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PARENTING
A Stranger Left Her Child With Me
Insights about family, love, and society from a little girl and a thousand comments
When I saw the little girl playing in the airplane waiting area, I didn’t know what all I was about to learn. And I definitely didn’t know that twenty years later, thousands of strangers would completely redefine what the memory even meant.
While my job at 19 took me around the country, I had not yet mastered airport timing, especially with the new and ever-changing TSA rules. However, I had cared for oodles of children through my teens. So, when I got to the gate a full two hours early, I assumed this was why the little girl started talking to me. She could tell I was babysitter material.
Probably four or five, the girl bounced sweetly around the chairs and made articulate conversation without a trace of shyness. After a short chat, I didn’t expect her to crawl onto my lap and try to hug me. But that is, in fact, what she did.
“Hey, let’s not hug strangers,” I interrupted her stream of consciousness chatter, looking to catch her mom’s eye and elicit help. Unfazed, Mom offered only a small approving smile before returning to her magazine. Almost out of habit, I pulled paper and pen from my messenger bag, started drawing tic-tac-toe…
