Sitting in a coffee shop close to home, reading a novel. There’s a tired looking mother here with her two kids. The younger daughter – long blonde curles, big brown eyes, probably like four or five years old – discovers a chess set in a box at a table with a surface that has been carved into a chessboard design. She doesn’t fully understand how to play the game, but she admires the chess pieces in her tiny hands and then arranges them vaugely on each side of the board. She wants to know which pieces are the king and queen, and which is which. At first her mother is too tired and busy to play, and keeps asking her daughter to keep her voice down. Nobody here gives a flying fuck if her daughter’s voice is too loud.  The child’s laugher shimmers; her voice carries across the room like ripples on a pond. It’s a cozy little space, only a few people here – working, visiting. The playlist in the background is all Lighthouse and the Dave Matthews Band and the Goo Goo Dolls and U2 and the Verve. I am startled by the realization that this woman who is here with her children can’t be more than a couple of years older than me.

Eventually she gives in and plays a game of chess with her daughter, letting the child take all of the bronze colored pieces from her side off the board one at a time even if that isn’t how any of this works. The child gleefully enjoys winning.

Sat here watching this out of the corner of my eye, carefully not looking at them. Pretending to read a book. Definitely not tearing up, not even a little bit, because why would I do that? It’s only an endearingly cute scene in a coffee shop.

The mother puts away the chess pieces in the box, holding each of them in her hand, admiring them quietly, cleaning up after child as though she is embarrassed. I don’t know her and I’m so shy and I don’t know what to say but I want to tell her not to feel as though her children’s voices are too loud.