A sky full of lanterns

The birthday boy

My son Philip is a genius. Every year we have a party for his birthday on the beach at Lake Huron. It’s always a gorgeous, moon-lit night in the dunes and we gather with friends and build a bonfire.  Just to make it extra insane, we like to pick a broad theme, which also involves highly improvised costumes and a  beach-friendly menu.

This year, Philip turned 17, and mostly since Philip loves to eat Asian noodles, we decided on ‘One Night in Bangkok” as our theme. I made an Asian slaw of cabbage and red onions and peppers and mango, marinated some lemongrass chicken on skewers for the grill and whipped up a vat of cold sesame noodles.

Philip and I went to Tap Phong in Chinatown for some chopsticks and a stack of carboard Chinese takeout boxes (they are easily found although sadly, you never get Chinese takeout in them anymore), and so we served our beach dinner altogether in these compact little takeaway boxes in our crazy Thai outfits in the dunes.

I wore what I realised later is actually my usual beach outfit: a military blouse, a sarong and flip-flops, my hair in Commie pigtails. Thomas was a red shirt.  Our friend Jim, who is British and can’t resist drag,  arrived dressed as a Thai Ladyboy, complete with silicone breasts (in his mother-in-law’s borrrowed bra, which is somewhat on the edge of weird).

But Philip, who, as I mentioned earlier, is a genius, had a far better surprise for all of us.

Last summer, Philip went to Thailand on a summer student trip where he learned to work with elephants in a wildlife refuge. On his trip he had seen these wonderful Thai lanterns and wanted to bring them home, but they were confiscated from his luggage (too dangerous, presumably) at the airport.

For his Thai-themed birthday, Philip resolved to find those same lanterns, which are called ‘sky lanterns’ online.

At Chiangmai Craft, he connected with a lovely guy called Barry who promised that a minimum order of 50 would be shipped to our doorstep in a matter of days.

Lantern Lift-off

 The lanterns came flat-packed and dissasembled, with their four-foot white rice paper shells separated from a small wire ring of flammable material that had to be wired to the bottom and then lit with a match. As soon as it grew dark we gathered at the water’s edge and everybody got one to light. The trick was to let them puff up and almost float away from you until you couldn’t hold on any longer and they escaped into the night sky.

Sky lantern sky

The sight of 20 giant white lanterns floating out over the lake was unbelievably lovely.

We all made a wish when we set them off and then swum in the cool lake under them and the stars.

The next morning we heard that we only narrowly escaped being beset by a swarm of emergency rescue helicopters. Clearly some cottaging retirees had panicked at the sight of all of our lanterns, thinking some boat had set off emergency flares and called the O.P.P.

 Had they arrived, I would have explained that it was my son’s birthday and that he was a genius. And then I would have offered them some Asian noodles in a takeout container. But it didn’t come to that.