Standing up for the child I was

Today on the train I came across a scene that flooded my body with remembered grief. A mother was in the car with her young daughter of five or six, and the mom seemed very upset about something the daughter had done. She spoke roughly to the little girl to go stand next to a door holding a vertical bar, then proceeded to wipe down one skinny shin where there were some dark smudges on the skin, probably something the girl had gotten on her bare leg. The mother, voice raised and hands ungentle, said the girl was really going to get it from her father and told her how bad she was.

Okay, so the daughter had done something wrong, maybe she'd been careless. I thought the mother seemed disproportionately upset from what I could see, but I didn't know the whole story and being a parent is hard work. I turned my attention to my phone like a good little commuter, but a tendril of my awareness hovered around the two.

( And then it got worse. )

Looking back I'm surprised by the force of my own memories. Here I thought I'd gotten over everything, just about--and then BOOM it all comes back and I'm a puddle of emotion on the train floor. It demonstrates the power of these experiences. What I really wanted to say to the mother was not some stilted line about appropriate behavior in public places, but a plea not to do this to her daughter because she's never really going to forget this, not in thirty years. I know I didn't.