Today I watch a mother in line behind me with two young boys, around the ages of two and six, the same difference in age as Riley and Desmond. The youngest is squirming in the grocery cart’s seat, squealing and trying to get out. The oldest is taunting him, taking a bite of his treat, despite the mother’s definitive, “No, you already had yours…that’s his.”
She looks like she’s about to snap, like a wishbone her boys are yanking—trying to get more than their share. I know the look on her face and the feeling too well—the wanting to escape—I can’t take anymore—I’m not cut out for this motherhood shit. Despite her spaghetti strap sundress, and ponytail, she is sweating. “I’m very disappointed in you,” she says sharply to her older son.
The tone of her voice makes me cringe. I want to empathize with her, but I’m afraid of exposing my grief if I say, “It’s so challenging at those ages.” She will most likely ask about my children and their ages. “One is nine, the other dead,” I imagine saying.
While the cashier is ringing my groceries, I overhear the man in line behind her say to the older son. “Listen to your mom…she does everything for you.” The mom is bent over, putting her items on the belt: milk, cheerios, orange juice, trying to ignore him. Next, I hear, “She’s going to kick you out of the house at six, if you keep this up.” I look at him, short, long, dark beard, narrow eyes, full grocery cart. “It’s all the chemicals in the food you’re feeding them…you’re spoiling them,” he says.
I am shocked by his unsolicited criticism. It’s one thing to think it, another to say it.
“What is he saying to you?,” I ask the mom, rhetorically.
She turns and looks at me, her hazel eyes bulging.
“She needs to discipline her kids,” he says loudly to me.
I feel magma surging inside me, tectonic plates about to shift. I see people in line behind him, looking at their phones. Her younger son’s curly hair reminds me of Desmond’s nursery school picture I looked at yesterday, and the older one has straight hair like Riley’s. The younger boy’s light blue blanket reminds me of Riley’s resting on the edge of the seat next to his chubby, bare legs. I think of Kilauea’s lava gushing from fissures.
I think about my younger self; the woman who worried about being a good mother and felt overwhelmed and judged by others. The mother, who, after losing her older son, feared her grief. I didn’t stand up for her in a therapist’s office shortly after his death, when I brought up wanting to start trying to get pregnant, and the therapist cut me off.
“It’s too soon to think about it…maybe in a few years…you can live a full life with one child.” I sat silently in the chair. I should have erupted in her office, wielded my grief. I should have let her see the effect her thoughtless words can have. I should have asked her if she had children, and how many. I should have asked her if she had ever lost a child or someone close to her.
Recently, I discovered that she had one child and no one close to her had died. I wonder how she would feel if her child had died and someone told her, “You can live a full life without a child.”
I stand motionless in line until the memory of my lunch the day before at Café Gratitude vibrates in my head, the server’s question, “What is your superpower?”
My grief, I thought. It’s my superpower and my kryptonite.
I feel the familiar grief tremor and a rising inside me before the words erupts.
“You can’t say that to her.”
“Freedom of speech,” he preaches.
“It’s not your place. It’s not okay.”
“I can say whatever the fuck I want,” he rants.
“Well, no one cares what you have to say,” I give him a "talk to the hand" gesture.
