A Stranger In A Store

Shopping with my son the other day, a woman who was watching us laughed when I got exasperated by his antics. She made some "boy energy" jokes saying she'd always wished she'd had one. I asked her if she'd had a bunch of girls and she responded that she had no children, cheerfully encouraging me to remember how lucky I was.

Since much of my days are spent writing about not getting stuck in stereotypes and regrets, I told her not to worry about traditional roles; she kept insisting how great it must be to have a child; I kept insisting back that following the traditional route doesn't make you more or less of a valid human being. We went back and forth, with me pushing the point that there's no use perceiving others as being somehow more fulfilled than you, and she saying she always wanted a boy and then, finally adding, she only had a girl.

Oh, I thought, now I get it. I asked her if her husband got sole custody. No, she said, her daughter died of cancer when she was thirteen.

I spent the rest of that day and the next going through stages of weepily clutching my son and self-recrimination for giving the poor woman, who had also been a single mother, such an odious pep talk. I guiltily softened every little interaction with my son, entirely focused on how irrelevant transgressions become when compared to the unthinkable. Eventually he transgressed every boundary, wreaked a lot of havoc and I lost my temper. Now I was an even bigger jerk - I couldn't even stay remorsefully grateful for one whole day.

I eventually unravelled myself by remembering one of the lynch pins of my sanity: out-of-control guilt hinders common sense. I had survivor's guilt, enforcer's guilt, single mother's guilt and I would have willingly taken on any other suggestions had they come to mind. I tried to figure out how to honour her request to never forget how lucky I was without living in perpetual fear of the unknown; simultaneously keeping her story close and letting it go. Perhaps by just carrying on, filling in the parent's part of the big space between birth and death with all the mundane and messy stuff, I'd accomplish it. In doing so, I hoped I'd be honouring both her and my son.

Painting is Mother and Son by Thomas Sully; Courtesy Art Renewal Center