…And I saw her, standing in the front of the line, her shopping cart to the right of her, leaning close to the counter. Her speech reflected the mixture of spirits in her head. She vacillates between cursing the unknown and speaking with the cashier in front of her. Mostly, she is cursing the unknown. I think to myself, “Her Spirits must be fighting.” 

She leaves us and goes to her universe and then comes back again. I think to myself, “that happens to us sometimes.” It can be just too much, too heartbreaking to be in this world to stay in it. Some of us leave temporarily through substances, some of us leave forever and some of us walk in multiple worlds, between living and dying, shape shifters who open and close doors when one world becomes too much.

I study her feet. They are bloated beyond the thin platforms that used to be shoes and her brown skin flaky with neglect. She is standing in a place where too many edges gathered: black, female, elder, mentally ill and poor. Her life in a grocery cart that everyone can see and anyone can steal. She is my mother.

Her transaction is coming to a close and her worlds collide in a fit of cursing and anger. As she begins to move towards her cart, I catch eyes with the cashier who is forming a smug smile on her face and rolling her eyes. I caught myself aligning with her feelings and then an overwhelming feeling of compassion came over me for that woman and I emerged from the waters, forever changed.

I opened the box of chocolates that I was about to purchase and I walked up to her and said, “Seems like you are having a hard day, would you like some chocolate?” She looked at me and said, “What are they?” I said, “Chocolate.” She said, “The box is so cute, where did you get them?” I said, “Down the aisle.” She said, “No thank you, they are too cute.” I said, “Okay, well you have yourself a good rest of the evening.” She said, “God bless you.” 

She grabbed her cart, walked towards the door and entered in to her other world. She said to herself, “That was nice, seeing those chocolates in a box” and then responded, “Yes, it was.” My eyes tear up, because I know she just needed to be seen-in her complexity as much as I needed to be seen in mine.