I made another Mom cry...and I'm so glad I did!

After a wonderful family getaway, I rushed to the grocery store to pick up food for diner and the coming week. Our kids have reached the age where they can be left home unless they have a burning desire to shop with me.

My first stop is always the produce aisle. As I was choosing my vegetables, I noticed a Mom with a toddler (a boy around 3) in one of those car carts.

Any parent knows those carts...beloved by children and IMPOSSIBLE TO STEER!!! The benefit of an entertained child (or two) weighs out over the muscle strain caused by trying to drive the cart.

Said Mom was picking out squash, and had placed it on the scale and gone to get a plastic bag. She stopped mid-step, and looked back at her son. "I'm sorry, did you want to help me?" He struggled to get out of the car, and Mom reached over to help him. She took him over to the scale, where she asked him to count the squash and they began to talk about how much it weighed.

I thought to myself "What an awesome Mom". I thought of the dozens hundreds of times I coaxed my kids through the grocery store with promises of "five more minutes", or a donut if they behaved. I thought of how few times I took the time to involve them in the process. I thought again, "What an awesome Mom". Anyone who knows me knows that I am a bit of an raging extrovert, and have been known to strike up a conversation just about anywhere. I didn't want to intrude on her Mom moment, so I went about my shopping.

Three aisles later, Mom and her car cart were coming toward me amidst the Taco Tuesday fixins. She apologized for her large cart. I told her she had nothing to apologize for, and that I had seen her in the vegetable aisle and thought she was an amazing mother.

With tears in her eyes, she said "My whole family has been sick. My younger daughter, me, my husband. We are finally getting out of the house after days at home and I feel like I have been so impatient with my son. You made me cry."

I told her again what a wonderful Mom I thought she was, and went about my shopping. All evening, I have been thinking to myself about how much more we could do to build one another up as mothers (or parents). So often we feel inferior because we don't make pinterest-worthy crafts, or we feel impatient, or we feel like we are barely holding it together.

All it takes is someone occasionally saying "you are doing a good job", or in my case a snowboard instructor who tells me that my son was a really good listener...It just takes a minute to make a Mom feel like they are getting it right. Why don't we do it more often????