The Responsibility Project^®. Exploring what it means to do the right thing

Mothering In Public

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August 25, 2010 by Joyce Hackett

“Spare some change? Something, anything! Trying to get something to eat.”

My grocery store, and the sidewalk outside, are always packed after work. With so many customers jammed together, it must have seemed an ideal place to beg. But with four plastic grocery bags already cutting into my hands, I wanted the walk home behind me. When a space opened in the crowd, I stepped by the beggar, avoiding his eye. But the light at the corner had just turned red.

“Come on,” he said to passersby, more urgently. “Something. Anything!”

I wondered if he was anxious to gather enough money to get into one of the city homeless shelters that charges its occupants, before the place closed for curfew. Then his tone hit rage.

“Stop that, now! Stop screwing up!” he yelled. ”I got a job to do.”

He went on, swearing, and I glanced back, fearing a brawl. But his target was a girl of about five, in layers of clothing. Her pink knapsack was open, and her little things had spilled onto the sidewalk. I turned back to the DON’T WALK sign and prayed for permission to WALK.

At times like these, the world seems its most unfair. I started trying late to have children, had trouble, and deeply missed what I couldn’t have. Why are children given to people who abuse them? An imperative has grown inside me to protect others’ kids.

About year ago, without planning to, I began mothering in public. I wasn’t being a good samaritan; it was simply a way to relieve the bitterness. Riding the subway, I’d heard a teenage mother shouting at her baby and wanted to rebuke her. But since scolding would only evoke more anger, I’d thought about what I could give.

“What a beautiful boy!” I said.

My remark distracted her, and for a moment she was confused. Then, as I went on cooing at her baby, she smiled and stroked his head.

A few months later, a big teenager on the subway was jostling for position with a petite girl. I’d thought they were playing, until her face flushed scarlet and she hurried away in tears. The car grew silent, his violence hanging in the air. Again, I thought: I can’t let this go by.

“You know,” I said, “you’re really strong.” His chest puffed out with pride. “Maybe you don’t know how strong you are?” He looked startled; I had his attention. “You’re so strong that everyone in this car is afraid of you.” The tension broke, and people started talking again. By the time I got off, the kid was scribbling down the title of my novel – misspelling the word “disturbance” — which he wanted to buy.

But that evening, on the sidewalk outside the grocery story, I faced a large, angry man, not a teenager. Not a good recipe for sticking your two cents in.

Trapped at the light, as I stood listening, I remembered far back, to my father shouting in my sister’s face. A picky eater, she had refused to eat an egg our mom had made because, instead of being perfectly flat, it had a bubble. My dad, a motherless boy raised by a poor, mean father, had made it through by joining the Marines. On my eight-year-old sister he was using the best parenting skills he knew.

Trauma is like a door that blows open too easily; strangers drag in pain, or a wild sense of threat, when you least expect it. My instinct, in these situations, is to run. But though no one would hold me responsible for that father and daughter, I couldn’t bear to let him shout that girl into my past. And so, instead of crossing on the green, I set down my bags and turned to him.

“I’ll give you twenty dollars,” I said, “on the condition that you listen to a story.” And I described the memory, the scene, he had evoked for me. As I talked I teared up, and then he teared up. I was 48, I said, and didn’t have a family partly because I hadn’t learned, in time, not to scream the way I’d been screamed at.

He looked down at his daughter and shuddered.

“She will remember every word of this,” I said.

“Wow,” he said.

I handed him the twenty. His clothes stank a bit, but we hugged. And despite the bags I was carrying, I walked home, lighter.

In telling my shameful truth to a stranger, I didn’t reach back and fix my own past. And that man, with his troubles, will probably shout at his daughter again. But despite all I can’t fix in the world, in that one moment, I was able to put who I am to use, even if that person is not who I wish I had been.

Responsibility – the word feels so heavy that one wants to back away. But maybe it’s just a simple decision to respond, to give what you have to someone who can use it.

Joyce Hackett is the author of Disturbance of the Inner Ear, a novel about healing from childhood trauma. Her novel-in-progress, Reconstruction, is about self-reinvention and -rewriting in the lives of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony.

11 Comments

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• August 25, 2010 by Kathleen

  Stellar...the enormity of an encounter! How Joyce is touched, the man is moved, memories evoke sweet pain...and something unasked for and unfathomable occurs: raw expression. An outreach for redemption.

  My tears thank you...

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• September 1, 2010 by w w w

  i like this article..once i was in new orleans on my way to meet up with some friends. as i turned the corner onto another street i witnessed a guy beating another man with a wooden crutch in broad daylight during the lunch rush. so many people sat and watched as i alone took the man to the ground until the police came and arrested him... they all applauded but not one helped me...this made me sick actually...im glad to see there are other people out there that stand up for what they believe in...good for you joyce keep it up....

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• September 3, 2010 by Wanderer

  This is so beautiful. I thought I was the only one who felt this over-powering urge to touch the young mother or give the adolescent youth, no matter his size, the confidence to be gentle. Thank you, Thank you. For sharing your pain, you may ease someone else's and just knowing that I am sure eases yours. God bless you.

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• September 22, 2010 by i let my children make a decision for themselves but not alone on their desicion

  i let for themselves but not alone on my children make a decision to includes the parent.

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• August 27, 2011 by Jeanne

  What a great lesson for all of us to keep in mind. I only hope I would be brave and gutsy enough when the time comes to approach such a situation. May God help me find the right words should the time come. Thank You for sharing.

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• August 29, 2011 by KAREN

  MAY GOD BLESS YOU FOR DOING WHAT YOU HAVE DONE, AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO,,,,,,,,EVEN MYSELF I HAVE ALSO PUT IN MY TWO CENTS, AND EVENTUALLY THE WOMAN LOST HER TWO YOUNG BOYS TO THEIR GRANDMA,,,,,BUT I WAS THERE WHEN THE BOYS WERE SO VERY HURT IN WHAT THEIR MOMMY PROMISED ALL THE TIME, AND SHE HAD NOT DONE ANY OF THEM,,,,,,,SO GLAD THEY HAD A GRANDMA TO GO TOO,,,,,,,THANK YOU FOR YOUR TWO CENTS,,,,,,,,,,

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• September 6, 2011 by dp

  'Trauma is like a door that blows open too easily'

  you are an amazing writer and you have a gift - thanks for sharing it!

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• September 6, 2011 by Donald

  Thank You Joyce Hackett for taking the time to write down and share such a wonderful story with us. And thank GOODNESS (Alas, I'm an Atheist!) for people like you that will take a stand for what's RIGHT! Others call our military 'heroes' but I (I being a veteran myself) know that folks like you are the real heroes. Thank You for your Service.

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• September 15, 2011 by Ceil

  I have tears dripping down my face. Your story brought back a flood of memories. Memories of my own, often traumatic, childhood. Memories of hurting children that I have reached out to in the intervening years.

  You have a wonderful way with words.

  "I wasn’t being a good samaritan; it was simply a way to relieve the bitterness."

  I will be writing down the name of your novel too! I think you should think of expanding "Mothering In Public" into a book. It is a marvelous and powerful lesson that needs to be spread to as many people as possible.

  And I agree with the previous poster; you are a hero. Thank You for your Service.

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• October 21, 2011 by Libby123

  Joyce..

  I am humbled by your random acts of kindness. Something so simple as spreading love and kindness that will hopefully ripple into something more permanent into the lives you touched. Keep on mothering, the world needs you!!

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• November 24, 2011 by Nick Drance

  While Joyce's book sounds like the journey from trauma to healing, the more signifiicant thing to me the place she arrived at.

  Telling the truth to a stranger is not considered politically correct and in many cases, appropriate behavior. Of course if our truth is harmful to the other person, that's not good. If it comes from love as these encounters depict, the gift of honesty, when it comes from a place of love is the greatest gift we can give to each other. We save others as we save ourselves and teach them another way to love and forgive as well.

  The kind of acts Joyce describes are pictured in some Liberty Mutual Insurance TV ads and Nickelback's music video "Savin me".

  What a brilliant way for me to begin my Thanksgiving day, reading this.

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