Seeing a situation through someone else's interpretation can be powerful. It can give you an insight that rocks you from your base and leaves you a little unsettled for all the moments following.

As I made mention of in another post, Mom hugged a stranger as we left the cancer wing of the hospital the other day. The woman looked so sad, so fragile, as she came through the bathroom door. Mom stopped mid-sentence and turned to her, asking, "Do you need a hug?"

The woman welcomed Mom's embrace. Mom said she held on with such strength and sobbed a sob that seemed to come straight from her soul before running back to the bathroom. We relayed the story to our pastor today, and he got chills.

"Wow," he said, clearly moved. "In that moment, you were Christ. You were that woman's Christ. God used you as his vessel. You were Christ."

Me: What about women's purses scares you menfolk so?

Scott: The junk you all put in them

Me: They tend to come in handy in a pinch. Need a Kleenex? check. An ibuprofen? double check. I haven't managed to find one big enough to haul the kitchen sink yet though...

Scott: Men get by with a wallet, which means, everything else is unneeded

Me: And they look so illy managed. There is the "man purse" out there these days

Scott: metrosexuals... *pfft*

She sat in the passenger seat singing along with the man on the radio. She bobbed her head to the beat and used her index fingers to reenact the percussion. Suddenly, one corner of her mouth hiked up to produce a cynical, "I don't really want to be here" smile.

"I bet when they were writing this song, they never envisioned a sickly, bald woman screaming, 'Born to be wiiiiiild!'"

Oh, Mother...

Mom sat in the kitchen this morning, dining richly on her toast and milk. She concentrated intensely on the Daybreak section of the paper with a pen clutched tightly in her fist. She drew a "v" with her eyebrows and admitted, "I'm really no good at crossword puzzles." I laughed, as I knew this was the expected reaction. Then, she ran a hand over her thick cap of hair and sighed. Looking over at her, she made eye contact and shrugged. "Do you know what today is?"

"The nineteenth," I answered.

"No. This is the day that I begin to lose my hair. Again."

Commiserating over sore mouths yesterday afternoon, I complained to Mom pointing at my outstretched tongue, "I paheel dishgushti. I hahp whie shuh onh mah tuhn, buh I cahn bwush ih ohp cush ih hursh tuh mush!" I was talking with my tongue hanging out for dramatic, hopefully comedic effect, to lighten the situation.

And, it worked. Mom laughed and replied, "No, the disgusting thing is that I understood everything you just said."