today's lesson
I was walking to the drugstore (to refill my prescription for antidepressants, if you must know), when I saw her.
She was about half a block ahead of me, but I soon realized that I was walking faster and was going to overtake her. She was entirely unremarkable -- medium build, medium height, medium hair --- but she was pushing one of those neon-yellow twin jogging strollers. I bit my lip and ran through the tedious litany I save for these kind of occasions. Lots of people use those double strollers, not for twins, but for children who happen to be a few years apart. Even if it turned out to be twins, they might be two boys. Or two girls. And even if they were twins and one was a boy and one was a girl, they were Medium Lady's twins. They weren't -- they couldn't ever be -- my twins. And that Medium Lady had boy-girl twins and I didn't were what statisticians call "independent events." In other words, the fact that Medium Lady threw sevens every time she picked up the dice had nothing to do with my endless run of snake eyes.
When I got closer, I realized that the stroller was actually being pushed, not by Medium Lady, but by a girl, maybe about seven or eight years old, with hair so blonde and thin it was almost white. As I passed them, keeping my eyes focused on the sidewalk, I saw that the girl was wearing pink flip-flops, decorated with a pattern of misshapen daisies. Finally, three steps ahead of them, I couldn't stop myself from looking back. The girl smiled at me. The stroller was empty.
11 comments:
That takes my breath away.
oy.
it is the very last part of your litany - the fact of independent events - that buggered my brain the whole first year of my own grieving...i worked so hard to come to that conclusion, but some part of me railed against it, foundered on it, came up blank and confused.
i think, during that year of my own magical thinking, the empty stroller would have blown my mind...because when you work so hard to be rational, to own the stats of independent events, having your conclusions seemingly vanish...? i don't know if that would have made me feel like i'd been let off a hook somehow, or chastised for my assumptions, or if i'd have seen it as grace of a sort. i don't know. that time is gone for me, now, thankfully...so i guess i never will.
what was it for you, Niobe?
I wonder what you felt when you saw the empty stroller niobe...
This is powerful, Niobe. You write so beautifully. I have the same question as those above: What DID you make of it? (Or would setting that down in words confuse/dilute things somehow?)
That reminds me of a dream or a movie scene -- or I'm having deja vu.
And maybe the little blond girl was a shape-shifting angel.
wow--intense.
You are such a great writer.
Powerful is right. This packed a punch. And you are incredibly spare with words yet manage to convey so much atmosphere.
"Medium Lady." That made me laugh.
The empty strollers always freak me out to.
Even when my boys were really little, and liked to push the stroller along instead of riding it, I could never quite get rid of the odd feeling when I looked at it. I knew logically what was going on, but yes, still odd.
You do write so well, Niobe. I wonder, too, how did the empty stroller make you feel?
My mother, for years now, has used an old stroller to carry things when we make outings with lots of stuff. The kind of outings other families use a wagon for. I never thought anything of this (besides the fact that my mothers eccentricities make me laugh) until M died. Now I look around and wonder if other people wonder where is the baby?
Angel Mom said the same thing I came in to say.
Wow.
oh yes ... i saw them everywhere, the double strollers and my heart would quicken, my eyes would tear and i would race forward for no other reason than to see something, i think an empty stroller would have punched in the gut, i think it still would but i don't know, mine still sits in a box in the basement ... sigh
thanks for sharing this ... hugs
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