A baby's cry always gets my attention. Their cries alert the mother in me: Where is the baby? Why is the baby crying? Is there an adult caring for the baby? Is the baby being abused?
Such was the case the other day in the grocery store. A mother was pushing her crying baby in a stroller. The crying baby was looking at his mother while moving his hands upward. The mother tried to put the pacifier in his mouth to no avail; she bought her groceries while the baby cried steadily.
I wanted to pick the baby up, and it seemed he wanted to be held by how he looked at her. Mind you, I could never let my babies cry. For me, a crying baby is trying to communicate something, and I believed it was my role as a mother to figure out the message and respond. At one point, the mother left her baby in the stroller with her daughter to watch over while she raced to get something around the corner of the busy grocery store. The daughter shook the stroller as her mother showed her, but the baby wailed even louder.
The second the mother left, several other women instantly gathered around. Some cooed, others touched the baby's feet, and others made playful faces, each offering a moment of motherly love, tenderness, and a way to settle the baby. I grabbed my camera because it struck me how I wasn't the only one wanting to help. I dared not go over as the other women did because the "Cautious Me" thought it wasn't my place, the baby wasn't my baby, that the mother wasn't doing anything wrong, and that the baby wanted to be held, but I could not pick up the baby. I was relieved when the other women gathered around, offering what they could; their caring made me smile at humanity. It showed me that my feelings were shared and that even if the "Cautious-Me" could not make a move, they did. Their tender giving was loving-kindness.
When the mother returned, the other women smiled, stepped aside, and reassured her that they could understand how it felt to be a mother with a crying baby in a grocery store. The mother seemed to melt from their understanding; her tense shoulders lowered, and she took the baby out of the stroller and held him close; she rocked him while the other women smiled, talked, and continued cooing.
A sweeter moment than the melon I was buying for lunch.
It made the expression, "It takes a village," come alive.
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