It’s hard to be a teenager and have your dad decide to take a new job and uproot the family and did you ask to move away from all your friends? Did you?

Not that any of them said any such thing to me, just, I’ve been a teenager and I’ve had friends move in/move out even if my own folks were kind enough to stay put for 47 years in the house built for them when I was three. One of the quirks of growing up in the Maryland suburbs was having friends afraid their dad–it was always the dad, back then–might lose the election and then they would have to leave. Back in those days, Congressmen moved their families to DC–and if their political fortunes didn’t hold, then, often, back out.

So. A new family recently moved into the area and showed up at church, the kids ranging from teenage boys to a babe in arms.

The mom is always smiling. Always cheerful. I like her already.

We got sent a picture–and I want to show it, but I don’t know how to access it from this computer–of my son and his little Parker, toddler totally copying daddy, very cute. Richard printed it out at work on Friday and I folded one of the copies and put it in my purse.

So there was the mom today by the door when the meetings were over, waiting for her husband to find her, holding the baby, her two teenage boys standing in front of her. They really don’t know me from Adam yet, so I explained I had one grandson: and then I pulled out that picture.

The mom went, oooh, so cute. The teens leaned in for a closer look and had the same reaction. They had a baby brother. They totally got this babies-are-adorable thing.

And then they looked up from the picture and into my eyes, still smiling.

I think they made friends on the spot with me as much as I did with them.