I Sat in the Carpool Line and Didn’t Roll the Window Down

Dear Delyara, Another mom smiled at me from the SUV next to mine. I saw her. I liked her, even. Under other circumstances I would have smiled back and maybe asked how she was doing or made some little joke about the weather or the school traffic. Instead, I looked straight ahead until the line moved. I couldn’t do one more interaction. Even a kind one. Even a light one. That felt terrible afterward, because women like us survive partly on these tiny social threads, these passing moments of recognition between one life and another. And still, I could not bear to pull on one more thread. I picked up my daughter, buckled her in, listened to her tell me about glue sticks and spelling and who cried at lunch, and the whole time I kept thinking about that woman’s face waiting in my peripheral vision while I refused the world one small opening into me. Sometimes I think loneliness has manners.