Yes, I know this is on my other blog. I is trying 2 rite more.

I'm sitting at a table by the window in the in-store Gandalfo's of a Chevron station. How I got here is irrelevant. Either way, the sun is shining murky outside for the first time in a long time, and traffic in and out of the gas pumps reminds me that Friday morning is the same Friday morning for everyone. We've all got stuff to do. We all wish it were done faster. We all wait as long as we can until it's time to come inside, refill, maybe look at sandwiches. I sip my drink.

A table away from me: two little girls. A slender Hispanic woman wearing business clothes and solid black high heels is wrangling herself and her two daughters in this in between period of eating and traveling with startling balance, accuracy and double vision. She speaks Spanish to the two girls. She stands at the counter, below the multicolored board of "Real, New York-Style!!" But she is also standing next to the two-year-old, who somehow manages to balance on a chair without falling, her dark curls held back with dignified pink clips. And while this mother stands there she is also standing next to the four-year-old, who is trying to lift wooden high-chairs to bring them to the table next to me, all the time calling out, "Mom! Mom! We have to have seats for us!" with the voice of a self-assured teenager. While the mother is in these three places, she is also looking outside at her car, looking at her planner, checking the time, ordering a meal, counting her spoonfuls.

The two-year-old looks at me, and I smile, raise my eyebrows, make her laugh. Her older sister glances at me with a knowing look, and goes back to her job. She has pulled two wooden high chairs to the table, and now the mother comes with a small cardboard bowl of potato salad, three forks, and two plastic bottles of orange juice with two straws.

But the two girls want to get out of their chairs, they don't like the food, they sip their juice and drop their straws, and I can tell from the mother's glances that she's on the move again. She looks out the door, eats quickly what the two girls ignore - "Mom! Mom! We want to get out of our chairs now!" Yo lo se, yo lo se, nos vamos, she says. And they're gone. Double vision.

Every mother is a single mother. I can remember seeing my mom and a thousand other moms here - a single simple meal, quick fortification, no time to rest, no gas in the car. Children that are more complicated than men can ever know, children that speak different English. When I'm pulling out of the Chevron station, my needs taken care of, I see the mother facing the other way at a pay phone. Her hands are full, her car is old and she glances to the right long enough for me to see her freshly-applied lipstick.