“Unbelievable.”
I looked up and saw a woman several yards away with her phone pointed straight at me.
I adjusted the blanket around Oliver and kept my voice low.
Recording.
She walked closer brazenly.
“So this is acceptable now? It is disgusting!” she said, loud enough for nearby families to hear. “People just breastfeed wherever they feel like it?”
I adjusted the blanket around Oliver and kept my voice low.
“I am covered,” I said. “I am just feeding my baby.”
“Oh, please. There are children and men here.”
She laughed.
“Oh, please. There are children and men here. If you need to do that, at least have the decency to use a restroom.”
She did not stop there.
Instead, she came closer.
Close enough to film.
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She tilted the phone, trying to catch a better angle beneath the edge of the umbrella. I turned my shoulder and pulled the blanket higher over Oliver’s head.
Then she swung the phone slightly.
“Please stop recording me,” I said.
She looked at me like I had missed the point.
“My name is Karen, and I feel responsible for documenting what families have to deal with now,” she said. “You may think this is normal. A lot of us do not.”
Then she swung the phone slightly, not just at me now, but toward Sophie and back toward Oliver in my arms.
That changed everything.
Until then, I had been embarrassed.
She wasn’t staring at the woman anymore.
Now I was scared too.
Not that she would touch us. That she would take a few ugly seconds from our day and turn them into something ugly forever.
I saw Sophie stop moving beside the castle.
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She wasn’t staring at the woman anymore.
She was staring at the phone.
“Do you want this posted?” Karen asked. “Because that is where things like this end up.”
I was already planning the drive home when Sophie stood up.
That was when I felt the whole beach change. Heads turned. A couple stopped unpacking chairs. One boy stared at the phone in her hand instead of the water. My face burned so hot I thought I might cry.
I did not want a scene.
I wanted to feed my son and give my daughter one calm afternoon.
I was already planning the drive home when Sophie stood up.
She brushed sand off her knees and walked straight toward the woman.
“You keep talking about kids. Which one is yours?”
Then she stopped in front of the phone, looked up at her, and asked, very clearly,
“Where is your child?”
