“Oh, gentle one, thy birthday sun should rise
Amid a chorus of the merriest birds
That ever sang the stars out of the sky”*

Dad loved Bryant’s poetry and copied this quote into my sweet sixteenth birthday card.  Amid a chorus of the merriest birds that ever sang the stars out of the sky is exactly how Mum and Dad always made me feel on my birthdays.

Some days can be a bit bizarre holding, as they do, both the here and now and a very full cache of memories in the palms of their hands. Sometimes, sparked by the oddest of circumstances, there is a rendezvous between the past and the present that jogs a very sweet memory:  Barbie and her blindingly hot-pink world has exploded onto screens of all sizes, everywhere this summer, poignantly reminding me of my seventh birthday which was oh-so-special and one of my favourites.

My parents loved to celebrate all birthdays but especially mine, and on those occasions, no effort was spared to make the event as exciting and happy as possible.  Yes, I’ll be the first to admit, I was entirely spoiled!  Birthdays meant fun and cards and phone calls from over ‘ome, and some small presents, and a homemade cake Russe and, when Mum was in charge, balloons galore.  And did I mention - FUN!  So much fun.

The centrepiece of all birthday parties is the cake and mine was always a spectacular work of art.  When I was a tad, my Dad introduced me to the joys of the Charlotte Russe, one of his specialities, which became an instant favourite.  Charlottes are types of bread puddings, but the Russe is made with, what North Americans call ladyfingers, and the French call boudoirs aux oufs.  My dad made my boudoirs from scratch.  Finished with crystal sugar, they were a little crispy, nicely sweet and unmistakably flavoured with vanilla.

The side of the Russe pan (now known as springform) was lined with the boudoirs standing on their ends, with crumbled boudoirs sprinkled across the bottom to form the base.  The filling is Chantilly with fruit and mine was always made with raspberries which created a very pretty pink confection.  When the Russe was removed from the pan, Mum would encircle it with a piece of pink ribbon and tie it with a pretty bow.  Honestly, there’s no cake more girly or pretty than the Charlotte Russe and it always drew oohs and aahs from my young friends when the climax of all birthday parties arrived - the singing of Happy Birthday, the wish-making, candle blowing and cake cutting.

My mum believed that no celebration was complete without balloons and, bless her, she knew every game it was possible to play with them.  The night before any party, she’d be at the kitchen table inflating balloons.  Mum had a cardboard pump - a tube-inside-a-tube with metal ends.  One metal end had a small hole into which she’d poke the end of the balloon and then slide the two tubes back and forth drawing air into the balloon.  Ingenious!  Since those days I’ve often wished I’d had one of those!

By far, though, and way more than the balloons, Mum’s biggest contributions to my birthday celebrations were my party dresses - a new one each year - which she’d stay up ’til all hours working on with her trusty Singer at our dining room table.  So many hours spent sewing for me.  Gosh, I was the luckiest one, wasn’t I?

As to the small presents, to paraphrase “Verbal” Kint, the greatest trick Mum and Dad ever pulled was convincing me we weren’t hard up**, and never was that magic more apparent than on my seventh birthday — the year Barbies “arrived” in my circle of friends and cousins.  The big “ask” of Santa that year by all my friends was for the Barbie Dream Home.  Such an extravagance was never going to be possible for Mum and Dad so, for my (December) birthday pressie, my adorable parents designed, built and decorated a wooden “modular” dolls’ house for my Barbie.  Looking back on it, my Barbie home truly was a dream – a melding of creativity, design and engineering:

Dad cut eight, twelve-inch squares of thin plywood which he then painted, both sides, with a very pretty, but pale pink.  Mum cut fourteen, three-inch squares from a white chamois (leather) lining from an old winter coat to serve as hinges.  Four tiny nuts and bolts attached each of the squares to the plywood pieces - two in one half of the chamois on one square, two in the other side of the chamois into the next square.  And so on.  With all eight pieces joined together in this fashion, the squares would stand up and I could “fold” them in multiple directions to create as many rooms as I wanted. 

Construction finished, Mum carefully clipped pictures from a host of magazines to paste onto the wood — there were mirrors, pictures, clocks, dressers and a vanity for the bedroom, cabinetry for the kitchen, and so on.  My favourite configuration was a square indent, followed by a flat wall, followed by another indent, followed by another flat wall:

Barbie's House Storie Version Sincerest apologies for the rudimentary drawing.
Gosh, I wish I still had my Barbie home to show you how perfect it was!  

My “furnishings” were an eclectic blend of found items and some penny purchases from “attic treasures” at Zion’s bazaar.  To see "furniture" in my collection of whatnots would require a ton of imagination of which, happily, I’d cornered the market.  I used an old facecloth to make a bed, an old fingertip towel to make a couch, a tiny jewellery box was my coffee table and an upside-down Russian lacquer box (sans lid) was my dining room table.  I added to my assemblage of pseudo-furniture at every opportunity until my Barbie’s house really was a dream home in every respect.  The greatest trick Mum and Dad ever pulled — it never once occurred to me that my Barbie’s house was make-shift. Because it wasn’t.  It was perfect!    

Come October, Dad will have been gone forty years and Mum, last February, for seventeen years.  I miss them both terribly and there’s so much I’d love to tell and show them. Including how much I loved my birthdays, my dresses, my Russes, my Barbie house and mostly, how special Mum and Dad’s efforts made me feel – Amid a chorus of the merriest birds that ever sang the stars out of the sky. I imagine dear old Dad would cringe at the Barbie movie trailers and posters (Mum would be bemused), but I know they’d be pleased as punch knowing that I so lovingly remember the Barbie house they designed and created for me.

'Til next time, y'all...

*William Cullen Bryant, from his poem “The Twenty-Seventh of March” - page 430 in his anthology Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant.

**“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.”  This line was spoken by the character Roger "Verbal" Kint in the movie “The Usual Suspects”, the screenplay for which was brilliantly written by Christopher McQuarrie.