My daughter wanted to go on a shopping trip to the new Nordstrom outlet and wanted a little company; sure, why not.
We were three blocks from home heading out when I exclaimed, “I don’t have any knitting with me!”
She was dumbfounded. “How could YOU not have any knitting with you?” I mean, were we talking about her mom here! Seriously? But it was true, I hadn’t yet started the next small throw-in-the-purse project, and there you go.
Talk about role reversal from her still-recent childhood. I looked around at all the utterly unwearable clothes and the marked-down-to-only-$200 handbags and the like and found my inner child: I got a laugh out of finding myself wanting to whine, ‘Shel. I’m BORED. Can we go HOOOOoooome yet?’
I wandered through the aisles. Down past all the shoes. Imagined an overhead announcement: “Attention. There is a Lost Mom in aisle six. Will ‘Shel please report to aisle six? Again, we have a Lost Mom. Thank you.”
And then, on our way home with her at the wheel, as I was glancing over towards the Bayland marshes, suddenly a flock of pelicans appeared, fanning out in a circle in the water, fishing, brightly white against the soft colors of the water and the cattails, the water waving in small ripples before them.
And Solomon in all his glory could never be so arrayed. I’m glad I went.