Eavesdropping on love

I was at the playground a month or so ago, when the family on the bench next to me started having an intense conversation. I tried to give them their privacy and kept my head down, working on my postcards, and I tuned out a lot of it (“He’s just trying to make you jealous,” “I think he was trying to drive a wedge between us…”) but as more of their conversation drifted over me I took in more and more.

And it was a different kind of wonderful.

It was beautiful and sad. The older woman was counseling the younger woman about documenting abuse. “You got to build your case, show the pattern, nobody will listen if you speak up just one time.” She was counseling her, not just on what logistical steps to take, but was also being kind “I don’t know you but I know him and I believe you.”

It’s tender and terrible and beautiful and brutal. She reassures the young woman that she’s doing the right thing, she needs to focus on her and her son, just the two of them, and here the older woman breaks my perspective– “I don’t care about sides, his, yours, I just care about (the boy) and making sure he’s taken care of and from what I can see, you are taking care of him, so I’m going to take care of you.”

Sitting on the bench, head down, I am convinced I am witnessing G-d herself at work.

And then… more pieces connect. The older woman, it turns out, is the mother to the abusive addicted father.

Now I obviously do not know their story. I only witnessed this one piece of it. But the love a mother who is losing her son to addiction, reaching through grace to care for her grandson and his mother, whom she had not previously ever met, is a fierce-ass love, and I was honored to eavesdrop on it.