Catching you doing it.

I slammed the car door against the wind and rain. The girls buckling themselves in, laughing through their wet stringy hair. I sit in the parking lot watching everyone run back and forth trying to avoid the surprise storm. As the laughter ebbs I reach over to pull my seat belt across, I see the older woman with the dark brown eyes,she waves a perky little good-bye. Her boxy grey car pulls forward and off she goes.
“You were nice to her”, comes a voice from the back. I look at Bel in the rearview mirror. I raise my eyebrows at her with a “hmm?” and wish I kept a tweezers in the car.
She repeats herself, ” you were nice to her that’s why she waved to you.”. Bel’s big blue eyes watch me. Yen looks up trying to catch up on this current girl talk. Her head whips back and forth trying to piece together what Bel is referring to.
Tucking my hair behind my ear I swiftly knock the car into reverse and laugh…kids notice everything. Why does this always surprise me? I always noticed everything as a kid. I pull through the parking lot thinking about how such a simple act makes a kid sit up and take notice.
After throwing my red and white bulls eyed bags into the hatch of the SUV I had turned to run the cart back to it’s little corral and saw the greying woman with brown eyes loading her last bag… I had just asked her if she was done and grabbed her cart and wheeled hers and mine off to join the other abandoned carts. Not a big deal. It took a second and it had just begun to pour down rain.
What will your kids catch you doing today? How will it impact them?