More than an Instant

The air is filled with floating bubbles. Some of them drift along off in different directions, others swirl around each other for an instant, some linger, some merge - held together by tremulous soapy tendrils.

I was watching CNN this morning and the breaking news was that the police found the body of Jennifer Hudson's little nephew in a white SUV. I stopped in my tracks and a wave of sadness washed over me as Julia Hudson's desperate plea for her son's life on the news yesterday came to mind. Her grief is unimaginable to me. And yet while I feel genuine sympathy, today I will run on the treadmill, go to Target, fold laundry, wait for the school bus, and change poopy diapers. But the delicate bonds that hold my kids and I together will seem all the more fragile and fleeting when juxtaposed to such tragedy, and I will try to remember not to take them for granted.

As I thought about it further, I found it odd that we are a voyeur to this particular bit of her life and now she will be remembered in my mind as a Grief-Stricken Mom. This one moment will define her thoroughly from a stranger's vantage point. We are encapsulated into one or two binding words based on a momentary encounters.

When the Stylish mommy is walking through the mall with her kid following behind in designer jeans, face down, absorbed in a gameboy, and I think some evil thought that contains the words "lazy" and "shallow", it doesn't occur to me until later that I was only there for the briefest of instants in that mommy's life. Just passing by in the mall, does what I observe really sum her up or was she perhaps allowing her kid the gameboy as a reward for: doing all his chores, playing with his baby sister even though his friends think she's lame, getting all A's?

What about the Grouchy Scrooge in the cotton candy booth at the fair who refused to wet a napkin so we could wipe Connor's face. For all I know, she could have been served divorce papers that morning, or maybe she was just having a bad day.

I hope my entire being is not summed up by the middle finger I flashed at an elderly driver when she nearly mowed me down at the end of a very long afternoon jog years ago. Although I'd like to add that I didn't see she was elderly until the finger was at apex position, and then I felt pretty bad about it.

But my point is that today I will kiss my children more, hug them tighter, and really look at their faces before this bubble, drenched with the solemn colors of despair, floats away from my conscious thought. That little bubble is too heavy for me to carry around, but maybe, the sheen of the compassion I feel for Julia will stay with me and I will remember to apply it to the other strangers who drift through my life.