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.
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