I was walking back to the car from Thomas's daycare this morning and I saw a woman approaching walking a beagle. Middle-aged woman, black, bandanna over her hair, trying to persuade her beagle out of the fascinating bushes and along the sidewalk to whatever their destination was.
When I lived in Urbana-Champaign I would have smiled and nodded at such a woman, said hello or made a comment about the grizzled dog's puppyish behavior. In our neighborhood there, everyone knew everyone, and if you didn't know someone, you knew you were bound to know them sometime, so might as well make small talk.
In the city it's a little different, and the woman wasn't meeting my eyes. So I did the only possible thing. I smiled at her dog, because it was charming and she loved it, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her smile at her dog too.
It was enough.
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