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elionwyrI travel by public transit (which is where I do the cross stitch I've been sharing here).
I started watching a lady yesterday that I see on the bus sporadically. She's always accompanied by a little girl - I'm very bad at guessing ages, but maybe 2 years old?
Usually, this kidlet annoys me because she's always fussy. But yesterday, I started watching closer.
The mother never speaks to her. At least, not that I can hear.
They sit side by side; the mother watches her rather coldly; and as long as she's not touching her, everything's ok. When she reaches over and picks her daughter up and moves her around - puts her face down in her lap, adjusts her clothing, etc - the kid fusses in this whiny nerve-jangling whimper of a sound...never an attempt at speaking.
Maybe they're both deaf.
Maybe it's abusive.
There are a lot of maybes.
But I realized last night that it is, at the very least, damned unsettling.
I started watching a lady yesterday that I see on the bus sporadically. She's always accompanied by a little girl - I'm very bad at guessing ages, but maybe 2 years old?
Usually, this kidlet annoys me because she's always fussy. But yesterday, I started watching closer.
The mother never speaks to her. At least, not that I can hear.
They sit side by side; the mother watches her rather coldly; and as long as she's not touching her, everything's ok. When she reaches over and picks her daughter up and moves her around - puts her face down in her lap, adjusts her clothing, etc - the kid fusses in this whiny nerve-jangling whimper of a sound...never an attempt at speaking.
Maybe they're both deaf.
Maybe it's abusive.
There are a lot of maybes.
But I realized last night that it is, at the very least, damned unsettling.