Baby moments

I was in a shop downtown yesterday and encountered a woman with a baby. She had him parked behind her while her transaction was rung up. I started talking to him and jingling my keys at him. She turned to look, so I gave her a friendly smile. She said, "Oh, good," and walked off to do a bit more shopping. It really surprised me, even though she didn't go far and was gone for only a couple of minutes. But I wish the world were such that all moms could be like that, trusting a friendly stranger to give her half a minute to get things done.

That moment in that store has helped a tiny bit to balance a very different moment I had in another store last week. This woman was walking all around Borders with her very small baby in a carrier. He was screaming, arms flailing, cheeks red. At one point, she set the carrier down, turned her back on him, and began to peruse the books. It was heartbreaking. I went up to that baby, too, and even went so far as to ask her if I could rock him. It didn't help. She said, "He doesn't like his carseat." Well, duh. That much was obvious to all of us in the store! I remain baffled over what she thought she might accomplish by torturing him that way.

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