Kindness of strangers

No cute stories or photos today, just some nice stuff that happened to me!

Today was snowy, cold and dreary. After dropping Cameron off at school, I bundled Matthew into his mei tai carrier and went grocery shopping. As I approached the check-out lane, the cashier motioned for me to stop. He walked around to me, pushed the cart in and unloaded all the groceries for me! How nice! I headed out to the parking lot and began to put the bags in the trunk when a woman stopped, helped me put everything in the car and then walked my cart back to the store for me! How heartwarming and unexpected to have two strangers help me!

With a smile on my face, I got in the car. It was too early to pick Cameron up from school but too late to head back home, so I decided to stop at Panera and get a coffee. Matthew and I sat at a booth while I sipped my coffee and played with him. When it was time to go, I stood up and started to put him in his car seat. As I did, a woman walked over and said, "I hope you don't mind me asking, but did you adopt your baby?" This is not an entirely uncommon experience for me -- it is frequently asked just out of curiosity and even more often by other adoptive parents or their family members. I was guessing that this woman had a grandchild by adoption when I told her that, yes, Matthew is adopted. To my great surprise, she told me that she was a birthmother who had made an adoption plan for her daughter in the 1960's! We spoke for about 10 minutes about her experience as well as mine. I was so happy to have met her and impressed that she had approached me. She said I had made her day, but really she made mine!