Superstar!

BY TONY ZIMBARDI—LE MONS

“I don’t know how you do it, Tony. I just baby-sat for a friend of mine, a struggling actress/cocktail waitress. She has a 6-year-old daughter—her room looked like a hurricane hit it. We spent the entire four hours I was there, just cleaning her bedroom. I took out six bags of trash! Kids are hard work. I’m so not ready for it!” I’m sitting in a Chinese restaurant with my friend Jenny from improv class. We’re meeting for a bite to eat before walking over to the theater. “I really love it,” I reply. “But, I had no idea how exhausted I would be all the time.”

I take a bite of my lemon chicken. “The other night, I was helping Edward with his homework—homework four nights a week in kindergarten! Anyway, he had to write five words that rhymed with ‘sit’ on a piece of paper.

“He was just guessing, using letters from the alphabet like ‘Is ‘rit’ a word?’” I take another bite of my chicken. “And I’m answering him, ‘yes, no, yes, no’ and he asks ‘is tit a word?’ and I just said ‘yes.’ And then he said ‘is ‘zit’ a word?’ And I said ‘yes,’ again!’” I sigh, “I let my child go into school the next day with rhyming words like tit and zit. What kind of parent am I? I was going to go back in the morning and help him change those two answers, but in the rush to school, I completely forgot about it. I’m worried they’ll call DCFS on me!” Jenny just laughs.

The next morning Edward and I are heading over to the Rose Bowl to watch Jaime perform in the “Kinder Chorus.” There are only a dozen 5- and 6-year-olds onstage, and he’s one. They’re all dressed in international costumes; they look like they’ve just escaped from the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disneyland. “I love my costume, Papa,” Jaime shares that morning leaving the house. “Can I wear it all day?” I smile and gently tell him no.

Edward and I watch from the stands as Jaime makes his entrance. Antonio has to work this day, so the two of us are showing a little family support. Jaime’s costume is black velvet with gold embroidered flowers holding little mirrors in the center of the petals. From a distance, it looks a bit like the pantsuit Judy Garland wore during her last concert. I beam with pride as he performs.

“How was he sweetie? How’d our baby do?” Antonio calls me on the cell right after the performance. “He did great!” I tear up. “It didn’t matter that he was one count behind in the choreography, he’d jump after the rest jumped, and he’d clap after the others did. He was just so thrilled to be there, it was a joy to watch; as usual, he stole my heart,” I add. “That’s our boy, sweetie, that’s our boy.”

In the next installment: More family adventures.

Tony Zimbardi Psy.D. is a psychotherapist in private practice in West Hollywood. More of his writing can be found at www.drtonyzimbardi.com.