Through a Glass, Darkly

Something I was reading several weeks ago made me think about sleepovers. Summer is a good sleepover time. I remember one summer when we lived in Charlotte and pretty much every girl in my class had a July birthday (like me!) and there was a party every week. It was awesome. I remember one sleepover in particular - Susie or Susan was her name, I think, and I wasn’t that close to her, but I sat on the back row of the class with her (and the other girls in my reading group) and we were friendly, so I went. I only remember vague things, like her house was really bright, and there was a huge playroom upstairs, and her mom was really nice, and we did some fun things, but I have a really warm memory of that party.

There was another one - my friend Caren - hers was really fun, too, except she had a cat and I wasn’t really over my cat allergies at that point, so I felt like a party pooper when the cat wasn’t allowed anywhere near the party. Except that time that her cat walked on my pillow, and her mom had to give me a different pillowcase so I could sleep. Caren had a really big house and nice parents, too. I liked going over there after school and playing with the playhouse that was for her and her sister. I remember my mom saying, “Her mom drives a Mercedes!” I asked if that was an expensive car. (My mom drove a Pontiac station wagon. With paneling.)

Sleepovers are such a status symbol when you’re growing up. There are plenty more I remember - one year I was invited to a particular girl’s party and it was huge that I was being accepted into that group. But the next year I had fallen out of her good graces, and I was most deliberately not invited. I pretended it didn’t hurt, but it did. I tried to casually ask my friends about the party, whether they had fun, but everyone had been instructed not to tell me anything.

I only had one sleepover - for my 13th birthday. We borrowed my aunt and uncle’s unused farmhouse and I had 10 or so girls over. We made individual pizzas and talked about our crushes and mixed all the sodas together and drank them. I remember it as a good time. Someone gave me mascara, which was very exciting.

It’s funny because until I got married, I was very particular about sleep. I haven’t ever been very good at sleeping when other people were in the room, or on retreats, that kind of thing. (In college, I went on a record number of retreats, and yet I will be the first to tell you that I hate retreats, mostly because I have trouble sleeping when I’m not in my own bed, which means I get grumpy on retreats. It’s gotten slightly better since I got married, but now I have trouble sleeping when Mike’s not around. I guess I am a creature of habit.) But I never said no to a sleepover.