I’m sitting in Balthazar by myself, drinking a glass of rosé and having a very late lunch, when I hear the loudest thud I’ve ever heard. I look up to see a woman scooping up what looked like a two or three-year-old, with her husband standing right next to her. The child did one of those silent cries - forty five full seconds of breathless shock before unleashing a whale of a sob. If that had been my kid, I’d probably be heading to the ER for an MRI - that’s how loud the thud was. The mother immediately nursed the child, soothed him, tended to him, while the father literally sat down and looked at the menu.

I texted my daughter, a mother of two herself, a play-by-play of the situation. Her response? “That sounds right.”

The invisible labor of women is really not  invisible at all. That afternoon, it was right there for the entire restaurant to see. The child cried. The mother comforted. The mother directed. The father read the menu.

Read the full musing on Substack.