P O T A G E R: Smiling, Real Life, and Sponge-Bob Square Pants

As a wise children's book once told me (as I was reading it to my boys many years ago).....There are Good Days, and there are Bad Days.......

There are days when you talk about scarecrows and plant cultivars and pumpkins, and then there are days when you talk about REAL LIFE and smiling.

REAL LIFE, as I once read in a magazine, is not about redecorating your living room. REAL LIFE is about boogy-men, and cancer, and the grace and strength of people you know who deal with these horrors, and live with them and work with them and hang on. THAT is REAL LIFE. A yucky, tragic and amazing thing.

Smiling is what you do when it is what you have to give. When, really, you feel helpless........and you don't know what else to do........and yet you want to contribute somehow, and make things less burdensome in SOME way.

When your sister asks what you did when you went home to Indiana to help out with your parents, you tell her "I filed, and paid bills, and helped Dad with his therapy...............but mostly, I just smiled. If Mom had a question about something, I would answer her and smile. If Dad needed help with his walker, or just looked up with a puzzled or What the hell is happening to me? look on his face, I would smile at him in what I hoped was a reassuring It's okay; you're okay kind of way..................because it is what I could do, lacking the power to do anything else.

So tomorrow, I am going to smile as proxy. For friends I have now who are finding it hard or impossible to smile. Because it's all I can do. Or have the power to do.

when you don't know what else to do. And you want them to have a little glimpse of sunshine.... or the possibility of sunshine.