ONE OF THOSE DAYS

It was one of those days when your children mean nothing more than the purse over your shoulder, when it is almost impossible to ignore them.
They reminded me they were hungry in the candle shop— A lady came to tell me that my babies had upset her display and were eating wax.
So I paid for the gingerbread tea lights and drove us all home.
To be honest the speed limit was giving me some trouble, and the median bumpers, like so many yellow trash cans, reminded me of the honeysuckle candle I’d left sitting on the counter.
I signaled and turned off at an early exit, a rest stop with a park and the jungle gym that gave so many neighborhood families the stomach flu last winter.
Everything I’d brought seemed inappropriate. Where were their little sweaters?
I knew then that if I tried to take the stroller out of the trunk, to open it, that I would cry, so I unbuckled my babies from their car seats and carried them into the shade of a tall pine with low-hanging branches.
So I put my babies in the tree, like gurgling Christmas ornaments blowing in the wind.