A very odd and unexpected thing happened to me this morning. I was shopping at Home Goods, a store where you can get great bargains on things for your home like sheets, wall decor, table ware, kitchen items,etc. It is not a store that sells things that you need to have in order to survive. No food, water or medical supplies are sold at Home Goods. It is usually a place where people stroll through the store's huge expanse and browse leisurely for bargains.
With that in mind, I had only been in the store a few quiet peaceful moments when I heard a baby start to cry. It was a very distressed cry. It was not a "I am tired of this place" kind of cry. I know because I had 2 babies and I also babysat for someone else's baby when my oldest child was a baby. I know baby cries and this was not just a cranky cry. This was a desperate cry and it grew more desperate by the minute. Yes, it went on and escalated for minutes, many, many minutes.
Usually when I am in a restaurant and hear someones baby cry, I get slightly annoyed when the parents don't either do what is necessary to calm the baby or take the baby out of the restaurant so as not to disturb the other diners. That is what we always did when our kids were babies. And, I have never found myself in the position of being tempted to get to the bottom of what the heck was going on with a stranger's crying baby.
This day was different. As the minutes went on and the baby was screaming violently, I actually had a visceral reaction. I felt myself cringe and tense up and I am not sure why. Home Goods is a huge store but you could hear the screaming all over the store. I suddenly felt myself being pulled by toward the sound. I was looking at tableware but my cart was heading towards the furniture section and the noise. I expected to find a desperate person doing everything to try to calm the baby down. After a short while, I found the source of the screaming. There was the screaming baby in an infant carrier (so most likely the baby was under 4 months old) attached to a shopping cart, a toddler in the back of the cart and the woman that was steering the cart was leisurely browsing in the silk plants section. WHAT? Are you kidding me? Why was she so calm and unattentive?
On what planet is it urgent to buy a new silk plant? Do you need a silk plant to survive? She seemed oblivious to the frantic baby. I watched her as she left the silk plant department and headed for the register line. Oh those poor other people in line, better still-oh that poor baby! He or she has a Mom or caregiver who thinks it is more important to shop and do what you want in a store where they sell NOTHING that is urgent to have, and at the same time ignore the crying, than to leave or attempt to comfort the baby! I guess I have left out one possibility-maybe the caregiver or Mom is deaf! It was really mystifying to me to watch this scenario.
In my baby care days, when my kids were fussy, I would head for the store exit as soon as possible so I wouldn't have to listen to the crying and neither would anyone else. I would attempt, in the meantime, to hold, comfort, feed, plug with a binky, or rock the baby in an effort to calm the crying. There was no such attempt that I could see and there was absolutely no break in the level of screaming to suggest any efforts were being made on behalf of the baby.
There are times when babies cry and you can't do anything to help them. I do remember that. When you are home you can walk away from the room where the baby is safe and close the door for a while or go outside and scream yourself!! The nature of this baby's crying, though, sounded to the trained (read: Mom) ear like he or she was in some serious distress. Maybe a diaper change was necessary or a feeding was approaching. That is not a time when you ignore the baby. Or at least, that is how I feel. I guess not everyone shares this feeling. After all it takes a village, right? It took a village idiot to allow this baby to scream that way and not attend to it!
I was very tempted to go up to this woman and say "What is going on with your baby?" That is not like me. I am not a buttinsky in general. But I have to say, when she finally left the store, I felt a palpable release of tension, and I know I was not alone in this feeling. There were several other shoppers in the store looking around at each other and sighing in relief after quiet took over once again.
The best conclusion I can draw from this is that maybe being middle aged has its own sweet rewards after all! Our children are almost grown, but have not presented us with grandchildren yet! Life is good!
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