After class last night I had to make a quick stop at our local large grocery retailer for a couple of items that would not wait. I parked, hurried my way in through the cold, and entered the "Open until 12 AM" entrance.
Right in front of the door was a display set up for the coming summer, seemingly quite foolish given our current cold snap: a carpet of artificial grass on which sat a patio table with an umbrella and a glass tabletop and four chairs around it with various spring related products to the sides. In the chairs sat four people: a man, a women, a girl about 14 and a young girl.
There were two sheets of paper on the table so I assumed it was some sort of homework problems, being done while someone was shopping. Then I did a second take - the adults were the ones doing the paperwork while the older girl was sitting there looking bored and the younger girl busy at anything but that.
It was a child swap.
I realized at that moment that moment that paperwork had something to do with some kind of unhappiness: a divorce, a child custody case, something. The grocery store, with its display of summer fun at 9:30 on a cold February Night, had become neutral territory, the Casablanca of its time; these people, with the mother and father signing away paperwork that probably represented a reduction of an emotional and physical investment of great measure and passion as shown in the young girl, became two agents of opposing regimes, shuttling life between them.
I wandered off down the aisle to make my own purchases but caught up with them in the parking lot as I left - to be honest, I hurried to do so, caught in the conclusion of a small drama. They were getting into a car, the woman and the older daughter already in as the father carried the younger daughter in his arms and put her in the car. "I'll see tomorrow" he said waving as the door shut and I skittered to my own car, the cold driving me faster than my interest in others.
We cannot always know the circumstances of the lives of others and it is dangerous to make assumptions, let alone conclusions, based on a two minute observation of a scene. But I find it somewhat sad, if not a little tragic and ironic, that a display became a display of two kinds that night: not only of the potential of enjoyment of family and friends but the display of a relationship that did not work and the fallout from it.
It was also a display of how much worse the government getting involved makes it. Take away the government's part in enforcing all these wealth transfers and scene like you describe would disappear almost over night.
ReplyDeleteIt was just incredibly sad, Preppy. I cannot imagine the money and pain involved, although from friends I understand it is not cheap or painless. It seems a little wrong to me that we have created an industry about separating people and their money, until I realize how truly dishonest people can be. As someone said (and I paraphrase), if one does not have God or morals one will have to have laws.
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