Tonight I was at our locel grocery store, picking up the all important cranberry juice*, when I heard a child’s voice pipe up from nearby.

“Mom, where are you?”

My own kids were safe at home, but once a mom, always a mom.  My nurturing instincts kicked in and I looked around, expecting to find a tear-streaked or worried face.

Instead I located a child of maybe eight or nine with a cell phone to his ear.  He listened for a minute, than told his mom to stay where she was.  He couldn’t find her, he said, but he would in a minute if she’d just hold still.

The kid walked quickly down the end of the aisles, checking each one, then went out of my sight.  A few minutes later he walked by chatting with Dad about his big adventure, Mom walking beside them with the cart.  The kid seemed to take it all in stride, and looked more amused than anything else.  His parents were quieter, and their expressions were hard to read.  Probably a cross between relief and dawning comprehension.  They’d just figured out what the next twenty years were going to be like.

 

*Of course I bought several items besides cranberry juice, but since the juice was the reason the trip had to happen tonight, and the juice was almost forgotten twice, the juice decreed that it would now be called the ‘all important cranberry juice.’