What would you do?

A mother walks into the shopping mall and her 2 children were running metres ahead of her. Though one came back when she called, the other continued in his headlong dash, checking back with a cheeky grin and then disappearing into the nearest shop. On realising it was the wrong one he dashed out again at which point his mother had caught up with him and held his hand lovingly in a fist of iron (seriously, handcuff makers could learn from a mother’s grip!).

Children more under control they start the rounds of the supermarket, the children calmer only briefly wondering off to toys and only the occasional item having to be removed from the trolley that is being carefully pushed by the elder child. The cakes were perused and a delicious looking chocolate cake was reverently deposited on the top of the trolley concisely labelled “BAK CAK SPECIAL OCCAS”.

On to the dairy aisle which unfortunately is located near the small selection of outdoor toys and little one had to be brought back to a loving hand hold and then stand next to mother while she regarded the butter trying to work out the best value for something which seems ridiculously expensive in a country that has more cows than people. With her concentration so avidly distracted, the elder child was obviously getting a little bored of his careful pushing and in the wider aisle decided to try a few turns and spins now the watchful eyes of his mother were so perfectly turned away. Crash, gasp, speedy turn on a heel and the stare of a mother surveying the tipped over trolley whilst trying to decide what the best reaction for her to have is. The internal monologue went something like this: "The food is everywhere, the embarrassment, there are 2 workers standing by who have turned around – what are they doing standing there chatting anyway, don’t they have work to do? Oh yes, the food …my son, her looks so shocked, ….close my mouth it is still agape, should I shout and let rip all the frustration that has been building over the day? Let it be an outlet for every annoyance and grievance I have tried to ignore and push down since morning and it would feel so good … but only for a minute, because then I would see my eldest crumble and either cry or grow resentful and angry… I need to be calm”

I’m sure you have realised it is me by now so I decide to go with ‘what happened?’ in as calm a voice as I can muster. He quietly says that he was spinning it and it fell over… ‘by itself’ he quickly adds. I say, “it’s ok, I’m not angry but how can we make it better?” To which he says we need to pick it up. Together we collect all the items back into the basket and it is then that I notice the cake – so lovingly selected and now upside down. We turn it over together and look at each other. Not quite so beautiful anymore but it will probably taste the same so we don’t do the quick swap idea that dishonestly flits across my mind but instead do the right thing and buy the mashed up cake.

However, this has all been watched by those 2 workers who were leaning against the freezer cabinets have a lovely chat not 2 metres from the crash site. They saw a mother with 2 children with her shopping over the floor. Did they offer to help pick up? Offer a word of support? Make the sympathetic shoulder shrug and half smile that is a standard greeting across the united front of mothers spanning the globe? None of the above. They stood, watched and most likely filed away the story to recount later. My passive aggressive sarcastic “Thank you for all your help,” did very little to assuage the indignation I felt at their lack of compassion. I would like to think that if I saw anyone drop their shopping all over the supermarket floor my first instinct would immediately be to help them and certainly not to simply stand and stare at someone else’s predicament. Thank goodness we have just had another new supermarket open up a little further up the road! Perhaps this incident could be my new standard test for how to judge a supermarket and its employees.

Overall I felt pleased with my ‘gentle parenting’ of the situation. No shouting, no scene, just a calm son, seemingly calm mother and a sensible resolution. But as with all mothers, we must always find something to beat ourselves up about and my biggest disappointment is that in my immense hurry to leave I didn’t think to allow him to push the trolley to the checkout. It would have given him a chance to show he could be sensible, feel as though he was regaining trust and shown that it hadn’t been a big deal. But as with all mothers, I am probably the only one worrying about it. My snoring son is certainly not losing any sleep over it and all I can do is try again tomorrow.

And did we eat the smooshed cake? Of course we did, cutting its distorted shape with great pomp and ceremony. And did we enjoy it? I really want to tell you that yes we did, every single morsel. But what the cake description didn’t tell us was that the beautiful looking chocolate cake was actually mint chocolate which was the hugest disappointment to a family who do not like mint chocolate! We struggled with a piece each out of determined duty, but then the rest was gifted out to anyone and everyone who came to visit.

The moral of the story? To do my own baking at home! 

I apologise for the lack of photographs with this post, it wasn’t my first thought at the time!