Judgementalisms

So last Friday I took Zee to the City again, and he is becoming a little addicted to The City. He talks about it a lot, as well as about going to the Zoo (Animals!?!) and his birthday, which is not until the end of April. (Every time the word President is mentioned- which is a lot when the news is on these days- he says For Me?!?! thinking we are talking about a "present" for him.) (Oh, and, on another related note, he does know who Barack Obama is, except he says ba-WOK o-MA-ma. And today, as I was driving, he was calling out– I thought– Ba-wok O-Mama! Actually what he was doing was using a similar pronunciation to say Booger, Mama! (As is, Mama, give me a kleenex so I can wipe this booger off my finger!)Okay, so I was getting to judgements. Just writing a little bit about the fact that there is no way to avoid them being made against one's self (try as I might) and no way to perfectly navigate the realm of handing out correct ones. Some cases in point:a.) I was in San Francisco, and happened upon a young woman I sort of know. I was surprised and a little happy to cross paths in this serendipitous way under the waterfalls of the MLK Jr. memorial. She seemed altogether interested in not talking to me. Not that I wanted to have a long conversation. But she seemed a little repelled. Was it me, or was it her? Little Zee, in his wanderings around the area, kept wandering near, and I made small talk because it would have been weird not to, and she made every effort to just bolt, even though she didn't leave the park. Which is fine. But maybe rude? Or not? I decided I would never know. Maybe she has some social anxiety. Or was just busy with her task. It's not as if she and I were personal friends. Interesting. It would be so easy to judge her, but I had to hold back & just shrug my shoulders.b.) Today I dropped Zee at daycare a local Community Center. They have a sign-in procedure for the building there, and an elderly gentleman presides over it. The lady ahead of me was signing in, it was 9:35am, and she ran down the hall to her yoga class. The elderly man said loudly to me, She runs down the hall! She is already late! She could have just gotten out of bed 5 minutes earlier. But really, who knows? Maybe. Or it could have been something else. Or maybe she's always late and he always sees her habitual tardiness, and feels compelled to give tutelage to this younger slacker generation.When can we make really make an accurate judgement? But I make them in my head all the time. Everyone does. And I fear the judgements of others, even though I have no control over them. Again, wasted energy. Really all I can do is live my own life, invest in my children, my husband, in God. And insomuch as friends and I agree on standards that we live by, we talk, we come together, and we figure it out as we strive in our common goals to live our lives in respect of our faith. So we make judgement calls on our own lives, judgements about friends that we voice or not, and we hear all the time about the judgements people make about those who are in the public's eye (the octuplet lady.) Who gets it just right? Who knows. We can hardly judge ourselves correctly, skewed as we can be about things. I guess I leave the final judgement to God. Well, at least I wish I did. I am always trying to figure things out.(p.s. I wish I could tell you what artist made that mirrored sculpture that I photographed reflecting Zee & I above- but after the pic I was too busy running him out of the room to make sure he didn't break anything.)