Guided by the Light of Smiles

An old pal and a new friend invited me to write an article for Be A Noble Kid, a volunteer effort and website full of resources, experiences, ideas, powerful questions, evolving answers, and supercharged with a cool, can-do vibe. Their mission is to "create a generation of kids who go out into the world and be noble." Please check out beanoblekid.org and join the village. We'd love to know how you and the little ones in your lives share your smiles and gifts. As for my family, we're still learning, still gathering, and still working out our do-better-be-noble kinks. But we're trying. Smile on, friends.

For most of the hour-long visit at the nursing home, my husband’s ninety-seven-year-old grandmother did not know who he was. She asked him, “Who are you?” He reintroduced himself, with tenderness, patience and a twinge of sadness. At times Gram thought he was her beloved younger brother. We gently corrected her. She asked if he was my boyfriend. I reminded Gram I’d been hitched to this fella, her Jonathan, for better or worse, for more than fifteen years. “You were there, Gram; we danced together,” Jonathan added. We told her several times and in different ways how we were woven together, but she shook her head in disbelief. “Fifteen years? How can that be? Where’d the time go?” She couldn’t remember. I know she wanted to remember. I know my husband wanted her to remember.

Our conversation circled in this way until we pulled photo albums from the shelves and thumbed through pictures from Gram’s nearly one hundred years of living. She began telling tales about the people and the occasions, and while accuracy ebbed and flowed, Gram’s spunk returned. We stopped correcting her and let her wax on, let whatever was in her head and heart just spill. We smiled and nodded and asked questions, and the more we smiled and nodded and questioned, the more she sparkled and spun these exquisite yarns. She laughed that throaty, familiar laugh. She even elbowed me at one point, giving me a sideways twinkling glance to make sure I had caught her joke.

We’d stopped telling her how we were connected and started simply connecting. I realized it didn’t matter that she couldn’t get to our names or that her storylines tangled and twisted or that we seemed to be in some space between reality and dream. For Gram, that space of story, laughter and eye contact loosened and lightened her spirit. She was happy for the visit, for our presence. She was happy to have the two of us sitting there with her, listening to her, laughing with her, hugging her, and encouraging her to keep going. Whereas details were blurred and fuzzed and forgotten and spotty, the happiness was spot on, bell-clear, crisp – pure magic.

I don’t know what, if anything, Gram will remember from that December visit, but I do know she, and we, most enjoyed those moments guided by the light of smiles and by openness to truths born more of feeling than fact. As Maya Angelou once astutely noted, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

I want my children to know that showing up for someone else matters. I want my children to know that their time, their snaggle-toothed grins and belly-giggles, their stories, their little listening ears and gigantic generous hearts, and their arms that monkey-wrap so tightly around necks and waists are all gifts. I want to teach them to give, give, give those gifts. I pack them into the car, sometimes driving them for hours, to visit their grandparents, great grandmothers, uncles, aunts, cousins, and family friends. Whether we travel to New York or Georgia for a week, over to Charlottesville for a night or two, or just scoot across town for a fifteen-minute tree climb and cup of tea with old neighbors, we go see people whenever we can.

When we can’t go visit in person, we try to show up in other ways; we let our friends and family know that we see them with our hearts, not just our eyes. We send them our smiles by way of a zealously colored-way-out-of-the-lines picture, a handwritten love letter, a thank you note, a silly poem, a zany text, or a link to a favorite tune with the message, “Wherever you are, you should be dancing.” We call and share our hoops war stories and spelling test triumphs. We ask questions. We try to be good listeners, good helpers, good humans. We craft origami masterpieces to fold beauty and calm into the world. We weave rubber band bracelets to wrap color around wrists near and far. We leave long-winded voice messages. We do not always wait for returned calls before trying again. We place Tupperwares filled with soup and bags brimming with cookies on porches. We require no notice for drop-ins and invite people right on into our messiness and madness. “Yes, please, oh, please, stop by! Stay as long as you like. The house is positively wrecked and mud-caked with life, but always open!”

There is no formula, no set way to show up for a person, no right or wrong on how best to connect, no required or recommended amount of time. I tell my little ones (and hopefully show them, too), “Your smile is light and that light – even just a flash of it – might be just the shine someone needs to keep going.”

* Published on beanoblekid.org on January 31, 2014.