Several winters ago, when we were making our way to Wisconsin to see my parents, our plane got delayed. I remember hearing the news in the Minneapolis airport and expressing my displeasure loudly – the girls were little, traveling was tough enough without delays, and I was extremely tired and frustrated. (I may have even sworn out loud.) I flopped down in a chair and looked to my right, where an older woman – some sort of airport employee who was clearly on her break – was sitting with a smile on\u00c2\u00a0her \u00c2\u00a0face. She was watching the girls (who were then, I’m guessing, about 2 and 5), and she pulled from her pocket a few packages of Pepperidge Farm crackers. She obviously didn’t speak much English, because she gestured for me to take them, which I did, stuffing some in my pocket and giving the others to the girls. (All the while feeling embarrassed about how I had just acted.)<\/p>\n
Long after we – finally – boarded the plane, that scene with the little old lady stuck in my mind. She had been so sweet and generous – such a contrast to my grumpiness – and she had reminded me, in that moment, that the small stuff (like a delayed flight) isn’t what matters in life. What matters are things like the innocent look on my sweet girls’ faces\u00c2\u00a0and the random kindness of strangers. I purposefully left one of the packages in my coat to remember her…<\/p>\n
Fast forward to last month, when we were getting ready to go to Tahoe and\u00c2\u00a0I plucked from the back of my closet a warm down jacket that I hadn’t worn in years. I took it upstairs to try it on and when I reached into my pocket I felt it: one of those little cracker packages from the airport. I immediately burst into tears. The girls, who were standing near me, looked horrified – but when I\u00c2\u00a0managed to get out the story\u00c2\u00a0I think they got it.<\/em> Sorta.<\/p>\n I put the crackers right back into my pocket. For next time. Should I forget again.<\/p>\n -M<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Several winters ago, when we were making our way to Wisconsin to see my parents, our plane got delayed. I remember hearing the news in the Minneapolis airport and expressing my displeasure loudly – the girls were little, traveling was tough enough without delays, and I was extremely tired and frustrated. (I may have even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-87-two-kids-jan-march-15"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21776"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21782,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21776\/revisions\/21782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoe.browdy.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}