Holiday Shopping.

Living as I do just north of the District of Columbia, inside the infamous beltway, but in the MOST politically correct community in America east of Berkeley, California! I have many options when it comes to shopping. And while you'll find me toting a bag of organically grown veggies from the Sunday Farmer's market, or spending 3 times as much as I could for eye glasses, just because I want an honest-to-god optometrist shop alive and well on my Main Street, I cannot completely divorce myself from a childhood of box stores and strip malls. The vast majority of my discretionary spending occurs by conscious choice in Prince George's county, my county's more economically disadvantaged neighbor.

On occasion, however, I venture north to a collection of retail stores and restaurants sprawling across three expansive and interconnected groupings. The shops may have some sort of moniker, but I’ve never seen it. They are found off of exit 175 west between I-95 and Columbia, Maryland--very near to Fort Meade. I like going there because I can visit an everything story like Target, but also a specialty store like Borders Booksellers or Toy’s R Us. As it turned out today, I wanted to visit all of these and a few more besides. It’s was a mild, mostly cloudy with brilliant dabs of sunshine sort of day. A good day to browse and buy or not buy.

My first stop turned out to be the one that got me. I went to Borders, because it’s time to stop thinking about the last book I read and look for another one to divert my attention from the here and now. I chose two books after toying with four. Because I’d recently read his memoir, I picked up E. Lynn Harris’ “Basketball Jones,” and by Michael Chabon, “Gentlemen of the Road”. I then went to the DVD section in search of “Up,” but it was $29.95 and I know I can get it for ten to fifteen dollars cheaper at my local Giant grocery store!

So I turned and began perusing the DVD’s along the long wall of other choices when I happened upon “The Kite Runner”—a book that I had just put back—and that’s when I noticed him. He was a very handsome, rugged looking man of about 30. On his lap sat a little boy of about 4; a little boy pushing himself hard into his father’s chest, tugging at his shirt, rubbing the back of his hand, his forearm. A second son of about 7 was running around them and pointing out everything that he saw, as if he was somehow his father’s eyes. The man was tender in his responses and even apologized to me as he rounded the corner of the aisle in his wheelchair and mistakenly assumed that he had hampered my way. And that’s when his military haircut completed outed him. He was a soldier.

A soldier and a father with his two young sons, not on a mission to buy anything in particular, just hanging out together. And that’s when I noticed how often and emphatically the 7-year-old repeated the word “Daddy”. He started every sentence with it, and even ended some—mostly the questions—with it. And that’s when I thought I was going to explode in tears. For about five minutes, as I continued to shop and fight the urge to cry, I continued to swirl around this iconic trio. At one point I felt like a light bulb surrounded by moths…as inert and unconnected, yet somehow as magnetic, and that’s when I made my way to the check-out and left.

In my head I was hyper stimulated by the possibility that this man had been injured in Iraq or Afghanistan. I so wanted to meet him. Have that conversation. Convey my heartfelt appreciation. Provide some measure of succor to him and his sons. (And lest you think me hyper imaginative—I will guarantee you that he was military. No one cuts a head of hair like a military barber. Not the most ardent skinhead in Berlin! No one! When you see it as often as I do, you know what you’re seeing.)

But I didn’t. Instead I went out to my truck in the parking lot, and cried. And when I was done, I went to Pier One Imports…..