There is a woman I think about sometimes.
I knew her when my son was small, before our daughter arrived. Our social circles overlapped we were often in the same place at the same time but I didn’t know her well. On the day I’m thinking about we were at some group playdate event and she was sitting a little away from the rest of us nursing her toddler. Her older child — preschool-ish aged — was standing behind her screaming. (It’s why she’d removed herself from the group.) He was beating on her back and pulling her hair. Her nursing toddler was wriggling around, the way nursing toddlers do, sticking his little feet in her face. She was sitting there on the floor, trying to ignore her oldest and silently crying. Tears running down her face, she refused all of our offers of help.