Second Chances

I just cried all the way home from Target.
At 4:30 p.m., that difficult time for moms, a woman about my age was in front of me in the checkout line. Her 5-year-old daughter, wearing a soccer shirt and pigtails, was sitting in the cart. Her 3-year-old son was running around the cart laughing and dodging his mom's grasp. Our checker was a young 18-year-old boy checking really slowly. The mom was simultaneously trying to load bags in her cart and contain her little boy. She reached out but he wriggled away. She put him in the cart, but he climbed out. Then her daughter climbed out. She picked up her son in one arm and loaded a bag with the other arm into the cart. With a big smile on his face, her son started squirming and she put him (subconsciously?) down. He ran across the way to the drinking fountain and pressed the button on and off.

The mom exasperatedly asked him to come get back in the cart. To stay out of the way of people. Her daughter ran over and as he pushed the water on and off and laughed, she would lean down and give him kisses on his cheek, forehead and lips. Then they giggled and laughed together. Meanwhile the mom was loading another bag in her cart and (I'm guessing) silently willing the checker to go so much faster. Then she called out to her kids to ask them to come back. But they were having too much fun and ignored her.

I asked her if they were her oldest or her youngest. She said, "My only."
I said, "They remind me of my children at that age. I have an oldest daughter and a boy 2 years younger." I said, "Look how sweet they are having fun and your daughter giving him kisses and him laughing."
She looked at me with evident appreciation and smiled. "Thank you!"
I think I put her at ease.

And then when I got to my car, I cried. Because there was so much joy on those children's faces having the time of their life at Target. But when I was the mom, I never saw that joy. Instead I only felt my frustration. My tiredness. My worry that they would be bothering someone. My desire to hurry and just get home because I was too tired to be in public wrestling children at this time of day. And especially too exhausted to handle a potential negative comment from a bystander.

But today I didn't see kids misbehaving or being rude. I saw children being children and finding JOY in the buttons of a drinking fountain and being with each other and riding in a cart and escaping their mother's grasp. I felt so sorry that I couldn't see that joy every time while I was living it. I totally missed it. And now they're 23 and 21 and so far away.

At first I was standing at Target annoyed that I was in a slow line. But I stopped and looked around and my eyes were opened. I saw beauty where I hadn't appreciated it before.