I usually avoid traveling on the weekend but there are days you cannot avoid them. Yesterday was one such day. I was on my way to Detroit for a day-long workshop. As the luck would have it, my flight was miserably delayed due to some passing storm. We were sitting on a plane waiting at the tarmac to fly and eventually brought back to the terminal. By the time I reached Detroit, it was way past midnight.

The ride to the hotel was about 40 minutes. I called for rideshare, a lady in her mid-thirties promptly showed up. She insisted me to sit in the front, which I happily obliged. We must be a few minutes into the ride when I heard a baby crying. I was shocked and upon enquiring found she had a three months old baby in the back seat. I mentioned to her that it was perfectly ok if she wanted to stop and take care of the baby, but she politely refused, stating she was a brat. I could sense the pun in her teasing tone. The baby stopped crying momentarily but from time to time she made us feel her presence.

I started conversing with her and found this was her 7th kid, ages ranging from 17th-year to 3 months. I was amazed. I couldn’t resist asking how she managed work, kids, and everything that goes along with it. She smiled stating it was organized chaos and after the 4th one, 7th or the 10th kid doesn’t matter, for the hullabaloo remains the same.

As I bid her goodbye I was thinking what is my excuse? Here is a lady who has seven children, a newborn kid in a car seat, trying to make a living in the middle of the night without any complain and prejudice.

Copyright © Shantanu Baruah

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Shantanu Baruah, ckonfab.com, and afflatuz.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content