JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at the Hidden Brain podcast. "My Unsung Hero" tells the stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else. Today's story comes from Emma Carlson Berne.
In 2015, Berne had just had her third child. She loved being a mom, but she often felt overwhelmed by it. One day, she decided that her whole family - her husband, her two young boys and her new baby - should get out of the house and go to a restaurant.
EMMA CARLSON BERNE: We drive down. We park. And by the time, like, we find a parking place and get out of the car, unload everybody, including the diaper bag and the little kids and, like, some books for them to read, the baby was ready to nurse again. And I was already feeling pretty shaky.
So we kind of like all pile into the restaurant. We're very messy. We're very loud. Now the baby is really, really, you know, starting to cry, so I - trying to nurse him under the blanket. And he's thrashing around. I'm feeling pretty sweaty. I'm feeling a little teary-eyed because, although we're doing it, this is really hard.
And in the midst of all of this, this woman came up, and she took a minute and stood there and looked at us. And I was sort of preparing that she was going to say how cute the baby was and you know. And then she said, what a beautiful family. Then what I remember is the very next thing she did was she looked at the boys who were sitting on my side of the table - two little boys, 6 and 3 - and she said, it's not easy to sit at a table for a long time.
And I could not believe my ears. Nobody ever noticed them anymore. But she wasn't done yet. And she said, look at you, Mom. You're doing such a good job. And then that was it. Then she sort of smiled at us, and she left.
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BERNE: So to my unsung hero, thank you for seeing all of us - not just my cute baby, but thank you for seeing the efforts that my little boys were making. And thank you for seeing me - me, someone who wasn't often seen during those early days and someone who was sometimes feeling pretty invisible. Thank you for taking a minute and seeing all of us. And I have never forgotten it.
SUMMERS: Emma Carlson Berne lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.
You can find more stories of unsung heroes at hiddenbrain.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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