Several years ago when my kids were younger, I used to play this silly game with them as I fed them breakfast.
We called it لعبة الحيوانات, the Animals Game. Each one of us would pick an animal and we'd pretend to be that animal, and then we would have verbal "battles" as said animals. Each child would pick his favorite animal (shark, arctic wolf, owl, tiger, lion, grizzly bear) and I would almost always pick my "favorite" animal, the lynx (I'd always deliberately mispronounce its name and it made them laugh).
We had teams, me and the baby (Khalid at the time, when he was 2 or 3 years old), versus the older three boys, who were between the ages of 8 and 5. Mostly it was nonsensical and hilarious; I would make grand, impractical plans to lay some sort of elaborate trap for them, and they would shriek with laughter and tell me all the ways they would avoid my trap and "win." It was an imaginary adventure game, overflowing with silliness and pretend play.
Yesterday, one of the kids said over breakfast, "Mama, remember the Animals game? We haven't played that in a long time!"
"Aww! Yes, that's true! Do you guys want to play?" I said.
They did, smiling fondly at the memory of our old game.
As we sat around the breakfast table and they fed themselves (I no longer help feed Khalid), we started our game.
"I'm obviously a lynx," I said with a straight face, mispronouncing the word as usual. "Who do you want to be?"
This time, years later, it was different.
No longer was each child just picking his favorite animal purely based on feelings.
To my surprise and amazement, the kids started naming various little-known (to me, at least!) animals and listing various obscure facts about each one.
"I think I'll be the giant Pacific octopus," one boy said. "It has three hearts and nine brains. It's very smart. It also has very good grip strength: the suction cups on its arms can hold up things as heavy as 35 pounds!"
"Really?" I said, impressed and very confused. "How do you know?"
"I read it in a book," my 11-year-old son said breezily.
I was shocked.
"I am going to be a saltwater crocodile," another boy announced. "They have the strongest bite of any land animal. The only animal with a higher bite strength is the great white shark, but we aren't picking ocean animals. So I'm sticking with the saltwater crocodile. They have a bite strength of almost 4,000 psi."
"What does psi stand for?" I asked my 9-year-old son, my surprise written all over my face.
"Psi stands for "pound-force per square inch." It's how bite strength is measured," he replied calmly.
I had not known that.
As the boys continued their animated discussion of animals and their characteristics, I sat back in my chair, quietly watching them and internally marveling at their growth and maturity.
Time is an odd thing.
What a difference just a few years make! SubhanaAllah.
We never did play our little pretend game yesterday morning.
Instead of the old childish antics and make-believe pretend play, now there was mature discussion. Instead of the crazy boyish shenanigans, now there were actual factual details about the topic at hand. Instead of picking generic animals based on their well-known stereotypical traits that most little kids love, now there was a careful selection process of each specific animal based on knowledge gained from long hours of reading books.
I felt both happy and sad at the same time.
Wistful. Nostalgic.
It's a bittersweet feeling, watching your children grow up.
Mamas of young children, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
You may feel, in the moment, as you change endless diapers and soothe uncountable tantrums and wash many chubby little hands at the sink, that this tiring work will never end. You are, understandably and justifiedly, exhausted and headache-y and sleep-deprived.
But inshaAllah soon, over the span of just a few years, you will look up and realize that your babies are no longer babies-- they are now more independent, more mature, more rational. They are still kids of course, but they are no longer the chubby-cheeked dimple-knuckled wispy-haired little toddlers they had once been. Over the past few years while you had been faithfully standing there but when you were not looking, they have grown taller, thinner, lost their baby fat, and gained a whole lot of sense and learned a lot of knowledge.
And you will gaze at them in wonder, your eyes shining with tears of maternal pride and gratitude to Allah.
Alhamdulillah for motherhood.
- Umm Khalid
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