Safura's First Mother's Day

As joyous as being a parent is, let’s be honest: Sometimes it is work. I’m eight months into being a dad and there are days that I put our daughter Noémie down in her crib for the night and I’m thinking, “Whew! See you in the morning! I’m about to ice out a glass, pour things in it you can’t sip until you’re 21, and enjoy my night!” I’ll make a drink for my wife Safura and the evening begins. On a night like tonight, we’ll dim the living room to movie theater-level darkness and start the latest Game of Thrones.

We get 5-10 mins in and, all of a sudden, I see something’s glowing that’s not the TV or baby monitor. Safura’s on her phone. “What’s up?” I ask. She flips her iPhone screen towards me and reveals that she’s looking at pictures of Noey. Here’s one of her on the playground swing last week. Scroll a little to the left and there’s a video of Noémie dancing to Mommy’s surprisingly decent beat-boxing. Lol, oh, and she took this slo-mo clip of her shaking blocks out of a box days ago. GoT paused, I laugh and enjoy the pics for a second, then wonder aloud, “Yo, weren’t you with me all day with Noey? How... Why are you looking at that album now?”

Saf’s eyes light up. “She’s just so cute! That’s my baebeeeee! Can you believe we made this beautiful girl?” Yes. As a matter of fact, I can. I was there for that. Y’all, could you imagine working at Popeye’s all day, then coming home and frying chicken for dinner? Nah, right? You’d be like, “I’m about to jump on this salad... or pasta...” Not chicken. Shoot, you might not even want to talk about food!

But Safura is that mom. She moms all day and then when she’s “off” at night, she moms hard some more. She buys her Converse sneaks while dragons fly on screen. She worries if those two coughs Noey let out at 3:12 mean she might be sick. She researches the best products for our baby’s East/West African/Iranian’s head of hair. She loves her Noémie.

For real, Safura is some kind of super. I knew that when we got married two years ago. But today, me and my little homie Noey celebrate our hero for another reason: HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

We love you.