A Successful Surprise
Bringing our adult children together to celebrate my wife's milestone birthday
This past Saturday, I left my co-working space and nervously started walking the block and a half toward King Street, the primary business district in Old Town Alexandria. Three of my four adult children, our daughter-in-law, and my 1-year-old grandson were following close behind.
The chatter, as it is when they are together, was constant as I tried to figure out the logistics of a planned surprise that seemed to be going awry.
“She’s definitely left the house,” Nick said, looking at his phone.
“She’s on King Street,” I said, looking at mine.
I saw Jill at the intersection of King and Payne Street and shouted out as the group behind me jumped behind a building, hiding around a recycling dumpster.
For our family, as Nick later said, the move was “totally on brand.”
Christmas at CVS
In 2014, we traveled to Chicago for the Christmas holidays. It was the only time we didn’t mark the occasion at home when the kids were growing up.
Ben, on tour with “Newsies,” was in the Windy City for a month. Given the performance schedule — a late Christmas Eve matinee, followed by two shows on the 26th — it was impossible for him to get home. Plane fares were nuts, as they are during the holidays, so the five of us turned it into a seven-day road trip.
Somehow, the seven-year-old Honda Odyssey made the 1,400-mile roundtrip journey despite an odometer that already had pushed past 150,000 miles. Exhausted due to holiday traffic and a DVD marathon of the first and second seasons of “Big Bang Theory,” we found a Motel 6 in rural Indiana about four hours from Chicago and stayed overnight.
We arrived in Chicago on the 22rd, went to an event with the touring cast of “Cinderella” that night, toured the city the next day, and met Ben at the stage door after his late matinee, which ended around 6 p.m. Naively, I didn’t think to make plans for dinner that night.
We walked around looking for something to eat, not realizing that every single place — four-star restaurants, decent establishments, diners, dive bars, pizza places — in the surrounding area had closed early. The only place open was a CVS.
No one was amused, but it worked out. Thankfully, the pharmacy had snacks and a frozen food section, and the hotel had a microwave.
Hashtags were just becoming popular then on social media. Nick, the oldest and self-anointed leader of the pack, tagged us as #WeAreTHATFamily.
#THATFamily remains the name of our group text chain to this day.
Preparing a Surprise
I’m not good with surprises. Part of it is lack of patience. Some of it is lack of preparation, which I attribute to the lack of patience.
I want to give a gift to the person I bought it for immediately. That means I usually wait until the last possible second to make a purchase for big events, which means the quality of the gift sometimes suffers.
But this year, with Jill reaching a milestone birthday, I was determined to do things differently.
We went to Mexico City in January for my 60th and I wanted to do something memorable for hers (the actual date is Tuesday). Given that we’re into experiences and not necessarily stuff, the question was, “What?”
Jill has traveled for work the past two weeks, and we have a trip to visit extended family in Oklahoma in April. Jamming more travel into a long weekend didn’t make sense.
But a surprise dinner with our kids — an adult meal in a nice restaurant with our grown children — did.
More than a month ago, the kids and I agreed on a date, place, and time. I made a reservation at a nice restaurant for the weekend before her birthday and told Jill I wanted to go to a happy hour at our local dive bar beforehand.
Jill knew I was up to something, but for once I didn’t spoil the surprise. The kids didn’t either, even though everything didn’t go according to plan.
Pivoting to Perfect
“Pivoting” became an overused term during the pandemic. Raising our children, we perfected the pivot before it was popular.
Kate and Matt live 45 minutes away in Manassas but were unable to get a babysitter and had to work all day Saturday. After Jill went to bed — thankfully early — on Friday night, I scrambled and managed to find someone to come to our house.
Ben and Emma rented a car and drove in from New York; unfortunately, they were without Gaby and Colby, both of whom were working out of state. Nick and Conner came from Durham with Colin, who was staying with Conner’s sister and brother-in-law at their hotel.
Given the uncertainty of traffic, the out of staters left early — and arrived earlier than expected. By more than three hours, which is why they found themselves hiding behind a running store recycling dumpster.
Jill was surprised when I shouted her down on the street, and even more confused when I babbled on and finally got her to walk with me down the street to meet the kids.
The rest of the evening went off without a hitch. We went to the dive bar, met up with Kate, Matt, and Marley, and then had a lovely dinner at the restaurant.
As parents, we’ve always tried to focus on the long game, recognizing that we would (hopefully) know them far longer as adults than as children. Sitting around that table on Saturday night, sharing stories and breaking bread with the people closest to us, was the best present I could hope to give.
I could not more proud of #THISfamily. Happy birthday, Jill.
Happy birthday, Jill!!
Happy birthday, Jill! 🪄🍾🥂🥰