I fold orange construction paper along the lines the teacher drew in Sharpie. My son beside me—six, gap-toothed, entirely absorbed—creases his own with unsteady fingers, his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth like punctuation. Around us: the muted chaos of pipe cleaners and child chatter, glue sticks clicked open and dry markers dragged across waxy tablecloths. A caged jungle of clatter.
He nudges my elbow and says: “Don’t forget the stripes.” I smile like I’m listening, though my tiger looks more like a fox that lost a bet. His, somehow, already has a kind of grace. He draws whiskers with certainty, black crayon swishing like a brushstroke from some memory he shouldn’t yet have. Maybe we all inherit a bit of tiger, unspooling through bloodlines. I’d like to believe that.
The teacher says the theme today is strength. “Tigers are silent hunters,” she offers. “Not loud like lions. They wait. They stalk. They strike when the time is right.”
I feel like the opposite of a tiger most days. I speak too much, too quickly. I apologize for things before anyone’s had time to be hurt. I write emails that say “just following up!” and mean “please don’t forget me.” I flinch at loud sounds.
But my son—he growls sometimes for fun. He climbs counters barefoot. When he falls, he announces the pain, then gets up like a cat uncoiling from sleep. No shame in him yet. I envy that.
He asks if tigers ever cry. I tell him I don’t know, but maybe they do, quietly, where no one can see. He says that doesn’t sound strong. Then he gives his paper tiger blue tears anyway, tucked just beneath the eyes. “Just in case,” he says. I don’t know whether he means for the tiger or for himself.
Later, walking home, his tiger flaps in the wind, tied to his wrist with yarn. He gallops it through the air, shrieking and laughing, until the yarn snaps. The tiger somersaults into the gutter. He freezes. Looks at me.
I brace for tears, but he just kneels, scoops it out, wipes off the wet. The paper droops a little now. It will never quite stand again.
“That’s okay,” he shrugs. “It still remembers how.”
I want to say something—to let him know how much he teaches me, how he carries strength like breath, casual and essential. But all that comes out is: “Want to make another one when we get home?” He nods. We walk on.
In between his fingers, the fallen tiger flutters.
~
Mathieu Parsy’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Your Impossible Voice, BULL, Bending Genres and Maudlin House. Originally from the French Riviera, he now lives in Toronto and works in the travel industry. Follow him on Instagram at @mathieu_parsy.