The twins were getting ready for school. With the butcher block in the middle of the kitchen, and the dishwasher which often yawns open, plus their camel like back packs behind them, the three of us moved like chess pieces across the tiled floor. Getting cereal, tucking grapes and nuts into plastic containers, pouring juice from the fridge, setting dishes in the sink. Since they leave at 7:30 and don't get home for ten hours they have to remember two pairs of shoes, dance attire, books, homework, snacks, I.D.s and water bottles. Everything is jammed into sports bags and pockets that swivel across their shoulders weighing perhaps twenty pounds. 

"Would you give this to Carling to give to her mother?" I held out an envelope. 

My daughter looked at me but did not say, "Ya kidding me? To save you a stamp?" In retrospect I am chagrined to have troubled her. 

I was visiting with a friend I have not spent time with in a long while. Her life has unraveled in ways she could not have predicted when she said "I do", and it weighed heavily on her. She wanted me to know that she had tried. 

In my effort to skim off the incessant opinions that keep rising to the top of my thoughts, I deliberately had none to give. Empathy, my full attention, even a little laughter filled the air above our breakfast. But no judgment. 

She seemed curious about this opinion free zone. We have known one another long enough to remember times when I handed them out like flyers in a parking lot. But this person, whom I care about, has sunk thousands of hours, if not tens of thousands, into her marriage. Who am I to, after sixty minutes of recounting the painful events of the past, think I know what she should have done differently? It seems like the epitome of arrogance. Could my lone hour of deliberation leading to a verdict have more worth than her ten thousand of soul searching tears?

I had no desire to hand her one more burden to add to the hefty load she already bore.