The Living Experiment
When I hear a child cry, my innate maternal response is to comfort: to cuddle and soothe and kiss and smooth wispy hair.
The other day I heard the muffled sound of a sobbing child as I wheeled my grocery cart to my car, and my nurturing instincts kicked in. I spotted a toddler, no older than two years, strapped into a car's back seat, and even though all windows were rolled up, his despairing cries pierced the darkness of the still parking lot. Initially I had the disturbing thought that he had been momentarily left alone.
And then I noticed a woman in the front seat. She sat motionless, eyes looking out the front windshield, impervious to the cries coming from the back seat. I was stunned that she did not try to comfort the boy, but she never once looked around. As I passed slowly behind the car, I saw the view the little boy had - just the back of a head of a person who was utterly ignoring him and who did not seem to care that he was sleepy or hungry or uncomfortable or just sad.
I wondered at the callousness of the woman's inattention. Like the boy, had her patience run dry? Or did she simply conclude that she was unable to solve his problem just then, so why bother interacting with him at all? If so, she missed a crucial point.
Often we cannot solve a child's problems, but we can usually offer a dose of comfort, in this case by slipping into the back seat, smoothing his hair, speaking tender words, or perhaps singing a lullaby.
I stood for a moment behind the car, vacillating between the sensible desire to let it go and the compelling, if not irrational, urge to open the front passenger door and implore the woman to soothe the boy. After a few moments, I moved along and tried to convince myself that my snapshot impression lacked situational detail which, once understood, might have made the woman's inattention appear less cold.
But however I fleshed out the scenario with various visions of the woman's exhaustion, distraction, frustration, or even the possibility that she was not the child's mother, I could not excuse her from at least attempting to soften his experience of being strapped in the dark car.
I was afraid that, as she sat impassively, the child - in the deepest corners of his soul - got an inkling that people cannot or choose not to always listen or care or try to make things a little better when he cries out for help.
Then I thought of Columbine, of teenagers veering down sad paths, and I thought of adults who cannot trust or open up and share who they are. Maybe the genesis is as simple as realizing so very early in life that surrounding people can just as easily ignore cries for help as they can lovingly attend to them.
As children grow, the challenges they encounter in life become more complex, and the adults in their world become increasingly less able to offer a panacea to make it all better.
Sometimes, in our fixation to help solve the problem of another, whether it be a child, friend, or relative, we are left feeling utterly helpless in the wake of our inability to do so.
A loving response is often the only fix we can offer. Even when we cannot solve, we can offer comfort, and sometimes just that will be enough to ease the way.
Kerri Havnen Gordon lives in Mountain View with her husband and two sons. She writes The Living Experiment monthly for the Town Crier.