Smile on a Stick

"Whenever I feel bored, I just make myself laugh," Fable explained to me Tuesday morning as we wandered the paper store together looking at greeting cards.

"... And you know what, Mom? I'm kind of bored here."

That was when Fable disappeared and reappeared with a smile.

(On a stick.)

It was Tuesday morning and we were just beginning our day together. (We used to spend days, just us, when Fable was in preschool. She'd come with me to the coffee shop in the morning with her crayons and her paper and I'd write and she'd draw and occasionally spill her hot cocoa.. )

We set up shop in the window of the cafe but this time Fable wasn't in the mood to draw. She just wanted to talk and hold her smile in front of her face and watch the cars drive by.

"Can you tell I'm making a sad face?" she said, frowning behind the smile.

"Fable, shhh. I have to work."

"Can you tell I'm making an angry face?" she said, cracking herself up.

"Fable!"

Over the next several hours, Fable placed that smile on top of everything we passed... the flowers and the trees, the parking meter, sidewalk cracks, bananas at the smoothie shop, faces of scowling models.

"Look how happy you look now," she said...

I've been such a downer lately... not that anyone would know. I'm very LA like that. I'm great, how are you?

Can you tell I'm making a sad face?

Can you tell I'm making an angry thought? 

...And then Fable placed her smile over my face and when she pulled it away, we were laughing. So hard Fable fell off the curb she was balancing on and spilled smoothie everywhere and we laughed even harder and then the smile fell off the stick so we walked back to the car, drove home and taped the thing back together again.

GGC