"Primal Scream! :)" by Dplanet:: is licensed under CC BY 2.0In the apartment next door there is a toddler who is unceasingly protesting life itself. The screams rise up, swallow the universe, and persist, persist, persist. I am thinking of his mother, a professional, now alone at home with this seeming agony. Where is her mind? 

I saw her at the elevator and said, "It must be hard being quarantined with a toddler." She responded that I was the first to notice such a thing, admitted the truth of it but then prevaricated, saying it is easier now that he can talk. Maybe so. One of the axioms of my former profession is that we might feel what our clients cannot. Maybe this toddler is expressing what she cannot. 

Mothers are really not allowed to complain.