Voyeur

I sit in my car and watch the family in the lot next to me. A woman- young, probably in her mid-20s- is standing outside her Toyota Rav-4 in the parking lot. The door to the left back seat is open as she tries to buckle a flailing toddler into her car seat, but the kid doesn’t want to sit. She wants to run.

A man with two dogs on leashes walks by, causing the child to scream with joy. This makes everything harder for the mom, as she wrestles her restless child back into the car seat. Finally one buckle clips, and the child resigns herself to the car seat, to having to go home. The second buckle in the cross clips shut, and she shuts the back seat door.

A mother’s day never ends; holding onto the cart with one hand, she tries to open the trunk with the other, but it doesn’t work. She moves the cart to the bit of space between her car and the next, opens the trunk, and unloads groceries one bag at a time. 

Once she’s done, she pulls the cart away back towards the storefront. Exhausted by her day already, at 11:30 in the morning, she trudges back to the car and gets in the drivers seat. She takes a sip of the iced latte in the cup-holder and shifts into reverse.

I don’t think she saw the woman rushing through the parking lot behind her. She reversed fast, whipping out of her parking space, coming dangerously close to hitting a pedestrian on the way out. But she doesn’t, the car turns, and she’s gone.

The parking lot is ravaged with pedestrians and irate errand-runners; rush in and rush out, that’s all there is to it. 

(Target Parking Lot in Wilton, 2/23/19)