It was long ago. He returned from a trip to Moscow. Before we landed in Emelyanovo we talked a little. Sit down normally. And now, when everyone began to walk out, I heard a wicked whisper behind me, “Why are you embarrassing me in front of people? Get up quickly! One punishment with you!”
and so on.
When I turned around, I expected to see a mother with a capricious baby. But I saw a thirty-year-old woman and an elderly woman (apparently her mother), intentionally attached to the armrests of the chair. She looked forward with a stalled gaze and was unlikely to perceive the angry replicas of her daughter.
And now is the time, it would seem, to be upset—saying how she can do so with her mother! But I thought about something else – and while this girl was a little girl, where did she get that pattern of behavior from? Where did she learn to whisper so wickedly, to hold her hand and to show her power? Isn’t it their parents – and not their mother, who is now sitting on a stone chair?
With what pleasure we break off on our children, breaking down on them anger or just a bad mood. We are drunk with our power. And then we become trembling helpless old men and begin to look at our wicked children.
Then, on the plane, a young stewardess approached the old woman. She leaned, and began to speak something quietly and gently. It took literally a few minutes for the old lady to get up, and the stewardess helped her get to the bus itself.