On the heels of my trip to Cincinnati, I went to Richmond this week for an overnight stay. (There is nothing like visits to two mid-size American cities in the course of eight days to make one feel like an international jetsetter, except for the lack of any international connection. It reminds me of what a cabdriver told me about the Richmond International Airport: It got its name only because of a single flight to Canada every Tuesday.) But it involved a plane trip, and plane trips always make me happy.

One of the things that did not make me happy was the timing of the return flight. Court would end by 10:30 a.m., but the first flight out left at 4:00 p.m. It seemed like such an inconvenience, an interruption of my life. I fumed, and then I came to my senses: This was my life. Who among us hasn’t charged hard, barreled head-first through a stressful assignment, only to find time on our hands and a feeling of what next? Or in my case, what next in a strange city?

It turned out to be a slice of serendipity. My time — my precious time! — gets claimed by those dear teenagers, an arthritic dog, a husband, clients, a business, an 89 year-old house, a 144 year-old building, teaching spin classes, church — you name it. I hit the pillow at night; I fall asleep quickly — so quickly that Chris typically has to lift the book I’m reading off my face. (This discourages the purchase of hardcover books.)  And here I had an entire afternoon sprawling out before me, with no obligations — and even better, no internet connection.

I took to the streets. I love a city that conveys a certain casualness about what its actual age is. Buildings designed by Thomas Jefferson competed with buildings designed by architects who favored functionality over beauty. Cobblestone streets ran under interstate overpasses. A monument honoring Confederate soldiers mingled with a sculpture commemorating school desegregation. A statue of Jefferson competed with large screens broadcasting a legislative session. I rambled, I took pictures, I petted strangers’ dogs. When I got cold (and it was a cold day), I ducked into an independent bookstore.

Here is a confession: I am a diehard Amazon purchaser, which is a stake to the heart of every independent bookseller out there. I feel guilty; I can’t help myself; thanks to Prime, I see my mail carrier at an alarming rate. But yesterday, paying five bucks more for a book seemed like a small price to pay to wander around in the warmth, read book flaps, and chat with the proprietress. I bought a card with this Roald Dahl quote: “If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.” And I bought a book, “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage” by Ann Patchett, one of my favorite writers. It is a collection of her essays, and many of them talk about writing — the process, the joys, the difficulties, the work.

And with this book in hand, I went to a Starbucks, ordered a hot chocolate, said yes (a thousand times yes!) to the whipped cream on top, and sat at a table near a giant window. For the next hour, I sat and read and thought and lazily watched people walk by. I felt so content, so satisfied with these little luxuries. An excellent book. A sweet, warm drink. A warm, sunny place out of the cold. Time to reflect. Solitude in the midst of strangers. It was hard to leave. I want to go back.

I went to Cincinnati this week for work. Since a bridge had collapsed, getting into the city required a detour through several small towns, wide open and situated on the banks of the river. The sun was bright; the sky was blue; and as Cincinnati neared, large buildings loomed. All of the open space disappeared downtown, and the city became grimy, as if a gloomy grey filter had suddenly been placed over a lens. When I travel, I often feel very much of a place, and it is not unusual for people to mistake me for a local. But here, I felt like an alien — and (contrary to my usual attempts to carry myself as some sort of international badass) altogether uneasy.

Feeling out of place reminded me of my first trip to Cincinnati a few years ago, when I suddenly heard my name called across a street. It was my opponent, an attorney from Michigan. I asked how he knew it was me, and he said that I just looked different from anyone else there. I thought about this. Later, on the plane home, it (finally) occurred to me that he had Googled me and found a photograph. Now, on this trip, I wasn’t so sure about this: Sticking out like a sore (southern) thumb seemed just as likely of an explanation.

But this trip was remarkable for one reason: I have never been called “baby” or “honey” or “sweetie” or “darling” as much in my entire life. Virtually everybody had some sort of pet name for me, offered with change from the register or directions to the highway or food or an open door. Twenty years ago, this sort of treatment would have drawn definitely a sigh of disapproval, possibly a rebuke, and maybe even a snarky “sweetie” in reply. (Indeed, I told my 15 year-old daughter about this, and she bristled: “I hate that!”) But time has passed, and I have softened. There are far worse names that “baby” or “honey” or “sweetie” or “darling,” and pushing 47, I have been called those names. So I took the endearments in the spirit in which they were offered. I reciprocated with a smile, a laugh, a genuine thanks, a fleeting connection with another person. And while driving my rental car to visit family in Kentucky, I thought about my new status as everybody’s baby in Cincinnati, and I realized how much more bearable these strangers’ kindnesses had made the trip.

This treatment made me think of a friend who tells me that she loves me almost every time she sees me. We part, we hug, she says, “I love you.” I actually wasted some time wondering why she told me that, and then it hit me that, well, she loved me. At first it made me uncomfortable — who tells friends that? — and then it made me feel chastised — why don’t I tell my friends that? What could be wrong with expressing kindness and affection in appropriate measure? Why the hang-up? Life is too short (and sometimes too hard) to turn your back on these types of gifts. So I started telling her that I loved her, too. I meant it. (Inspired, I have started telling other friends that I love them. I mean it.)

You love purists out there are scoffing. Doesn’t this dilute the word “love?” But love means so many things. This hit me as I was painting our bedroom ceiling last weekend (a labor of love in itself) and listening to a Spotify play list called “Pure Love Songs.” I listened to at least 20 songs about love, ranging the gamut from friendship to infatuation to lust to betrayal to a steady, constant light. Certainly love throws open her arms wide enough to encompass small kindnesses and deep friendships — as well as familial bonds and a soulmate. I was reminded of the color blue. Sometimes the shade is so light that you can barely see it — a whisper of the sky, a hint of ice — but sometimes the shade is so dark that you can hardly fathom its depths, like the deepest reaches of the ocean.

I saw my father on this trip, too. He has long feigned a benign incompetence in the kitchen, but he made me a decent cup of coffee, toasted a bagel for me, set it all on a tray, and opened both apple butter and raspberry jam that he had made. And for two hours, we sat and talked. (This is a feat in and of itself: Dad and I are both summa cum laude graduates of the University of Idle Hands are the Devil’s Workshop. We share the same compulsion to move and to be doing something. Always.) But we talked about my children, our work, his retirement, investing. His dogs would occasionally pad over to me, gently place their paws on my legs, and nuzzle my face. It was cozy and warm and calming. I tell my children this: That they will understand how much I love them when they have children of their own, and that it will overwhelm them. I was reminded of this as I talked and listened to Dad.

I would not have changed a thing about that morning. As I walked out of Dad’s house, I thought about the first people I loved — my parents, my brother, my sister — and I thought about returning to my husband and children the next day. (They are my own sea of love, where the water is so blue that it is almost black.) I thought about strangers and friends and kindnesses, small and large. I thought about how grateful I was to have reached the point in my life where I could connect with people and (sometimes) tell them that I loved them, even if I worried that it made me sound silly. I looked up then and saw the winter sky, with the snow swirling in the skeletons of the trees. And it was beautiful.

ALC

P.S. — I leave you with these words — Raymond Carver’s “Last Fragment”:

I just had a conversation with a friend. It seems that everything in her life is changing right now, that the container holding all of her hopes, dreams, and plans has been shaken mightily and everything that all of her preconceived notions have been dumped ingloriously on the floor, topsy-turvy. Her take? Sometimes the universe kicks you in the pants.

I will add this: Sometimes you need a kick in the pants. Who among us has been afraid of change, only to find that change was exactly what we needed? I can give you small examples from my own life. Firing the cleaning service? It seemed like a negative, but on the whole, it’s been a pleasure. I bank the money; I clean the house; I tend my things far more lovingly. And it encourages me to keep the house neater on a daily basis, rather than a weekly half-assed salute to organization before the cleaning people arrived. A car accident? There are things that I wished I could have avoided about that — mostly, a concussion and a shoulder injury that ended my swimming — but it reinforced the notion to me that life is too short and that things could change in an instant. Within a year of that accident, I changed jobs, and I began to change my life. Quitting a good job in a bad economy and opting for self-employment? The financial part can be stressful, but on the whole, the freedom and the independence have been exactly what I needed. Consciously spending less money? It can be hard to walk past things that sparkle and shine, but I have enough. (Really, I have more than enough.)

At a family dinner the other night, my daughter pulled out a card from a conversational deck we keep and read this question: Would you rather your children be happy or successful. Chris answered without missing a beat: Happy. Of all the times he’s tossed a coin in the fountain or made a wish for the two of them, it has been for them to be happy. He’s never once made the wish for them to be successful. Now Chris is a terribly pragmatic guy. (It’s true: Opposites attract.) But at the end of the day, isn’t it far more practical to wish for and want a life of joy? Without fulfillment, without change, without challenge, it is hard to grow and to fit your own life comfortably and to see beauty and opportunity where you have overlooked it so many times before.

Change is not a license to do whatever the hell you want to do. But it is a license to reflect, to figure out the next best course, and to adapt. To live your life on your terms and to move forward — always forward, mindful of the past, hopeful for the future, grateful for the present.

Friend, I love you. You will make these changes, you will make the right decisions, and you will figure it out. It will then be your life, and it will be a good one.

ALC

My dad has a saying: “Nothing goes right when your underwear is tight.” He has never actually said it about underwear. But when things are going bad (or sometimes, just out of the blue), he will lean in, and in his wisest dad voice, remind me of this truth. Is he brilliant? Is he absurd? Is he a brilliant absurdist? Who knows. He’s my dad, and I’m hardly one to judge.

I finally figured out what dad meant in 2014 — an entire year spent (at least in the figurative sense) in very tight underwear. Nothing went right. And I would find myself uttering this phrase, and realizing that Dad meant that nothing goes right when you feel uncomfortable, regardless of the reason. (Well, he probably meant that. But who knows? It’s a funny phrase, and my dad’s a funny guy, and he may have just been saying it to be funny.)

I will spare you the details of my discomfort, so you can breathe a sigh of relief right now. We all have our own bag of rocks to carry. But in my (figuratively) tight underwear, I thought a lot about how to get to a more comfortable place.

Help arrived in the most unlikely way, as it often does. My then 16 year-old son had planned a long hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail — from Hot Springs, North Carolina, to Springer Mountain, Georgia — with his best friend from camp. His best friend bailed out. And as he was telling Chris and me this fact — on a Saturday evening in February, in a parking garage in downtown Savannah — and asking us if he could go alone, I found myself blurting out, “Why would you want to go alone? I will go with you.” And my son replied, “I would love that.” So it was settled. We would start the weekend before Memorial Day.

Even the laziest reader will immediately wonder two things: 1. Why did a 45 year-old mother volunteer? and 2. Why did her 16 year-old son agree? There is a case to be made for this explanation: I offered because I didn’t want him going alone, and he accepted because he didn’t want his parents to call off the (now-solo) trip. But I think that the better answer is that neither of us knew exactly what we were getting into.

Sure, there are photographs of me camping. I am four years old in those photographs. I went white water rafting with Chris’ family in college. In that photograph, I am safely in the middle of the raft, smiling and waving to the photographer. Hell, I don’t even like cheap hotels; I can’t cook; and untidy bathrooms provoke a strong visceral reaction.

But I had one thing go for me: I was game. Good, bad, or ugly, I have an almost puppy-like enthusiasm. If I could have announced this trip to the world in bubble letters with a glitter pen during a ticker-tape parade set to my own soundtrack, I would have. (Or perhaps more accurately, I would have!!!!)

Instead, I found myself in the market for accessories. Hiking boots? Check. Orange replacement laces from Sgt. Knots (seriously, it’s a shoe lace purveyor) to have better-looking hiking boots? Check. A multitude of bright bandanas in every color? Check, check, and double check. A backpack? Well, duh, that’s what ebay is for. I was child with almost every conceivable accessory, car, dream home, cruise ship, and airliner for America’s favorite fashion doll. As a middle-aged adult, I became Granola Barbie. I even vowed to hike the trail in these cute outdoor skirts from Columbia. (Note: I did. One male hiker said, “Are you REALLY hiking the AT in a skirt? You are ridiculous.” Yes, yes I was.)

So for the next three months, I would throw on my AT uniform (hiking skirt, striped tank top, bandana, floppy purple sun hat, Sgt. Knots-equipped boots), put bags of birdseed in my backpack, and hike around my neighborhood. At sea level.  For a few miles. With a grapefruit LaCroix in hand. And neighbors would stop me to ask me what I was doing (my answer was the excited equivalent of “OMG!! I’M HIKING THE AT!!!!) or occasionally, thinking I was the real deal, offer me food. On one occasion, someone asked me if I was walking through Georgia, and on another occasion, someone told me of his hikes in Peru. And so I marched on.

(Figuratively) tight underwear and all, it was often hard to walk alone for hours, stuck with my own thoughts. Fortunately, to distract me I had a backpack that escalated in weight from 10 to 20 to 30 to 35 pounds. Let me tell you this truth: (Figuratively) tight underwear is nothing compared to (actual) backpack straps that bite into tender shoulders. But I kept going. My Fitbit loved me! I met my entire neighborhood! I went to bed tired! I could carry my pack!

As my son and I got closer to the departure date, we started packing. It is humbling to have your world narrowed down to what you can carry on your back. Food and camping gear aside, I had two skirts, four tank tops, three bandanas, two sports bras, a fleece pullover, two pairs of socks, a pair of flip flops, and two pairs of (literal, non-tight) underwear. This was too much, as it turned out. And it was really too much for me to pack a hardcover journal to record my deepest thoughts (as it turned out, there were none); a copy of “The Sun Also Rises” (because if you’re going to get to the root of your existence, why not read an existentialist?); a really adorable pink water bottle filled with small batch bourbon (I didn’t have a drop); and my favorite Olay beauty product. With all of my gear and my food, my pack weighed easily 40 pounds.

But I was undaunted. Because I had never hiked, much less hiked the Appalachian Trail. And it kicked my well-accessorized, skirted ass.

I have two teenagers, a 17 year-old boy and a 15 year-old girl, and more than they want but less than I’d like, I post vignettes about, or pictures of, them on my Facebook page. These posts often describe some act of kindness or cooperation by one of my children. (If you’ve read them, perhaps you can sense my wonder and pride.) And a recent one, showing my daughter help her father dig a hole in the backyard, prompted a friend with two small children to comment, “You make life with teenagers seem blissed out.” Fingers poised over keyboard, I had a variety of small quips and slightly deprecating remarks at my ready, and then decided against it. Because I actually enjoy life with teenagers.

This has come as a bit of a surprise: Teenagers are supposed to be cranky and smelly and mean to their parents and disagreeable. Mine can be, albeit rarely. But I get this age: the feelings of uncertainty and growth and struggle and the need to figure out and express exactly who you are. My struggle is more contemplative; theirs is writ large, and I have a ringside seat to their metamorphosis. They are great. They are messy. They are funny. They are mine.

I have absolutely no business giving parenting advice. (Disclosure: I garnered some of my best tips from “How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend,” a book by the Monks of New Skete on training the household pet.) But for my friends with younger children, I offer some things that have surprised me about this age, and some things that I think have helped with raising children to be pleasant teenagers.

1. Ritual. When the children were young, someone sent me a book about the power of ritual in parenting. Being a short attention span reader (particularly with, ahem, slightly over-earnest subject matter), I think I read the title, the inside flap, and the back cover — and walked away with an impression that children really enjoy and need ritual. (The Monks of New Skete said the same of dogs, by the way, although they called it consistency instead.)

So we have family rituals. Nothing big, nothing expensive, and (certainly) nothing involving the slaughter of goats. Friday night? Movie and pizza night. Dinner time? At the table, with candles and fresh flowers and cloth napkins. Chores before dinner? Twenty years from now, I will be able to holler “CHORES!” up the steps, and my then 37 and 35 year-old children will run down and set the table, put ice in glasses, light the candles, and take the food to the table.

2. Dinner time. The observant reader will note that I already said dinner time. Yes, it is so important that I am writing it twice. We have family dinner, and we have fairly raucous conversations at family dinner. When the children were young, they discovered that they could ask us (almost) anything, and we would answer them truthfully. Let me just say now that health class has led to some of our more interesting conversations. Let me tell you, too, that a $6 box of conversation-starting cards found on an end cap at Target has been one of the best purchases ever. Not every night, but four or five nights each week, the four of us sit down at the table land eat and laugh and talk about God-knows-what. It is invaluable.

3. Mistakes are okay. One of the things that I talk about with my children — whether at dinner or other times — is mistakes. I tell them about stuff I’ve screwed up or things I wish I’d done differently or ways that my quest for perfection totally blew up in my face. I also let them make their own mistakes (nothing permanent and life-altering, I assure you) rather than stepping in immediately to help them.

I do this because mistakes are such a big — and often underappreciated — part of life. No, I don’t like making mistakes, but I typically learn more from my mistakes than I do from situations that I’ve breezed through unscathed. Having your mom solve all of your problems isn’t exactly going to help you in the long run.

I read a study recently about the difference in men and women’s responses to difficult situations. (Apparently the tendency is to tell boys that if they work harder, they will figure it out, while people tend to suggest to girls that intelligence is immutable — thus making women more prone to frustration and the folding of tents when challenges arise.) It changed my perception about challenges — dig in, girl, and figure it out! I want to encourage my children to do the same, and I think that making mistakes, figuring out the lesson, determining how to avoid the mistake again, and moving on helps a lot.

4. You’re old a lot longer than you are young. I think we can all attest to this. I view my role in their life as one of planned obsolescence: They will live without me (and by this I mean on their own) far longer than they will live with me. I encourage them to take the long view on things (see, for instance, the discussion on mistakes). I talk to them about how much things costs and how money compounds and how a little saved today can mean a whole lot later. I talk to them about love, and I talk to them about work. I make them do their laundry. And they know how to use power tools and cook and write thank-you notes and select gifts and (this is extremely important) how and when to apologize. These are useful skills.

5. But I remember that they are still young. One of the bigger surprises about the children is how much they still need me. There is some truth to the saying “Little kids, little problems. BIg kids, big problems.” I take walks with them. I listen to them. I learn their interests and try to appreciate them. And when one of them needs to cuddle, I sit down on the couch and hold them, just like when they were little. (By the way, I am delighted when they do this, even if it surprises me.)

6. A tired dog is a good dog. I am much nicer when I am a little fatigued from exercise. They  are, too. A run or a walk has nipped a number of arguments in the bud.

7. (And since we’re on dog book advice) make your expectations clear. When I was young, I thought that my parents loved to discipline me. Now that I am a parent, I see what a stupid thought that was. I hate disciplining them. It kills me. I love to avoid punishment. So I make my expectations clear. This is what I expect from you. This is when I expect it. This is why I expect it. This is what will happen when those expectations are not met. This seems to have prevented most disciplinary issues within the family, and I am grateful.

8. Hold on loosely, but don’t let go. Oh, .38 Special, you were so wise. By “loosely,” I don’t mean to suggest a free-for-all of lawlessness, a veritable Australian Rules of parenting. But some things aren’t really that important. Your child misses a shower? It’s not such a big deal. Someone spills a glass of water at dinner? Eh. Clothes will be torn, disappointments will be had, eyerolls will ensue at the least opportune moment, snippy comments may be made. Bedrooms will almost always be a mess. But try to be bigger than that, and fight the battles that matter.

Listen, I have written too much now. Thanks for reading. It means a lot to me.

ALC