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Stephanie and I squabbled tonight. Of course, it was over something completely stupid, but tempers were flaring. And so while we had planned to take a walk together after dinner, we wound up storming off separately.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. I charged down the street. It was cold out, and the first few blocks I walked into the wind. My cheeks stung and my ears ached in the cold, but it felt good to purge adrenalin and emotion.
The streets were mostly deserted. I power-walked for about 20 minutes, and then turned towards home. As I did so, footsteps approached from behind. Slowing my pace slightly and moving right, I thought the person would pass. The footsteps came closer, but remained behind. Then, a noise, “Ahem.” And again. Finally, a voice said, “Aren’t you going to turn around?”
I turned. A black, middle-aged woman met my eyes. “I used to live in New York – you should always look around,” she said. “You never know what’s behind you.”
By that point the worst of my negative emotions had burned off, so when she matched her pace to mine, I felt receptive to chatting with the stranger and we began to talk.
She seemed glad for the company. Her name was Beverley. A mother of four children, she said she walks to keep her blood pressure under control. And tonight, she’d had words with her teenaged son before she left, so apparently when she’d set out, she’d been stomping too.
The coincidence of our common circumstances birthed an instant camaraderie, and we laughed as we walked. By the time we bid each other good-bye, I think we were both feeling better. Beverley’s arrival by my side – into the darkness of the evening and of my mood – felt like a gift.
Stephanie came in the door a few minutes after I did, having also gained some needed perspective. She made us both a cup of tea. We talked and we laughed, and then shared a hug.
***
“Not all worries end up as water under the bridge or over the dam. Some evaporate.”
You know – the bleep button that television people use when they want to eliminate something before it hits the airwaves. Bleeping is only possible because such broadcasts are either pre-recorded or ever-so-slightly delayed, not quite live to air. If you had a bleep button – you could see the consequences of your actions far enough in advance that you could either prevent them altogether or bleep them out before they had a chance to do their destructive damage.
Yesterday I found myself wishing I had a bleep button.
I was vacuuming in the basement, under my 13-year-old’s sewing desk. (Jenna likes to sew).
Jenna's sewing desk
Sucking up wads of thread clippings, an invisible dropped pin or two and a few dust bunnies, I moved aside a plastic bag that was also there, and peeked inside – Bleep! – to determine both its contents and its proper storage place. Bleep!
I won’t tell you what the bag contained. But I will tell you it was beautiful.
Later, when Jenna came home from school, I asked her about it. Bleep! Bleep!
Oh, my question was of the friendly, mildly curious sort. And I asked in complete innocence. I simply asked her where it came from. Bleep!
But she was devastated.
Jenna doesn’t show her devastation loudly. She just sat there quietly for a moment. Said not a word at first. Her eyes reddened, then glistened with moisture. A single tear brimmed. And spilled over. Silently.
I think silent devastation is even worse than the noisy kind.
Then, “It’s your Christmas present,” she said, ever so softly. “I was making it for you.”
“Merry Christmas.”
There are some moments in life you never forget. I think this will be one of them. In that instant, I felt like a total heel. I also felt overwhelmingly proud of my daughter. And incredibly, monumentally, enormously blessed to be her mom.
“When you have brought up kids, there are memories you store directly in your tear ducts.” – Robert Brault
