I assume it’s the norm these days for elementary schools to have some sort of faux-money merit system for their students. You often come home from school saying, “I earned some loot today!”
Based on last year in Kindergarten, as you spent it pretty much the moment you earned it, I figured you were doing the same this year; immediately spending it on erasers or bouncy balls or something.
But when you came home from school this Tuesday, you immediately announced to Mommy and me:
“I’ve got 100 loot now!”
You went on to explain there is a stuffed animal you were going to spend it on at the school store the next day.
And that’s exactly what you did.
Apparently, it’s not so common for most of the students in your class to save up 100 or more loot. But you did it!
So things were extra special when you were able to show us your new prize, and then on the same day, Mommy happened to receive some Pokemon-themed gifts from a co-worker who recently traveled to Japan.
You made it sound like that blue dog was the most expense thing you cared about in the school store. Now that you have obtained it, and you still have a few more months left of 1st grade, I wonder what will be the tangible motivation for saving up more loot.
Of course, the fundamental psychological part of this story is not that you got earned a stuffed animal at your school.
Instead, it’s that at your school, you have done a consistently great job of behaving and getting your work done.
The blue dog reinforces that fact. The blue dog serves as a trophy for you being a good citizen in your class.
I was definitely worried about Grandma’s timing in arriving at our home in Tennessee, as she was preparing to fly here from California.
Just a few days earlier, Mommy and I had to take you to the Emergency Room twice in the same day for your 106 degree temperature, as you were suffering from the flu.
My biggest concern is that Grandma would come all the way out here, only to not be exposed to our normal jolly little Holly.
Fortunately though, just as Grandma was coming in, your symptoms of the flu were on the way out.
I noticed right away how quickly you were drawn to her. Despite us only getting to see her about twice a year, you treated her as no stranger.
What really amazed me was on the 2nd day of her visit, you spent a solid two hours just chilling with her in the living room, playing with your toys. You never once needed Mommy or me.
I definitely noticed that you adopted a certain energy from Grandma. It was like a switch was turned on whenever you were around her.
You just wanted to show her what a sweet little playful granddaughter you are. It was as if you wanted to make sure Grandma got her money’s worth out of her cross-country trip.
Though you’re too young to process that Grandma is actually Mommy’s Mommy, it’s like somehow you already understand this.
You instinctively know that she is a very special person in your life. It helps that her personality perfectly compliments yours.
I am confident you could have spent all day with her on the living room floor, with just your plastic tea party set and a baby doll to serve as entertainment.
You typically are reserved around people you don’t see often.
I am taking a moment to deliberately freeze this moment in time; as if to keep you this age long enough for me to process the concept.
It is clear to me that you are in a transition between two different stages of boyhood.
You’re old enough to recognize that “Sesame Street is for babies”, yet you will happily watch it alongside your sister, while giving critical yet intelligent commentary on the plot line.
You’re old enough to finally stop spending all your birthday and Christmas money on stuffed animals, yet you genuinely celebrate receiving a new one as a gift.
You’re old enough to walk across the street to catch the bus every morning to school, yet you still can’t tie your own shoes.
Speaking of shoes, it’s as if you’ve still got one foot in the world of Young Boyhood but now have the other foot in the land of Middle Boyhood.
I feel like I’m even catching a glimpse of your early teen years, when it will no longer be cool to be seen in public with your dad.
I keep that in mind, even now, knowing there are times when I need to give you space; yet the very next day you may be very needy of my attention.
It’s obvious to me that you have gained a sense of your own identity at a much younger age than I did. I’m sure I’ve said it before, but I feel you’ve already formed the confidence in yourself that I didn’t gain until junior high.
Perhaps I feel that this is one of those fleeting stages in your life, where if I’m not careful, it will already be gone before I had a chance to acknowledge it.
So I’m acknowledging it.
Before too long, you’ll be openly mocking Elmo and tying your own shoes.
I feel like there’s this familiar cliche from family sitcoms of the 90s where the mother-in-law comes from out to town to visit, which inevitably yields 23 minutes of zany frustration for the husband and father of the household; accompanied by laugh tracks, of course.
Maybe that’s true for some men out there, I don’t know.
What I do know is I personally can not relate to this stereotype at all.
My wife and I have been married for nearly 10 years. I can honestly say that I have never once felt frustrated when my mother-in-law comes to visit or when we visit her in California. In fact, she has the opposite effect on me: I feel more relaxed with her around.
I assume I’m the typical American dad in that I am heavily involved not only with the kids, but also with the household chores. The only real free time I have is when everyone else is asleep.
During my waking hours, I’m either taking care of at least one kid or I’m helping clean up a mess. Because with young kids, there’s always a mess to be cleaned.
But when my mother-in-law is in town, I get a break from reality. I actually have pockets of time where I can do things like, you now… learn what it feels like to sit on my own couch for 5 minutes; thanks to my mother-in-law insisting on preparing dinner without my help, telling me, “Now Nick, sit down. I’m taking care of all this over here. You just take a seat and relax.”
This is all especially fresh on my mind, as my mother-in-law is currently staying with our family here here in Tennessee this week.
When the folks at Mazda heard about our special guest flying in from the West Coast, they dropped off a 2017 Mazda 6 Grand Touring with a full tank of gas, to make the week-long visit extra special.
It’s funny because despite only living about 40 miles south of Nashville, I only see that wondrous and trendy city a few times a year. But knowing we had a fancy car to get us there, we loaded up in the Mazda 6 and took our mother-in-law out for a magnificent lunch.
My wife suggested this cool Lebanese bistro called Epice.
Wow, seriously. It is now officially my favorite restaurant in all of Nashville. It was like being introduced to a whole new world of food. Not to mention, they were easily able to cater to me being a vegan.
The restaurant shares a parking lot with a very swanky “Nashvilley” shop called WhiteMercantile, which happens to be owned by Holly Williams; the daughter of Hank Williams, Jr.
I admit, the decor there was so cool, I took lots of pictures, made it into a collage, and debuted it as my new Facebook banner picture.
My mother-in-law just loved that store! Despite being born and raised in Oakland, California, she definitely has a fascination with the Southern motif.
After lunch, my wife and mother-in-law decided we would be stopping by an organic grocery store called The Turnip Truck; as it is soon to be a place frequented by Country Music stars.
Apparently, there were no celebrities there at the time, but at least I got a Mexican coffee out of the deal, and my daughter was able to enjoy one of her favorite snacks for the drive back home.
The next day on Saturday, my mother-in-law decided she wanted to take us out for dinner at our town’s official favorite restaurant, Viking Pizza Co. of Spring Hill.
Needless to say, it’s been a very enjoyable week for our entire family with my mother-in-law in town. Especially for me. I have enjoyed being able to remove myself just enough from the household chores, as my mother-in-law has assumed many of my roles this week, so though I could have some moments of sanity.
I don’t care what happened in 90s sitcoms. All I know is, I definitely like having my mother-in-law in town!
If you would like to learn more about the specifics of the 2017 Mazda 6 Grand Touring, check out another article I wrote; which as the title of it implies, will answer many of your immediate questions. Just click on the click below:
And don’t forget to catch up with me on The Lifetime Network’s “This Time Next Year” on February 20th, at 10 PM Central/9 PM Eastern; as I journey over the course of an entire year in attempt to find and meet my doppelganer!
Chances are, with it being this time of year, if you scroll through your Facebook feed right now, you’ll likely find a paragraph-long rant from someone declaring that people shouldn’t come in to work sick, spreading their germs with everyone else; how doing so only makes it worse for the whole office.
Here’s the thing: I was always that Scar or Jafar-like villain who secretly kept coming to work sick anyway. And in hindsight, I have no regrets about my selfish actions.
Strange Trivia Rabbit Trail: Have you ever noticed the common practice in Disney cartoon movies where the villain either has a foreign accent (to subliminally instill in us the propaganda that foreigners can not be trusted) or effeminate mannerisms (to further distance mainstream America from accepting the homosexual community)? It just so happens that both Scar (from The Lion King) and Jafar (from Alladin) relate to both of these tropes.
Yes, I was the co-worker who secretly came to work sick.
I deserve the electric chair, so I can personally relate to the lyrics of Metallica’s 1984 song “Ride the Lightning”, or at have least people standing on my front porch with pitchforks to denounce me for the heinous crime I committed more times than I could count, over the course of a decade.
If nothing else, surely some people could get together and create a clever hashtag to trend, to globally “sick shame” me on Twitter:
#SickShameNick
But with cold blood running through my icy veins, even now, I admit I wouldn’t have done anything differently.
I only had a limited number of sick days each year. I had to save them for my kids. My wife and I had a deal: We took turns staying home each time one of the kids got sick; which occurred a lot over the past several years.
Between two kids, this has included febrile seizures, a parapharyngeal abscess, tubes being put in ears to end countless issues with ear infections, as well as a few trips to the the emergency room.
And this doesn’t even include the Rolodex of times one of our kids simply had a temperature (that led to nothing more), and we had to leave work to stay home with them.
So obviously, “sick days” were never for me. They were for my kids.
I wasn’t willing to stay home and use sick days for myself when it could lead to me running out of them, then having attendance issues at work, and/or having to not be paid for work that day.
And that would all be on top of the medical bills that kept popping up an account of our kids being sick.
I am not ashamed to admit that I was always the one showing up to work sick while doing my best to keep it a secret; as I would chug an entire carton of orange juice at my desk, along with some priobiotic Kombucha, and Ibruprofen; as a cheap way to get myself through the day.
Amazingly, it usually helped restore me to health after about 2 or 3 days.
But don’t worry, entire world: I’ve been a stay-at-home dad for over 3 months now. I rarely get out of the house anymore. You are safe.
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