A Mother's Embrace

A few weeks ago, as I was chillin' at a coffee shop with friends, there was a little girl and her parents hanging out near us. She suddenly slipped and bumped her arm on the table.

What transpired was like a process. She first assumed a face of complete surprise and terror, as if to say, "what just happened?!" She then realized the situation, and a look of pain made her eyes squint and swell up with the urge of tears. She started to cry and you could tell she just wanted the pain to go away.

What happened next was a collision of different reactions from the mother and father. The father immediately asked his daughter, "what's wrong? what can I do?" The mother simply picked her up out of her chair and held her. The girl burrowed her head into her mom's chest and let the tears flow.

There's a lot of stuff going on there, and I'm still drawing meaning from it. The Dad has a big heart and he wanted to fix the situation, but it didn't line up with her needs. She needed her Mom to hold her. She needed the pain to go away.