“I remember when someone wanted to kill my mommy. That made me sad.”

What would you say if this came out of your four year old’s mouth? If you are like me, your mouth would gape open in astonishment. You mind might shift into a higher gear for a few moments as you tried to sort out the best response.

I asked her what she was talking about and she repeated herself. I asked her if it was part of a dream she’d had. She insisted it was real. So I questioned her about the details of this situation she was remembering. My daughter has always had a clear separation between the real world and the imaginary world and it didn’t take long to figure out that she was referring to an incident that happened last spring. I left my kids in the car for a couple minutes while I dashed into a store to pick up diapers and a woman playing vigilante called the police on me because of what she considered my blatant abuse of my children.

It would appear that while the woman waited with my wretchedly suffering happy and content children for hours and hours the possible total of three minutes I was gone, she mentioned something about killing me. I imagine it came out something like “I could kill her!” as many people often exclaim when they are frustrated. But to a then three year old girl who doesn’t understand metaphor, it sounded like a threat. My heart broke thinking of my little girl carrying that fear around with her the past seven months. The idea that someone was going to hurt or kill her mommy would have been terrifying for her. I explained that the lady was just angry and she was saying things that she really didn’t mean. I don’t know if it sank in to her little mind. I expect it will take a while to really simmer, as it often does with her.

Let me be clear. I am not proud of that day. And I would never leave my kids in the car while I go shopping all afternoon (much as I might want to at times). A minute or two, in a locked and turned off car which I can see from the store window, with children who are unable to get out of their car seatbelts is, in my opinion reasonable. You don’t have to agree with me, but it isn’t illegal. It’s not my ideal situation and I certainly don’t do it often, but it’s my choice. So any wandering mom-haters out there can just shove it. Nothing you can say to me would be worse than what I have said to myself about it.

But what kind of a person (especially a person claiming to be coming to the aid of a child who they believe to be in danger) would say something so completely awful in front of the child? This is in addition to the insults she screamed at me in front of my children when I arrived back at my car and, eventually, left. In what way is it helping to make a child fear that her mother will be murdered? That situation only lasted a few minutes. Avery has been carrying this threat around in her mind for seven months. There are not words to express my contempt for this woman. Go ahead and attack me. I don’t feel I deserved the self-righteous attitude, the insults or the call to the police. But I am an adult and I will deal with whatever you throw my way. But how dare you cause my little girl to be afraid! How dare you act superior to me and accuse me of abuse when you have mentally abused and frightened my children in my absence and then again in front of my face! If you can’t understand something as simple as a child’s fragile psyche and their inability to understand your expression of anger then what makes you think you are a better parent than me? This kind of ugliness is beyond my comprehension.

I hesitated to link to the post that told the story of that day when I listed my favourites of the last year. Mostly because I am still ashamed that it happened at all and I am afraid that people who I greatly respect will loseWeight Exercise respect for me because of it and I didn’t want to draw attention to that post again. I still carry a lot of guilt concerning that day. Not so much because I left the kids for a minute but that they were exposed to such ugliness because of my actions. And the guilt has resurfaced now that I have learned about what my daughter has been thinking all these months. I have definitely gained some humility. But I have also gained a little bit of pride and confidence in my ability to parent. The truth is that it doesn’t matter a lick what some random wacko thinks of me. Regardless of how I often feel, most days I am pretty damn good at this job.