No small change

The old-time-y filling station hadn't changed one iota in comparison to the neighborhood in which it was rooted.

The clapboard structure donned the same light grey coat of paint it had worn for decades — a working relic of a bygone standard.

A kid jogged out from the office at the sound of a tire-tripped bell. I noticed his t-shirt, visible through his unzipped coveralls, took a cheeky dig at a former president.

I became annoyed that I'd have to tip this guy. And in my mind he was equally peeved he had to provide service with a smile. Of course, he'd notice the one-word feminist slogan on my Fruit-Of-The-Loom. 

He smiled uneasily at me as I came to a stop near the pump.

I'm the kind of motorist who frequents the more impersonal stations: swiping my card before pumping my own. I rarely need help, but have, on occasion, been grateful for the slightly-annoyed sounding disembodied voice calling out from a crackly speaker to reset the machine.

The fewer words exchanged, the better. You never have to make the awkward assessment of weighing service against an appropriate amount of gratuity.

But this place was legend in the eyes of the locals. There was a personal touch here that went beyond being neighborly.

A single mechanic in a two-bay garage worked on cars while politi-kid pumped fuel and washed windows at the four-pump island in front — small jobs at smaller costs, mostly, for local patrons.

I didn't need gas, but the light on my dashboard reported a tire pressure problem, and this was the nearest place.

"Filler-up" I said awkwardly, realizing somewhere around the hyphen that it was an expression that didn't suit me. I must have pulled it out of a sitcom, as I've never used it before or known anyone who has.

My cloddishness continued as I stammered through an overly-worded question aimed at getting my genuine desire: to have him check and fill

the tires. Which he did at a glacial, albeit, methodical pace.

When it was almost over, the kid dipped his head into the open passenger-side window and leveled the tally:

"That'll be 11 dollars."

I handed him a twenty and told him to keep the change. He thanked me and tapped the car, the official symbol for the transactions' end.

As I turned the key in the ignition and adjusted in my seat, the thought occurred to me: there wasn't a thing I'd rather do with my money at that moment than spend it on another human being. 

It's just a small kindness, not something that's owed.

As much as I would like to think I've matured into understanding the value of small change, I've learned it from watching my kids.

And even though nine bucks wasn't going to put a dent into my kids' education funds, they wouldn't have minded.

My son is always ready with the five-star reviews and new and better ways to gush on comment cards. He also keeps a keen eye out for tip jars. Doesn't matter how small a gesture is made in his direction, he's always willing to round up for the sake of humanity.

Maybe that little bit extra will be able to lift something higher, even if only as little as a mood.

Playa-ble

She wasn't playing.

"You always make me look like a little girl," she said in exasperation. Cheeks too full. Expression too invested in whatever it was that occupied her. Caught in my eye, she saw only the baby she'd been in the old picture albums.

The mysterious teenager she has been cultivating in the mirror was nowhere to be found.

Though she agreed, for old-times' sake, to let me take pictures of her in the waning light of latest summer, the procedure was entirely new.

The edges of her hair took on the gold of the sun. It crept past her ears and spilled onto her cheeks just enough to add glow.

She tilted her head to the side and made a face. The expression was a practiced one: nose scrunched and lips pursed. Eyes small and sharp. The loo seems to be all-knowing, all-seeing.

One click, and then another. Looking toward the lens and then quickly away.

It was clear who was in charge. I merely followed her lead. 

"Ok, show me."

I handed over the camera while looking off in the distance as if it were some item of contraband. 

We weren't the only tourists trying to mark the occasion taking pictures as we walked in the sand, though my daughter tends to appear more selfie conscious than your average teen.

But other kids were traveling around with their friends, holding pocket cameras. She was being trailed by her mother, with what anyone under two-decades-old could plainly see was The Hubble Telescope.

People smiled at me as they passed by; all of them still the wiser. Their kids were likely nearby, equally oblivious to our presence.

"Ughhhhh!" She uttered in a low growl as she scrolled through the pictures I'd just taken. Making, even more, sounds I wished I could mute.

"I look terrible. You are waaaaay too close."

She explains her process: her face must be partially obscured (on both sides) evenly by her hair. The bones of her cheeks can't rise or fall any discernible distance, and she must be looking straight ahead. She prefers portraits taken from the back ... Christina's World" style.

She handed the camera to me and got back into formation. This time we each backed away as if we were challenging one another to a duel.

"Should I try again?"

"You should try again."

The sun was setting on the beach, and we were losing the light.

My timing was off, too. But my daughter's agreeance to stare into my lens took me by surprise.

"Stand there," she instructed. Positioning me as an opposing force to the sunset. "Raise the camera higher .... higher still."

I did as instructed and just snapped away as she leaned in, and then turned out and, finally, tilted sideways. 

No more than a minute went by.

"That's enough. Let me see," she said as I handed over the gear.

"Oh ... there are actually some good ones. Nice going, mom. You've finally let me grow up."

I'm thinking of an animal

First confession: I am never thinking of an animal. 

It's true.

Since it's my turn, and we are trapped in a car, I don't stop to think. Even the slightest hesitation would show my weakness, which I will put on full display anyway once I allow the 20-Questions portion of the game to begin. 

"What's the hint?"

My usual strategy would be a hedge. I will offer the size of my imaginary animal as being bigger (or smaller) than a bread box. 

But I'm tired of using comparisons that have missed their generational relevance by a count of two. 

I choose a more obvious dodge, one that won't paint me into a corner before the yes-or-no questions take effect: "It's super cute!"

Mind you I STILL haven't chosen an animal. I figure I have a least two, possibly three, more questions before I was at risk of having to "discover" an entirely new species and secretly create a Wikipedia page to fein "proof" of its existence before I'd be caught in my own web of deception and ridiculed mercilessly.

I figured wrong.

"It's mom cute, which means it's gotta be ugly somewhere."

We hadn't been playing our oldest and least annoying Long-Car-Trip game, "I'm Thinking Of An Animal," for even a single round when my eldest scorched me with this little burning ember of truth.

"Some people have faces only a mother could love, right? Well, our mother only seems to love those kinda faces."

It doesn't help to disagree. Both kids have the will and ability to prove their points with the help of 4G cellular internet access at their fingertips.

And that, dear reader, is how 27 minutes into a four-and-a-half-hour journey I was forced to realize my family not only has coalesced around this painfully obvious trait of mine, which has managed to elude my fraught self consciousness, but also an illustrative fact that lemurs are, indeed, "creepy looking."

I have to concede the point. Especially in light of a quick Google Image search revealing that the source material for Disney's King Julian didn't leave much room for exaggeration. 

While I quietly acknowledge the graceful herons posing in lush marshland and the sturdy ships in glistening harbors as we cruise past. I am bubbling with excitement the moment I see a giant inflatable lobster tethered to the roof of a seafood restaurant.

Eighty-seven minutes into the ride and the only sound inside the passenger cabin is the crunching of bagged popcorn and the rumble of the road.

The kids have plugged in and tuned out. No amount of oohing and ahhing over a horizon line cut by giant pines and marshy bogs is going to distract them from their personal tubes.

Ugly somewhere. The thought rings in my head. Aren't we all ugly somewhere? And not just in the asymmetry of our outward features, but also in the distressed resilience of our inward features? Our jealousies? Our inhibitions? Our insecurities? Our pain.

No one in this car wants to play this game.

"I'm thinking of an animal. ... It sticks its head in the sand."

Painterly

Things started appearing in the hallway, eventually creating a topsy-turvy tower. Taking a closer look, I could see the construction: a coat rack, some shoes, and boxes and bags and other containers that never made their way into the recycling.

Toys also lined the walls and dotted the floor, making a trip to the washroom reminiscent of a game of Angry Birds come to life, only with the new goal of avoiding the newly displaced's collapse.

Each thing sat with a look of shock, the glassy-eyed stare of sudden homelessness.

A stuffed bear with a maple leaf t-shirt and a doll with a horrified expression sat together next to a pile of picture books, none of which had had hands placed on them in years.

Framed slogans of flowery intent leaned against bags of old and not-so-old clothes she had either mentally or physically outgrown.

Their shelves now empty and dusted clean.

The teen had started clearing out her room in preparation for the third decorative makeover of her residency.

I felt surprisingly calm as I tiptoed around the stuff that once orbited her childhood, and was now staged for its final jettison into the great unknown.

Maybe it was because I didn't have to lift a finger. That was the deal.

The pink of her primary years was long gone, but the toil it took to slap two coats of tropical turquoise onto her walls was still fresh in my mind. The preteen years go by so fast.

So far, she has done all the heavy lifting, if not the financing.

She had chosen the color and had invited a friend to help paint the walls a particular shade of soft gray. "Alaskan Husky," to be specific.

I wonder if she will think of her room as the frozen Tundra.

In her younger days, the name rather than the hue would have been the reason for the selection. I might have to take that back, seeing as how I picked "Raccoon" for the dark gray of our house's exterior … so that I could think about living inside a trash panda.

But I digress.

It's some sort of magic I think as we wait for the paint clerk to mix the paint colors and smudge a sample on top of the can.

"It dries darker," she said.

The concept is as familiar to my daughter as the prep work she's already completed.

She has moved the furniture to the center of the room and draped it in old sheets. She's taped off the edges of the ceiling and the molding.

She even knows the preferred roller technique: the Y formation.

Getting two coats of paint up in one afternoon will seem like child's play. 

Only less messy.

There's barely a drop of excess paint on anything, let alone the cloth made for catching them.  There are no dabs of paint on the ceiling for me to cover over in flat white.

A clothes rack, some baskets and a new rug ... that really ties the room together.

The result seems sophisticated beyond my years, let alone hers.