Surreal is...
...shopping in VV and coming across a mom, grandma, and adorable 16 month old baby who charmed the socks off of me. We were chatting about the cute baby slippers she had on and where to find them then they told me they were from out of town staying at Ronald MacDonald house. The little girl has brain cancer they said. I responded with 'well children have such a higher success rate for recovery than adults thankfully". "She has less than a 35% chance of surviving" was their response. It was like someone had sucker punched me in the stomach. "She has a very aggressive and rare form of it and they were only able to get 90% of it out as there was 10% attached to an important function in the brain and she would be a vegetable otherwise and always need life support". I responded with "well I bet you are enjoying every single minute with her then!" and they said "absolutely".
I walked away and continued shopping. Maybe this hit me hard because I am a mom, or maybe it hit me hard because my grandma is dying of brain cancer right now, but I felt such waves of sadness. Then I realized that I still have the little leather slippers of the same kind that they wanted to find for their little girl saved from my girls. So I searched them out in the store and found the mom chasing this adorable laughing girl around the clothes racks. The mom is young, and appeared to be about 19 but had this warm grounded feel about her. I offered them my girls' slippers because I felt compelled to. They were super grateful and I gave them my info so they could contact me to get them. They told me next week she gets the final scan to determine if the chemo actually killed off the remaining cancer or not. If not, there is nothing more they can do.
As I paid and walked from the store and was getting into my car, this very handsome man came out afterwards walked up to my car. "Ma'am, I just wanted to let you know that I think you are a very beautiful woman and I was wondering if I could go out with you sometime if you aren't married?". He then explained that he had seen me shopping and didn't want to make me uncomfortable but did I want to have coffee sometime. We talked for a bit. He was really nice and not creepy and took no for an answer. Still, it was nice. That hasn't happened for a while.
But, back to back like that, those two situations all in a short space at the same place was very...odd.
I walked away and continued shopping. Maybe this hit me hard because I am a mom, or maybe it hit me hard because my grandma is dying of brain cancer right now, but I felt such waves of sadness. Then I realized that I still have the little leather slippers of the same kind that they wanted to find for their little girl saved from my girls. So I searched them out in the store and found the mom chasing this adorable laughing girl around the clothes racks. The mom is young, and appeared to be about 19 but had this warm grounded feel about her. I offered them my girls' slippers because I felt compelled to. They were super grateful and I gave them my info so they could contact me to get them. They told me next week she gets the final scan to determine if the chemo actually killed off the remaining cancer or not. If not, there is nothing more they can do.
As I paid and walked from the store and was getting into my car, this very handsome man came out afterwards walked up to my car. "Ma'am, I just wanted to let you know that I think you are a very beautiful woman and I was wondering if I could go out with you sometime if you aren't married?". He then explained that he had seen me shopping and didn't want to make me uncomfortable but did I want to have coffee sometime. We talked for a bit. He was really nice and not creepy and took no for an answer. Still, it was nice. That hasn't happened for a while.
But, back to back like that, those two situations all in a short space at the same place was very...odd.