Tiger Babies Strike Back (24 page)

I am in the trenches with recycled bubble wrap and Elmer's glue. It's where I need to be. Frankly, it can be a royal pain. But I've got to stay flexible, shift gears, and constantly rethink my own mental state if I'm going to preserve my kid's bright-eyed love of life, her natural exuberance, and her ability to enjoy watching the clouds moving ever so slowly.

From the moment Lucy was born, I looked into her eyes and whispered, “I see you.”

When I was a kid, that's all I ever wanted to hear, to know in my heart. I wanted to know that someone saw who I was inside, but instead, my family focused only on practical matters: get in the car, eat your dinner, finish your homework, write your thank-you notes, don't be late for school, practice your piano, get to basketball practice, and so forth.

After I participated in all my activities, and obeyed all the rules, when would anyone ever see who I was, or ask what I'd like or what I wanted?

Every obligation we rushed off to. Every family event where my accomplishments or failures were discussed in detail as if I wasn't sitting right there, I was always wondering,
Can we just go home now?
And even when we did get home, I wondered,
Can I just be myself now?
Would I ever have time just to stare into space and try to figure out exactly what that might be?

Sure. Just as soon as you get into UC Berkeley. I mean, after you graduate. Oops, my bad. I meant graduate in four years with a double major. Of course, with honors. That goes without saying if you are Chinese.

When I look at my own daughter, I think back to my own childhood and wonder, was I ever really satisfied or happy with straight As and piano recitals? I know I was satisfied to have pleased someone else. I wasn't actually ever discovering for myself what I really liked, nor had I been asked. Of course, if I
had
been asked, I would have said I liked puffy stickers and touching “down there.” Good Lord! Better double up on those piano lessons to keep those nimble fingers busy!

Oh, and speaking of the Lord, I was mighty afraid of hell. Because I attended Catholic school, I lost a lot of sleep before the age of ten, worrying if the next two dimes I swiped off the kitchen counter were going to be the last drips of Christ's blood to overflow the world's chalice full of sins. I worried about mortal sins and venial sins, memorized lengthy prayers and couplets out of my Chinese school textbooks, only to parrot everything back to teachers without understanding what they meant.

I was a good learner, a real homework machine. I spent my waking hours doing precisely what I'd been told so I would avoid both everlasting hell and, potentially the next worse thing, paltry acceptance into only a junior college. In retrospect, between St. Brigid's School and a Chinese upbringing, I had a lot of worry I didn't need to have. I could have been running through a forest or feeling the sunshine on my skin. But I had learned early that fresh air was only for suckers who didn't get in to Berkeley.

Which is so not true. Once I got to college, there were plenty of people who'd grown up swimming and playing, and generally had had a grand time. And here we were, having ended up at the same school. I probably could've gone to the beach more and would have still gotten into the same college. I could've taken off my shoes and socks more during the first twenty years of my life. For Pete's sake, I wasn't even supposed to walk around without socks
in our house
.

Yep, coulda lived a little more on the edge.

But hey, cry me a river made of Purell. Lucy is plenty barefoot during the summer and catches snowflakes on her tongue in the winter. She stomps in mud and swims, plays with roly-poly bugs, has friends who live right next door, and has me to pick her up from school every day.

I am aware that my parents were working hard for me and making sacrifices of their own, but when I saw moms on TV baking cookies and actually talking to their kids, I always yearned to know what that might be like. I had wanted that so bad, and now I have the opportunity to give that to my own child. I am able to give her a mother who spends time with her, who sees who she is now and who she is becoming. I am her unequivocal ally through life.

And as such, I am the opposite of a Tiger Mom. I actively choose to not constantly pressure my child to do better, as if who and what she is isn't good enough. I strive not to make her feel like I am consistently disappointed in her. I am not shaming her into excelling by calling her names like “garbage.”

So sue me.

And in twenty years, let's hope my daughter doesn't.

Hopefully, she will remember how I put my brain aside for several years in order to play with her creepy, freaky Care Bears. In case you don't know, Care Bears appear cuddly and cheery, but their secret agenda is to melt the adult brain. In their world, if you can't get fired up about painting a cloud with a rainbow-dipped brush, they collectively focus their zombie eyes at you and hypnotize away your bad behavior in a mind-control experiment known as the Care Bear Stare. I know these things because I have crawled on the floor for hours, setting up tea parties for Tender Heart Bear, Bashful Heart, Funshine, America Cares, and Perfect & Polite Panda. Believe me, I wanted to snuff them all out with an Uzi that shoots fire like the gun Ripley uses in
Aliens
. But instead I usually place two Cheerios each on their tiny plates as my daughter pours water into their teacups.

When I think of the Tiger Mom parenting style, in which playdates are forbidden and carelessly drawn birthday cards are refused as inferior, I don't imagine a lot of parent participation in crawling around on the floor like a Care Bear. That sounds so much easier for the parent, but I don't know how it is for the kid. I couldn't ever say no to the sound of my child begging, “Mommy, play with me, pleeeeeaaase!”

One of the saddest sounds I ever heard was when Lucy was two years old, standing in our hallway on the other side of the door where I was inside the bedroom writing. I was on a book deadline and was trying to concentrate, trying to forget the dirty dishes, willing myself to put domestic concerns out of my mind. Meanwhile, Lucy was pounding on the door with her wee little fists sobbing, “Mommy . . . Mommy . . . Mommy . . .” I could see her little stocking feet stomping like two Jazzercising blobs of cookie dough through the crack between the floor and the bottom of the door. As she exhausted herself screaming my name, she sank lower and lower until she was lying prone like an exhausted meatloaf. The lump on the other side of the door whimpered, “Maaa-maaa.”

I wanted to die. I stopped what I was doing, opened the door, and scooped her off the floor. She came to life like the happy baby I knew her to be, and I let her mash my face with her hands to her heart's content. From then on, I told myself, she could have a desk next to mine, and I would teach her how to work quietly, or else I would have to work at night while she slept. That pounding on the door thing accompanied by uncontrollable sobs was just too heartbreaking. I vowed that I would never keep a locked door between us again.

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I want Lucy to have access to everything I didn't have, and by that I mean barefoot summers and afternoons of digging in the sand or swimming at the nearby pool. She needs the chance to get dirty, to meet other kids, and to goof around for no other purpose than to have fun. We've chosen a life for her that includes neighborhood friends, walks to and from school, and relaxing days in the backyard watering flowers. We've created a slower pace of living, with less rule following and more looking at the clouds. In contrast, my upbringing was scheduled in every increment, and I don't want to revisit that upon my own daughter.

But make no mistake. I am a very attentive mother. When Lucy was an infant, I would let her sit and stare at me for long chunks of time, and I did not look away. When she wailed inconsolably for no apparent reason, I gently bounced her and told her, “I love you even when you're crying. It's okay to be sad. I love you even when you are sad . . .” It helped a lot, this mantra. It kept me from going insane especially when I was so frustrated that I would have rather jabbed myself in the eye with a Mr. Potato Head arm than to have the crying go on and on. Which it did. The crying scrambled my brain. But what else could I do?

In addition, I strive to be particularly gentle and attentive when tending to her personal care such as washing and grooming. I remember my own mom ripping a comb through by hair so hard that the comb's
metal
teeth
broke off
. She'd continue to rake the jagged, broken points through my tangles as I screamed. I had always promised myself there would be none of that for Lucy.

So here we are. You can call me a coddling, permissive parent, but also, when it comes to food, I don't even mind making a separate kid dinner for Lucy. It doesn't take that much more time, and I'm not interested in misery at the dinner table or an endless battle of wills that can be solved easily with a piece of whole-grain bread, a little cream cheese, and some strawberries. In my experience as a parent, drawing lines in the sand that you decree you will never cross, sooner or later, makes ya kinda look like an idiot. So I'll just make burritos
and
mac 'n' cheese and call it good.

And over here we're playdate central. We've got neighborhood munchkins dressed as ladybugs and bumblebees. We're digging deep, muddy channels in the backyard. We're saving the lives of every roly-poly bug we find. Our hands are busy making ghosts out of paper napkins and washed-out yogurt cups, and we're transforming milk cartons into cars with paint and the wheels from an old stroller. Countless grilled cheese sandwiches have been consumed, and we've cleaned hundreds of sticky fingers, milk mustaches, and muddy little feet. Sometimes the hair is a little messy, but so far, the world hasn't ended.

I'm not striving for competitive perfection for Lucy. Instead, I'm seeking excellence in a different way. In ways nobody might be able to see, measure, or quantify. I'm teaching Lucy the subtleties of listening to her own body, and her own heart. We are helping her to talk about her emotions. We want her to be a happy kid. We want her to be a good friend, to play fair, and to be a compassionate and kind person. We do not refuse hugs.

So how can we be careful and attentive, without turning into banshee fascists from Crazytown? I understand that when both parents work full-time, and have their feet firmly planted in the adult world, it can be really difficult to shift gears and set one's mind to Shrinky Dinks level. But I have time to do it, and the desire, also. Of course, it does require being once again in between two worlds, between pretending you're Hunka Munka the mouse and, say, itemizing bills from one's health-care provider. Keeping up with the fast-paced, seemingly nonsensical minds of several five- or nine-year-olds while cooking and cleaning up after them, and constantly stepping on every last Polly Pocket, Perler bead, and Webkinz, will fry both your brain and your body. Meanwhile, your adult responsibilities still have a raygun pointed to your head.

To give ourselves a break, we make the conscious decision to not be overscheduled. I'm not sure when simply being together and talking to each other became a luxury. Even if you take the kid out of the equation and are only referring to communication with one's spouse, it's so easy for a wall of work, chores, daily routines, and family duties to come between us. Sometimes we're both so exhausted that it's more convenient just to slump our aching bodies against this invisible wall of fatigue and inertia instead of tearing it down. This wall is not a physical wall, and yet it has everything to do with all the material detritus of our cluttered lives: old PG&E bill stubs, dead computers, and stacks of paperwork taking up room in the corner, and hundreds of white plastic bags shoved in drawers.

And if you have kids, add to this barrier the other piles of stuff that accumulate everywhere. Our mental and emotional flexibility is further hindered by the heaps of dirty clothes, stuffed animals, clean socks, drawings that we can't bear to throw away, old books, crushed tissue boxes, and maybe a Ziploc bag containing two squished grapes. Haystacks of that stuff add to the aforementioned wall of psychological ennui, and one can feel so stuck that one can barely muster the energy to watch the pet-fur tumbleweeds roll by.