Descriptive essay techniques and applications

¶ … Mall

On a sunny Saturday morning, the mall is a quiet place to be. Most people, unless they have a job or an errand at the mall, contrive to be almost any place else where they can enjoy the golden light and gentle warmth of a new day. Early on Saturday morning, the weekend still lies ahead, with the promise of relaxation, enjoyment, chores accomplished, or whatever else one hopes the weekend will hold.

On a rainy Saturday morning, however, the mall is a bustling place. There is no need to postpone errands. The sky is dark and the air is chilly and wet. There will be no ball games or picnics or walks in the park. It is a good day to get things done indoors and perhaps even snuggle under a summer-weight blanket and take a nap.

Don't children watch cartoons on Saturday mornings anymore? Mothers and fathers, their children in tow, patrol the mall. They hope, perhaps, their children will be sufficiently exhausted by this exercise as to earn a little peace and quiet for themselves in the afternoon. I watch a mother with a baby in a stroller; she has another small child by the hand. The stroller is one of the small, folding, umbrella types. It is too small to balance the mother's enormous striped canvas bag, the straps of which she has looped around the stroller's handles. She struggles with it, and I cannot help but think that if the baby were just a pound lighter, the stroller would tip backward under the weight of the striped bag and its contents.

The baby is chubby and solemn-faced, as serene as a Buddha, quietly observing the mall scene with large dark eyes. The baby is dressed in white and perhaps because the mother got tired of constant inquiries about the baby's gender, a tiny pink bow is tied around a tuft of dark hair.

As quiet as the baby is, her sibling is loud and full of energy. He looks as though he might be three or four years old. He is clad in Thomas the Tank pajamas and, incongruously, Spiderman sneakers. The pajamas are clean but faded, a certain sign that they have been well-loved. One can imagine there was some mild argument about wearing pajamas to the mall before the mother acquiesced. One imagines her sighing, finally, and telling herself he's only three, it's only the mall, it's only for an hour, and it's nobody else's business anyway.

The boy ("Thomas") tugs on his mother's hand to point out some particularly wonderful things at the mall, all of which cost money -- beanie babies at a kiosk, "penny" candy machines (for a quarter) and the tantalizing sights at the food court. From my vantage point, I cannot see all of the food court, but it has my attention, too, because I smell the sugar and spice of the cinnamon rolls that I know I will not be able to resist. I wave at Thomas and make a face that I hope will make him smile. It does. He grins back at me and then quickly buries his face in his mother's hip. He is suddenly shy.