A lady rounded the corner of the aisle we were in, and immediately began to oooh and aaaah over my adorable children. Nothing does a mother's heart good like hearing someone else praise their children. I, of course, know they're cute, but it's nice to have other people say it too, sometimes...
The lady paused her cart to watch the kids for a second (she gave me the impression of being someone who didn't have any of her own tiny people around, and missed them terribly).
Right as she seemed like she was ready to say goodbye and move on, suddenly Susannnah's lemonade somehow turned 180 degrees in her hands, and dumped straight through the grid of the cart onto the floor. As she is wont to do in these situations, Susannah froze and panicked all at once. I almost habitually began to reassure her and help her put things to rights, as I so often do.
When we had reached something like equilibrium, that sweet lady gently laid her hand on my arm and said, "Oh, you did such a good job!"
Part of me wanted to burst into tears right there at that exact moment. I had no idea, until I heard them, how much I needed to hear those words. I told my husband later, I was so thankful for her saying that because otherwise, I would have made it to the end of that day never remembering that small moment in which I did something right. My head would have just been crowded with all the moments I did the wrong thing.
It reminded me of my sister-in-law's recent experience in the grocery store where a stranger said something like "Your kids are so happy!" Then looked straight at her and said "That's because of you, you know."
These are the kind of things we need to hear and say more often. Maybe there's a time for platitudes like "the days are long, but the years are short" or "these are the best days" - those might be helpful during the infant days, but I don't remember if they were for me. They certainly aren't helpful when all day every day feels like one long battle. These don't feel like the best days when you're in the thick of it.
That sweet lady at Costco reminded me, though, to try to channel that difficulty toward pointing out the specific good I see in others in the moment when it's happening, rather than trying to soliloquize about the general "good" I see in an overarching phase of life.
We certainly all do this - I can't tell you how often I tend toward telling single young girls aching for marriage and companionship how much they're going to miss the days they're in (not helpful, even if it is true - I know this from experience), just because sometimes I personally miss things about those days. Next time, instead of a "you're going to miss this" comment, I think I'll try "What you're doing now matters, and here's why."
