I sat in the booth and I looked at my son and I could not find the boy who sat with lonely kids at parties anywhere in what I was seeing.
I did not make a scene.
I want to explain this choice because some people would say that making a scene was the correct response, that Sam deserved a public defense, that Leo deserved a public consequence. I do not disagree that Sam deserved to be defended. What I chose, instead of the public version, was the version that would produce something more than the immediate satisfaction of the defense. Making a scene at that table would have become, in Leo’s memory and in his telling of it to his friends, the story of the time his mom embarrassed him in public. The thing I was trying to produce was not embarrassment. It was understanding.
I put my credit card on the table.
