A young mom takes a walk with her little child on a sunny cloudy morning. The kid plays in the sandbox, mom stays put, staring at her smartphone, swiping / sliding / scrolling kilometers away. She’s interneting. Kid fills the bucket, taps on the side of it with his toy shovel, takes another scoop, carves solid icy sand, carves again, gets what he wants — another bit of dark greasy soil in his shovel, puts it in the bucket, just to top it — it’s already full — lays the shovel aside, it’s been a job, it’s going to take some time to get it done, but for now, he deserved a little break.
He stares up at the naked trees, at the sky, at the block of flats they’ve walked out of half an hour ago today, and the day before — actually, they were doing it since the day he was born, he was born here, brought to life, conceived also here, not in that exact block but in the neighboring one, that’s just the same as this but of another color, one can tell it when the weather conditions are good — but they aren’t, and therefore there’s nothing in particular up in the sky that could attract kid’s attention, so he disappointedly moves his stare to the mom. She’s still into phone, she’s not looking, and there’s a little smile passing over her face as she continues to swipe — she had probably just found something funny.
She notices the kid is looking and quickly throws that smile at him, still quite vulgar, nasty, definitely not a kid-targeted raw adult smile.
“Hey,” she says, “what’s up honey?”
“Mommom,” answers the kid, clattering his shiny plastic shovel in the bucket.
“Mommom!” repeats mom, smile still aimed at the kid, eyes slowly migrating to the phone.
“Mommom!” begs the little one, seemingly losing interest in conversation.
“Mommom,” she repeats, fully back to the phone.
The kid is staring at the sky again. The sun is going to pop out of the cloud for a little second and he can’t miss that.
Jan Vaschuk 