I pulled into the terrible parking lot Sunday afternoon somewhat unprepared for the task.  I was exhausted from traveling the night before to avoid post-Thanksgiving traffic.  But my cupboards were bare, and though it had been a wonderful visit, my reserves were empty.  

I'm not sure what it is about this particular parking lot; it could be the poor layout or the high percentage of elderly people, or the diverse neighborhood. I have always loved living in a racially, culturally and religiously diverse area.  Homogenousness disorients me.  But often times it seems diversity breeds disagreement.  It's a consequence I'll happily accept, though it's not always pleasant. Whatever the reason, something about this place guarantees that I will hear horns and see swears and hand gestures every time I am there. Once as I was trying to get Emerie out of her car seat, Mirabella at my side, the woman who had been parked beside me talking on her phone rolled down her window and said, "I need to pull out, and I don't want to hit your kid." 

Incredulous, I said, "Hold on just a second, I'm still getting my baby out of the car."  She looked annoyed.  On another recent trip, I saw a woman yelling at another who had tapped her bumper while pulling too far into a spot.   

"Your car's not even damaged!" The very clearly pregnant  defendant cried.   

"We don't know that!" Her accuser yelled, "Not until I drive it! Look, I don't want to upset you, because I can see that your pregnant, but you hit my car."  Police were summoned.   People fight for spots, even when there are some in clear sight.  On my way in Sunday I saw several seemingly mild-mannered women shout obscenities at other drivers.  

Now here's where it stops being about everyone else.  It's easy to condemn others for their actions and attitudes. Believe me, I'm good at it.  But after being in this lot for a minute, I heard myself sarcastically laughing at a driver who was trying to go around me as I waited for a car in front of me to park. "Hold on, honey," I told her, "What's the rush?"  Not a minute later, as I waited for an elderly driver to decide where she was going, "Oh, just park already!" I shouted.  I heard it as soon as I said it.  I am no better.  Over the last few months, I get angry quickly and often without just cause.  I vividly remember my verbal fisticuffs with another shopper when I was pregnant with Mirabella; it scared my sister.  I feel like that a lot lately, but I don't have a pregnancy to blame it on.  It has gotten to the point that I brought it up in my small group as a prayer need.  I am not sure what is at the root of it, but it has to stop.  I'm not the person I want to be.  

So when I heard myself hurrying the old lady so I could get into Trader Joe's faster, I made a decision-- or maybe more of a plea.  Lord, please give me opportunities to show grace. After that, I smiled when drivers pretended not to see me as I walked across the parking lot.  I tried to see it as an opportunity.  

In the store, having collected what was on my list and then some, I stood in the checkout line behind an African woman-- likely from Ghana or Nigeria, I couldn't tell which.  She was dressed as if she had come from church.  Trader Joe's doesn't have a conveyor belt, just a counter, so she was taking items from her cart-- a bag of apples, a chicken, another bag of apples-- placing them on the counter and asking the cashier what each cost.  She looked embarrassed and was clearly fretting over what would have to go back.  I stood watching.  The cashier said, "Are you getting these, or are you still deciding?  It's no rush."  I could see that this was just the kind of opportunity I had been asking for.  I felt butterflies, wondering what I should do; what I would say.   

Finally, I approached her. "Ma'am," I said, touching her arm, "Please pay for whatever you can afford, and let me cover the rest.  I would really like to do this for you."   

Her eyes grew wide, "You mean...you want to pay?"  

"Yes," I said. "Please just pay for however much you can, and we'll do a separate transaction.  I will pay for the rest."   She stood staring for a while. 

"Are you a Christian?" she asked.  

"I am.  Are you?"  She nodded.   

"Oh, the Lord bless you," she said in her lovely accent, " I am just so touched."  I went to put my arm around her, awkwardly, and she hugged me.   

"I am so happy to be able to do this," I said. She paid for her portion and we instructed the cashier to ring the rest up.  We stood in awkward silence while we waited.  And when I swiped my card I felt the weight of something much bigger.  I was paying for $38 worth of groceries. Though the coincidence of the amount struck me, it was not a large sum.  But as I signed my name to cover her debt and saw her visible gratitude, I couldn't help but think of the infinitely larger debt that has been covered for me, for all of us, and I welled up.  

As she steered her cart around me and the befuddled cashier, she said, "Thank you so much.  I am just so moved.  I have to get out of here because I feel like crying.  But thank you.  God bless you."   I smiled and wished her blessings and said you're welcome.  I never know what to say.  

As I started bagging my groceries the cashier squinted at me.  "Is she a friend of yours?"  

"No," I said.  

"That was really kind of you," she said.   I shrugged. And this is the part where I always struggle.  I am not an evangelist.  I have never been comfortable with approaching people on the street or forcing God into a conversation.  It just doesn't seem authentic to me.  And while maybe it works for others, I have mostly abandoned it.  It's why this idea of intentional living is so attractive to me, this idea that if we treat everyone like they matter, we can accomplish the same goal.  And mostly, I think it works.  But it only brings me so far.  It brings me to the point of a stranger asking me why I have showed another stranger kindness, and I choke. 

I said something like, "I just feel like if I see something, and I am able to help, why wouldn't I?"  I didn't mean to, but I gave myself the credit.  I felt terrible.  I tried to think of a way to salvage it, but the moment was gone.  I knew that girl would tell her co-workers and friends later that day about the nice person who performed a random act of kindness, but that wasn't my intent.  I could have talked about how I have been the person whose card was declined in the grocery line.  I could have mentioned times when others have shown me grace for absolutely no reason.  I could have said God has lavished his love on me, and I am called to lavish it on others.  But I didn't.  I walked out, humbled, grateful for the opportunity, and hopeful for another chance.

This year I was fortunate to have three overnight visits with girlfriends.  My first was with my best girls from college.  We have known each other since the first week of our freshman year.  We try to get together once a year, and this last year, as we’re all turning thirty, has afforded more opportunities than others.  During our visits last year, one for a wedding, the other for a birthday, there were a few late nights out. But for two of us, there were also nursing babies and overworked husbands and active little ones tagging along.  The morning comes a lot earlier than when it's just us.

Then when we got together in March, Tara was nearly nine months pregnant.  Hindsight tells me it was probably poorly planned.  Since our home bases now extend from Florida to Indiana to Virginia and Maryland, we had trouble selecting a central location and decided on Annapolis.  It’s not really about the destination anyway.  Fortunately.

Annapolis, waterside and low-lying as it is, experienced a downtown flood.  We were able to circumvent the standing water to venture to dinner and a brunch, and we all got mani/pedis, but then found ourselves starving and putting a hurting on a bread basket (or three) at a steakhouse at 4:30, which meant, obviously, that we’d need to cancel our dinner plans at an upscale wine bar (why did I think we would be up for an 8:00 reservation at a wine bar?).  When we returned to the room, we watched a pay-per-view movie, had a makeshift baby shower, and talked into the night.  I seem to remember there were tears.  Tara, uncomfortably pregnant, slept propped up in the recliner and said it was the best sleep she’d had in weeks. 

Then, in September, Daniel shocked me by returning from a trip on a Friday when I thought his brothers were coming for a visit. He called from the driveway and told me to meet him on the porch.  I walked out, stunned, to see Edie, Amber and two of her children on my porch with balloons and cupcakes.  Tara would arrive on a late-night flight with her new baby, whom none of us had met yet.  We all ventured to the airport at midnight to collect her and finally settled in to bed around 2:00 when Tara had pain that required emergency attention.  She and Edie spent the night and most of the next day in the emergency room.  I wish I could tell you this is the first girls’ weekend that has featured emergency medical attention.  Alas, it is not.

So in October, when three of my local friends and I prepared for a night away in D.C. that our husbands had planned, I wondered what it would be like.  No nursing babies, no pregnancy, no getting up in the morning with toddlers.  Would there be wine?  Dancing? Sleeping in?  As it turns out, not really.

Two of my friends announced the happy news of their pregnancies on this trip.  We wandered around the city in the perfect fall weather, walking into the American History Museum three minutes before it closed, only to be brusquely escorted away from the (awesome!) Julia Child exhibit.  We walked in to a restaurant for dinner, since we couldn’t decide and were too late to make reservations.  One thing about these weekends—there is never a shortage of good food.  My non-pregnant friend and I had delicious sangria before we decided to go to a movie, admittedly, a luxury I am not often afforded.  I chose 50/50, the dark comedy about a young man with cancer.  We sat, four across, crying.  I’m not talking about a few tears—this was the ugly cry at its worst—there were audible sobs.  When we left the theater, bleary eyed, not only did we not feel like doing anything else, we didn’t even talk much to each other.  Who picked that movie again?

At brunch in Georgetown the next morning, the waiter, upon hearing we were all on a night away from husbands and kids said, “Well, when the cat’s away…”

“Umm…we’re the cats,” I said.

On all of these trips, the company is the thing, not the locale or activities.  Still, I’m not sure what I expect.  Sex and the City we are not, but it’s not like we ever really were.  Since graduating from college, we've gotten married, acquired real jobs, and had children.  And we're tired, so very tired.  I’m not denying late nights in my past, or the occasional regrettable decision, and I'm not saying I don't know how to have fun anymore. I would never deny my lasting penchant for unruly, Elaine Benes-esque dancing, even if I don't get to do it as often anymore.  But maybe this is what it is to be responsible grown-ups, that even when afforded the opportunity to let loose, we don’t.  Not really. 

Or maybe all of this is why I need these friends.  I need the new ones to help me navigate the waters of being a mom, a wife, an adult.  I need them to remind me that I’m not alone in all of this, and I cherish their company on this road. And I depend on the older, similarly disoriented ones to remind me that it wasn’t always this way. There was a time when I was reckless, a time when I stayed up until four just because I could, a time when I drove through the night to the beach just to see the sunrise.  I knew how to throw a good party that did not feature an arts and crafts table.  Then again it did feature crappy beer, bad food, and really obnoxious former frat boys who were not nearly as entertaining as the little girls who frequent my living room dance parties now.  So the progress is not all bad.

Sunday night, while I was laying the girls' Halloween-themed shirts out for the next day, Mirabella sighed, "Mommy, you can't go to work tomorrow; it's Halloween!"  I cringed.  They are no longer in day care, so there would be no party, but I longed for a day spent baking cookies and making crafts.  Her disappointment was doing nothing to relieve my guilt.
 
I got in early Monday, set up the cupcake tower recycled from Saturday's "carvinal" in the break room for my overworked colleagues, and received a call back from our pediatrician that they wanted to see Emerie to check out her eye.  I had left them a message before they opened explaining that my daughter had poked herself with a wand (it took a lot of restraint not to call it a "magic" wand on the voicemail).  So an hour after I arrived, I raced home to retrieve Emerie who was, by all accounts, perfectly fine.  We got her checked out anyway, and by the time I got home I just couldn't go back in.  I put a few hours of work in during nap time and took the rest of the day to bake whole wheat sugar cookies and color--  to be, as Daniel reprimands me for calling it, a real mom.

It was our first year in a neighborhood and with children old enough to warrant trick-or-treating.  I am not sure who was most excited.  I bundled the girls in so many layers of cotton and polyester fleece under their costumes that Daniel called Emerie The Christmas Story.  I safety pinned Emerie's unicorn hood to her so tightly that she complained it was "stuuuuck" all night, but she kept it on.  I snapped photos on our way out the door, on the porch, in the driveway, and Mirabella sighed.  I could see into the future for a moment; I would be the annoying mom trying to capture every memory.  I can't be sure whether it was aloud, but I might have said, "my heart is bursting."  Emerie started spontaneously clapping.  "I happy!" she said.  I almost couldn't take it.

We thought we would be able to leave Emerie in the stroller, but she would not have it.  Several houses in she pleaded to go up to the door.  She doesn't really eat candy, but she understood this was an enterprise she wanted to be a part of.

We stayed out for about an hour and a half before winding back through the neighborhood heavy laden with candy and now two children on the stroller.  At the last house, our neighbors declared, "We should have had a costume contest.  You girls would have won."

"Mommy!" Mirabella cried, "Did you hear that?  We winned!" 

I said, "Mirabella, did you have a good time trick-or-treating?"

"Yes!" she said, "And we winned!"

I didn't realize until later that night, while compiling photos into an online album for the grandparents, that I might have tried to pack too much specialness into one night.  After trick-or-treating, we made "mummies" (pigs in a blanket), decorated our festive cookies, then had a bonfire in our backyard.  It was a lot.  And though Mirabella did deem it her "most favoritest night of all," I can't say I did it only to make memories for her and Emerie. Of course I want their childhood to be happy and warm and full of homemade fun; I want them to associate Daniel and me with a feeling of home.  But nights like that remind me that I would do almost anything to slow it all down; to keep them small and hold them just a little longer.