The Meeting by Andrii Lysenko

I was sitting in a cafe
working on an important project. When a mother with a child came in. They entered loudly and chose the table next to me. It was very irritating to hear the little boy constantly shouting meaningless sentences and complaining because his mother didn't do this or that. Finally I lost my temper after the kid spilled his juice on my jeans. He is very inattentive, just like his mother is. I bear no grudge against her but she had raised a
terrible child. That's what I told her. So I stood up to tell her everything I thought about the situation. But suddenly I noticed by boy's facial expression that he had only tried to make fun of everything. I also realized that despite his young age he actually had a good sense of humor. He didn't mean to do any harm, it's just his way of joking. Being so painfully shy the mother didn't object that her son was raised in not the best way. She apologized several times and looked very guilty. From the look on her face I realized that I scared her. I didn't mean to do so. Having observed the face of her, a lot of empathy woke up inside of me and suddenly I wanted to protect her from my angry self. It came to me that she probably raised the boy alone without a husband which is hard to do. In fact, I realized I was rude. In my turn, I began apologizing for what I had said. I told her that I didn't mean to hurt her feelings. All this time when I had been working on my laptop I was merely hearing their voices. But when I looked up at them I noticed that she had such a striking appearance that I couldn't resist inviting her to have dinner together. That's how we got acquainted. Two years later we got married.