
I went to a cupcake store today to buy a birthday treat for a friend. On my way in, I passed a fellow mom. In the blink of an eye, I used my tribal knowledge to fully assess her situation. I felt like a detective, checking off all the tell-tale signs in my head as I walked by and gave her a half-smile. She was having a day I had had before.
About to come out of a kid’s hair salon, she looked unscathed for the most part. Physically, she was not disheveled and seemed to have everything under control. She was not the “type of mom” to have unruly children, or like most of us, wanted others to think she was. There was just one more errand on her list, if she could complete it before pushing the lunchtime envelope.
Once inside the store, the kids were increasingly awful. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. All my emotions competed: empathy, pity, anxiety. I even felt some form of resentment towards her, perhaps for triggering my own PTSD. Mostly, what I felt was guilt.
Usually, I would have joked about the terrorist-in-disguise I had left in the car with his tablet, specifically for this reason. I didn’t, or would ever, sneer or roll my eyes at this peer of mine. I simply froze for some reason out of my control. Did I enjoy that she might think I was childless and envy me? Was it my sheer morbid curiosity to see the scene play out for someone else? Was I trying to keep quiet to minimize the chaos for her? I will never know.
However, things didn’t end when I left the store. The scene lingered with me on my ride home. Like when you accidentally run over an animal, and you have flashbacks of it the whole day, I kept thinking of this mother.
The little boy was whining and rolling around on the floor. She had to chase him from behind the counter and apologize profusely while her little girl ran towards the door, grabbing things off the shelves on her way. The mother was visibly embarrassed that she did not, in fact, have her shit together as she presented. She ended up leaving before purchasing her items, telling the cashier that she would be back after putting the kids in the car.
I kept wondering what happened when she was finally able to escape to the car. Did she lose all sense of herself and start screaming at the kids for embarrassing her? Or was she the type to be able to keep her composure, then cry quietly after she finally got them down for a nap? Maybe her nightmare even continued when she got home.
My thoughts were finally interrupted when I saw the blinker of a car trying to squeeze in front of me to get out of the wrong turning lane. The driver’s eyes met mine, pleading. I glanced quickly and saw a rear-facing car seat in the back. A vivid memory was recalled, of my own screaming infant on an endless drive home. I gestured to her nicely and urgently with my hand and a head nod to please go ahead. At that moment, balance was restored in my universe of motherhood.
-This entry is included in my new book "Wake Up; It's Time to Go to Life", now available on Amazon
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