Really just the same

Today, I'm linking up with Kate Motaung's Five Minute Friday. The rules: Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.

This week's prompt: Same.

You and I, we're different.

I was born in the United States. You were born half a world away in the Middle East.

While I have never personally known war, war caused you and your family to flee your homeland, fearing that if you didn't, you'd be killed.

I speak English. You don't.

And yet... The moment I saw you, I suspected we'd connect.

Your darling baby girl appeared to be about the same age as mine. So I walked over to you, two strangers at a local picnic for World Refugee Sunday, pointed at the baby, and tenuously asked, “Boy or girl?” followed by “How old?”

In halting English, you nervously communicated “Girl, 10 weeks.”

Eventually, I pantomimed holding your baby and you graciously unbuckled her stroller and beckoned me to lift her up. I did, immediately enveloped by the smell of baby.

You handed me a bottle and motioned. I willingly put it to your baby's lips, wishing I'd brought my daughter with me so you could do the same with her.

United by motherhood, we dared to continue. With stops and starts, I learned you'd delivered at Central DuPage Hospital via C-Section just a few weeks after I delivered at Good Sam via the same.

You motioned to your stomach – to your incision – and said “Hurts.”

I motioned to my stomach and my own new incision and replied, “Mine does too.”

In that moment, I realized that you and I are different.

But we are also very much the same.