Smiling is my favorite

I always hated when people told me to smile.

You know what I mean. Strangers – usually grown men – telling a young woman to smile as they pass by on the street. They think nothing of it; to them, it's just friendly advice so that that stranger might look more attractive, or seem approachable and available … to them: A stranger on the street.

In alphabetical order: Alone, Approachable, Attractive, Available … all of the things that can be dangerous when you find yourself in a dark alley or -- in my neighborhood back-in-the-day – walking home all by your lonesome at 3 p.m. on a Thursday.

The idea of “Hello,” or “Nice Day” or just a silent smile of their own without the demand of a response, never occurred to them?

I suppose it's just as well … A stranger who tells you to smile for them (if you aren't paying them to take your picture) is a pretty good indicator of a creep we should seek to avoid.

Of course, I'm bringing this up because I am pushing a birthday of monumental proportion, or so I'm told. And birthdays are the watch-pots that have a tendency to boil over while you're standing over the stove.

Now, I won't tell you which birthday I'm not celebrating … you can just keep on thinking 27 because that's where I stopped counting (two years before my own mother ditched the accounting of her chronological age). You can probably guess it's been a while since anyone has told me what to do with my expressions.

Which, I have to say, is one of the genuine benefits of getting older.

And – hold your pearls – smiling has become my favorite.

Granted, I realized this because I am vain and as unlikely to employ the skills of a plastic surgeon as I am to get my roots done in a timely manner. A smile is the most inexpensive yet effective facelift I can muster.

But I feel I must let you know … as a public service, not as a demand: Smiling has been a fairly eye-opening endeavor (though not literally; literally it makes me a little squinty, but that's for another column).

Have you seen a senior light up when you look them in the eye and just smile? It doesn't matter if it's a “fine morning” or the “worst weather we're having,” the temperature out there is something we all share in some degree of a stake.

You don't have to dig any deeper.

You don't have to carry their groceries or help them find where the store managers have moved the cornflakes this week. You don't have to do anything.

But you might feel some tension in your body loosen. You might start to see that some things, at least, aren't as bleak as the talking heads on TV or your friends on “facebonk” make it seem.

But just like I've begun to look forward to getting at least one hundred and fourteen “Happy Birthdays” typed at me from the social network on the anniversary of the day I was born, I've come to realize that as an exercise, even disingenuous smiling somehow becomes bona fide with practice and repetition.

But you'll have to find out for yourself. It's not my place to tell you to smile.

God willing

God willing

In my heart, I am a liberal. The “L word,” defined in my mind, is quite simply the belief in providing safety nets wherever possible, even if people claim they don’t need them or won’t avail themselves.

I might also be a little bit communist ... like the characters in the English nunneries on Netflix and the hippy communities of Hollywood romantic comedies, where prosperity is measured in the abundance of song and zany hallucinations.

I might even be a little bit conservative, owing to depression-era ancestors who understood the intricacies of having cake and eating it, too. Or as my grandmother would say: “If you save your money, you’ll have money.”

Officially, though, I am nothing.

I have no declaration, in part, because of employment and the desire to be a mirror of objectivity. And in part, because I don’t want to decide.

To this day I have never voted in a primary election.

Not that it matters when you get to kick sand on a beach in Maine for a few weeks a year. Or brush its crust off your kids or throw sticks along its length as your dog races seagulls into the surf.

You count yourself lucky if you can look out onto the world and marvel at its gifts. A vast number of people cannot avail themselves.

The ocean is bigger than all of us.

Walking dogs on Gooch's Beach, 7 a.m. That’s where I first ran into Barbara Bush. So many dogs ago. 

She was walking behind an English spaniel (not Millie), and I was hoping my soon-to-be husband’s dog, Maggie, wouldn’t chase after them. I was sure the Secret Service wouldn’t take chances with a former First Lady being rushed by an uncouth mutt.

My dog took off barking. And of course, ran straight at them with purpose and the horrible deep-chested bark that had often made my heart leap into my throat.

But when she got to them, my dog quieted, slowed down and circled back to me. Neither Mrs. Bush nor her escort batted an eye.

Dogs. On a beach. It’s what they do.

There wasn’t anything unique about that encounter. Every morning of our vacation, every year for nearly two decades, I’d see the former First Lady at 7 a.m., walking her dogs.

As the years passed, everything about these walks seemed the same. Only our dogs changed: Mine were ever-so-slightly more observant of voice commands; hers got smaller in size. In time, she followed them with the assistance of a walker.

If we ever spoke to one another, it was cordial and in passing. I would apologize for my overzealous cur, and she would reassure me that she took no offense. She'd even joke that her "little rats deserved to be eaten.”

She was funny. And kind. And the stories about her around town reflected those attributes.

One time, though, I dared to take a picture of our worlds meeting on that beach. My entourage – my father and sister – had found themselves walking alongside Mrs. Bush’s entourage (a member of her family and a secret service agent).

And I, with my long lens, weathered the blistering stare of the detail as he spoke into his watch so that I could freeze this moment in time.

Over my objections, my dad had a copy of that photo framed, and he sent it to her with a note describing how much he loved Maine, and that beach, and being in that moment with her.

In time, a reply came back, thanking him for the gesture. Agreeing the place was special and hoping we’d all get back to it again next summer, God willing.

Go pave the driveway

The state of my car is appalling.

Dog hair and detritus everywhere.

I'm not even going a hazard a guess as to how to classify the sticky substance between the middle row of seats or what solvent would make it disappear.

I had been in the car by myself for the better part of an hour, driving from one errand to another, listening lazily to the sounds straining out of the pop music radio station my daughter prefers.

I might have been amused by the constant banter of the DJ duo discussing bad dates with their listening audience. Everything about it felt familiar. Even the talk formula, intermittently interrupted by one of seven hit songs, presumably played in rotation, seemed like old hat.

But as I drove, my mind was churning a mixture of past, present and future banalities as anesthetizing as the airwave testimonies fueling this perennial battle of the sexes.

Truthfully, I hadn't been paying attention until I hit snow. (Yes, there was actual snow ... this winter refuses to retreat) but it was the radio static that transformed figurative pain into literal pain.

I changed channels.

NPR.

A woman with precise diction and a chuckle in her voice proceeded to lay out the problems with kids today:

Their parents.

Hovercrafts

Helicopters ...

Snow plows ...

Pushovers ...

Absentee ...

We know where we are on the spectrum.

A part of me wished I was not white-knuckling behind a steering wheel so I could let my eyes glaze over.

I could tell from the way her words flowed with a practiced flair into clear and chiseled points that this was more than a radio interview. Perhaps it was the subtle, yet distinctive sound of live studio-audience laughter punctuating her pauses that made me realize I was listening to a clip from a TED Talk.

I briefly wondered what the speaker looked like, imagined her pacing a stage wearing elegant but comfortable attire. I made a mental note to listen for the host to repeat her name so I could Google it later.

I never caught her name, but I imagined if I scoured the Interwebs for any of the above-mentioned search words I'd find no fewer than 7,000,010 potential scholars.

Far too few of us, our esteemed speaker noted with observances during her years of experience in academia, can walk sturdily in the place we need to be as molders of the future: a narrow little pathway she called “Authoritative Parenting.”

Usually, we end up on either side of the divide: the strict disciplinarians wind up on Authoritarian Avenue, and the friend-zoned parents wind up on Doormat Street, both of which are presumably dead ends in the game of Chutes and Ladders to Success.

Authoritative parents, however, are perfectly balanced between dictatorship and fairyland, which might mean they rule their little fiefdoms with a magic wand.

Not that I would ever bet bitcoin on any of that being even remotely true.

But as a person of a certain age, with a certain set of expectations and cultural pressures, I have continued to listen, hoping this stray voice in the wilderness will hand over the key to the universe, and she does: All we need is unconditional love … and chores.

Chores, like taking out the garbage or doing the laundry.

Paving the driveway. Anything that teaches children to look at their surroundings and predict what needs doing.

Look junior, a pothole. Fill it with tar.

It couldn't be easier. Chores! A simple and attainable plan.

I don't need to sweat all this big stuff. I don't have to worry that colleges won't accept my children if they walked out of school to protest gun laws when they were in middle school. Or that life won't be worth living if they don't play a sport or learn a second language while they play piano and develop a scalable model for a disruptive economic driver using only code.

I just need to get them to clean my car.

Parlez vous français? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My daughter noticed it first. The city was a ghost town.

As we passed over the Champlain Bridge on a midday Monday, she remarked about the construction equipment seemingly abandoned.

“Isn’t it creepy,” she wondered aloud, “there doesn’t seem to be a
single soul anywhere?”

As we made our way into Montreal to celebrate spring break with a four-day holiday, I wondered if the Quebec province was celebrating a holiday of its own.

“Nope. I already checked.”

Then the only explanations I could come up with were a zombie apocalypse or an alien abduction.

Which, let’s face it, wouldn’t exactly surprise me considering my past history of planning our way through travel.

This diminutive vacation had been off to a rocky start from even before we’d arrived.

We’d been delayed at the border unexpectedly. Our car waved into a concrete slot while three uniformed men asked us to exit and stand at the curb.

“Take your hands out of your pockets, please,” asked one of the officials, whose voice didn’t make “please” sound in any way pleasant.

She had been excited to spend a few days exploring a foreign city. She had envisioned eating gravy-drenched fries and practicing her middle-school French for a stunned an appreciative audience.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her the minute she said “Bonjour,” her host would switch to English, having detected our native language expertly. She’d find out soon enough.

My daughter didn’t want to watch the latex-gloved inspectors paw through our things, so we took them up on their offer to take a seat inside a cement block building to stay out of the weather.

We had planned to see the old city, visit some museums and explore the Biodome, a museum of the environment that, as a google search would confirm, was not one in the same with the Biosphère, a similarly themed museum made from the 1967 World’s Fair pavilion designed by Buckminster Fuller.

Neither of which would be open during our stay.

It turned out the dome had shuttered for a complete renovation the day we arrived, leaving a gaping hole in our itinerary. The rest of the city seemed to be in a similar state of hibernation.

Everything seemed to be “ferme.”

We started to understand once we went into one shop and found that it spiraled into a city underground.

While it seemed a the survivors of the zombie apocalypse staggered around outside as Winter refused to concede Spring, life bustled under the streets and through buildings that connected, blending commuter trains with the retail terrain.

It felt ... how do you say?

Mort Vivant?

I think I may be too cynical for travel. Too fearful of being the illiterate who can only get lost. This trip has only reinforced my resolve to limit my surroundings to the familiar.

Back at our concrete shack at the border we sat behind a table and avoided looking in the direction of our car by translating a sign on the wall bearing the likeness of the saddest raccoon known to man:

“La Rage!”

“Ne jamais toucher à une chauve-souris, qu’elle soit vivante ou morte.”

“Rabies!

“Never touch a bat, be it alive or dead.”

It’s hard to deny that everything sounds better in French. And probably look better with a photo of a raccoon, too.

One of the inspectors motions to us as he walked to the table. When he arrived, he unleashed a torrent of words that cascaded around us in beautiful nonsense.

I cock my head and raise my shoulders as my daughter proudly used her French:

“Je ne paux pas parler français.”

“I do not speak French.”

He smiled and points to our car.

“Enjoy your stay in Canada.”

Waiting for the bump

It was the cutest thing: Two squirrels scurrying across the street as if they were a pair of teacup-sized dogs that had broken free of their people and gone off to play.

Rolling, tumbling, and then stretching out fully - as if in flight - they performed these and other varmint gymnastics until they were safely on the other side.

For a few moments, as I waited at the stop sign, I thought of how adorable this impromptu act seemed, and how I kind of miss the squirrels while they are laying low during their winter siestas.

But then they returned to the center of the road with full and equal vigor, heading straight into the path of my car and uncertain doom.

Squirrels being squirrelly and all, the certainty of a traffic-related demise can be offset by the quick and limber directional changes they exhibit that border on the magical.

As a driver, however, I know my response is limited to one of only two possibilities: the unwise and reactionary change of course that could impact other drivers; or the tensing of body parts and the momentary closing of eyes as I wait for the stomach-churning bump under my tires.

I always choose the latter.

No bump. I open my eyes. No rear view of a tiny corpse. Safe again.

I can relax, thankful for the agility of squirrels.

It occurs to me that parenting can feel a little like white-knuckling through an alleyway full of darting squirrels.

Obviously, these kids have no idea what they are doing. Boldly starting out on their journeys, doubling and even tripling back before darting back into harm's way.

We count ourselves lucky if we don’t feel or witness the bump.

Lately, though, I’ve had the sneaking suspicion that our kids may not be the only ones playing the part of the squirrels in this anthropomorphic flight of fancy.

We parents are also chasing our tails in some panicked state of industriousness.

Sure we have intuition. A nature to nurture. But our real-world experience with raising children is limited to how we were raised.

When you think about it, parenting feels like tackling a never-ending circle of tasks we would rather do differently than our parents if we could just stop hearing their voices coming out of our mouths.

Of course, nature would have it that we are always wrong. I know you can’t hear me, but the voice I used in the last sentence was not tinged with sarcasm.

We humans get it wrong. A lot. And probably throughout recorded history we have always made mistakes that we just haven't acknowledged.

We zigged, perhaps, when we should have zagged.

Maybe these mistaken turns lead to places we ought not go, or perhaps they lead us to safety. If we are lucky - and many of us are - the bump we experience in the road won’t prove lethal. But the thing that I think makes us most squirrel-like is the speed at which we venture forth into this great unknown.

It really is the cutest thing.