Every day the same woman sets up shop at the coffee shop in my neighborhood with her son. She's beautiful and tall and carries with her a plastic case of beads and string and little clasps that look like hands. Glass and wood and crystal beads with little faces. She doesn't make eye contact with anyone but her boy and she sits outside by the window, with her coffee and materials, sometimes for hours, as her son peels at straws and kicks the window with his scuffed shoes.
She works through the morning with squinty eyes and rocks her son's stroller with her right foot. Back and forth and back and forth. She could just as easilly work from home, away from the condescending eyes of Hancock Park patrons but she likes it there, at the coffee shop with her table in the shade out on the sidewalk.
The other day I was walking behind two women, both pushing strollers-- both mothers like me, mothers like the woman with the beads and the stroller she drags back and forth with her foot.
The women waited until they were safely up the street before shaking their heads and talking shit:
"It's like torture what she does to that child."
"I know it. Her poor son just sits there all day waiting for her to finish."
"It's so sad what some children have to go through."
"She doesn't even pay attention to him. She just sits there and makes crappy jewelry all day..."
"We are so lucky..."
I'm not saying I'm above judgment. I judge people every second, in
shallow and terrible ways but when mothers judge each other's
"mothering" I get angry. Because it's always the pot calling the kettle black and for whatever reason it's impossible to see the mirrors in the broken glass after the stones have all been thrown.
I wanted to turn around and say hello to the woman with her Caboodle full of beads but I didn't. I wanted to tell her that I identify with her-- rocking her son to sleep as she strings beads on fishing wire. Concentrated on the two things in her life that will never be less than inspired and inspiring: her child and her craft-- working and creating and mothering all at once. Because she has to. Because maybe she wants to stand on her own two feet without locking her knees. Because maybe she bought that coffee with the money she made selling a box full of bracelets. Because she stained the coffee lid with lipstick she forgot she even had on.
I saw my name on her cup. And the lipstick stain looked just like mine.
We need to give each other a break. Some of us have to work. Because we need the money. Or perhaps more importantly, because we need to feel like we are fulfilling ourselves. Because there are different ways to be a good parent. And the woman who strings beads on the sidewalk with her son by her side is no different from me or any other mother doing the very best she can to balance her worlds, her loves, and her selves.
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