Tiger mom and her cub
My maiden name is Namer, which means Tiger in English. It’s a Sephardic name. So when people tell me I’m strong, I have to remember where my roots are – I’m a tiger by birth.
I’m coming down off a weekend in the life of the mother of a four and a half year old – we started with a playdate in Destrehan – stopped first at the grocery to pick up balloons but Tin changed his mind and asked if we could bring donuts instead – so we got a dozen hot glazed donuts and Tin held them the whole way there sort of in disbelief that he had twelve fresh donuts in his hot little hands.
Destrehan segued into Tin’s first soccer game, where he put on shin guards and grabbed his soccer ball and went to join the team after he finally let go of my hand. He kept coming back to the bandstand for water and telling me how hard he was playing out there and asking me, “Are you watching me?”
Afterwards, we ran to the Community Bookstore for their 30th anniversary celebration and picked up Twelve Years a Slave, which I hope I can read before seeing the film, and then we came home to crash.
We woke this morning to another playdate with a friend who is Tin’s equal in energy and range and his mother is my equal in age and disbelief.
Once we cleaned up that mess, we were off to see Tin’s first movie in a real life movie theater – which was Planes – and it was less crazy than I had feared and we actually had a fun time. Similar to when he saw the piñata on his 4th birthday and thought it was his present, he thought the commercials, not even the previews, were the movie and he said, “This movie is good!”
As well, he couldn’t believe his good fortune to have not only popcorn and a Sprite but also some M&M’s – he kept looking for the catch. There was none – sometimes you just have to be bad to the bone to feel good to the core. And (ahem) obviously, I’m not a Tiger Mom.
The downside to this child-centric weekend is that when we were headed over to his other house this afternoon for our weekly transition, he got sad, told me he was sad, which made me sad – but instead of trying to fix it or say anything to assuage the sadness we were both feeling, I kept quiet and we just sat there with our sadness – the upside is that he shook it off a few minutes later – once again proving himself to be resilient and adaptive – good skills to have in his adulthood.
I do believe he is going to be okay – it’s always us adults I worry about more than the kids.