Scene on the E Train

I saw the saddest thing happen on the subway today. A woman had a baby in a stroller and a four-year-old trailing behind, and she noticed that the baby had dropped his bottle. "You are going to suffer for that," she said. "I'm not buying you a new one--you'll just have to suffer."

The baby, who was probably about eight months old, started crying. "Oh, don't give me that," Mom said. "Don't give me that. You're a brat. You lost your bottle." Then she started slapping the baby's hands with the papers she was holding. "Brat, brat, brat, brat."

And behind her the four-year-old was repeating everything she was saying. "Brat, brat, brat . . ."

I think I've become a lot more understanding of moms' shortcomings in the last year. It really sucks to lose a bottle. Or a pacifier or a rattle or a bib or a hat for that matter. And it's even worse when you realize that you lost it while you're traveling because you really will just have to buy a new one if you know you're absolutely going to need it before you can go home. I've been yelled at enough by idiot strangers to vow that I will only offer assistance to other mothers and never lecture them on how to rear their children.

The problem is, I've also become a lot more sensitive to the world of an eight-month-old. It's like I could hear him saying "Mom, mom! Please don't slap my hands! It was an accident! I didn't mean to drop my bottle, but I'm just a baby and it's really hard for me to remember not to drop my things. I'm not a brat, mom." I saw his childhood stretching ahead of him with a mother whom he couldn't trust to show him gentleness and self-control and an older brother who was learning to hit and humiliate him.

There was nothing I could have done, right? I hope I don't think of something I could have done later, because I will deeply regret having done nothing at all.