You will be 13 in six days. And I can already see you growing up. Stop it.

You’re taller. You wear snazzier clothes. You use a sort of adultish voice now, and use grown-up-female words like “absolutely” and “amazing” and—God help us all—“See? I told you so!”

Also, you’re not interested in toys like you once were. I noticed this when we were at the store yesterday. You were picking out a gift for your birthday, and we were in the toy aisle. You were yawning while I made suggestions.

Finally, you told me you were more interested in having a purse.

“A purse?” I said.

“Yes, a purse for my phone.”

So we went to the women’s section and you picked out an actual purse. Then we walked through Walmart while you wore your soon-to-be purse around your shoulder, clutching the strap like you were on your way to an important PTA meeting.

Later that night, we had your birthday supper. The

celebration went well. We celebrated with cheesesteaks and French fries. But I could see some subtle differences in your table etiquette.

For starters, not once did I see you lick your fingers. Neither did you drag your sleeve through any ketchup, or spill food in your lap. You kept your napkin on your knees, pausing now and then to primly dab your face.

Consequently, for the first time in a long time, you didn’t need help finding your food on the plate. Ever since you went blind, eating became a challenge for you. But not anymore.

I still remember times when I helped feed you out in public, so you wouldn’t spill food on your nice dress. I remember hoisting you up to the men’s bathroom sink to scrub stains from your clothes while bathroom guests gave me odd glares.

But you do not need help…

My phone finally arrives in the mail. It’s small. Ugly. It’s “dumb.” And it looks like it was invented during the Herbert Hoover administration.

This phone is incapable of performing any task greater than making phone calls or serving as a doorstop. Hopefully, this will help cure my smartphone addiction.

I leave the house to run errands. Armed with the most advanced technology 1989 had to offer. I am meeting a friend for lunch.

With no GPS, I soon realize that I’m completely lost downtown. I have NO idea where I’m going once I exit familiar neighborhoods.

No problem. This is embarrassing, yes, but I pull over to ask directions.

I tell the gas-station clerk I am looking for Broadway Street and ask how to get there. The clerk tells me he doesn’t know the names of any streets inasmuch as he usually just uses his phone.

So we look up directions together on his phone GPS. At some point the clerk stares at me and says,

“Don’t you have a phone?”

“Not a smart one,” I say.

“Dude,” he says, and there is real sympathy in his voice.

I arrive at the restaurant late where a waitress tells me I can find a menu by scanning a QR code.

“May I have a paper menu?” I ask.

The waitress gives a bewildered look as though I have just broken wind in an elevator. You don’t even want to know how she reacts when I pay with cash.

Next, I have an appointment at the opthamologist. I arrive early. The waiting room is empty, the staff is killing time by playing on phones.

“You’re in luck,” the young staffer says. “We had two cancellations, so we can bump your appointment up 30 minutes, you won’t have to wait.”

Then she pauses. The words seem to come out…

I am in Baltimore. Looking at the Chesapeake Bay. Cold gray water. Brown grass.

Canada geese overhead, playing follow the leader, honking in sing-songy tones as if to say, “My butt is cold!” 

I have always wanted to see the Chesapeake. My whole life, actually. 

It all started because my dad was a reader. He read books obsessively. You’d see him sitting in his chair, poking through some thick volume. 

Usually he read boring books. Such as those outlining the various stratagems of the allied forces’ offensive maneuvers within the Pacific War Theater. Or the biography of the long and complicated history of dental floss in the United States. 

He read especially before bed. I’d peek into his room to say goodnight, and he’d have a book in hand, glasses low on his nose. He’d kiss my hair and say goodnight. Then just keep reading. 

He was a blue collar steelworker, but he tried so hard to defy this image by forcing himself to do non-blue-collar things.

Things like listening to classical

music even though he hated it. Or writing down vocabulary words for himself, and trying to use these words in sentences. Words such as “loquacious,” or "munificence.”

The last book I remember him reading was “Chesapeake,” by James A. Michener. I believe my father had read all of Michener’s books. But he deemed “Chesapeake” his favorite. Not just his favorite Michener book, mind you, but his favorite book of all time. 

Years later when I was 13, I was going through a box of his things one night. Old baseball gloves. Old photos. And I found his favorite book. 

I just held it in my hands, clutching it close to my chest, as though this book had strange magic inside the pages. 

I tried to start reading it, but the language was too high-minded for a 13-year-old whose most advanced reading involved catching up on the exploits…

Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The windchill is negative four and I can no longer feel my unmentionables. I’m about to play my fiddle and tell funny stories to a room of people at the community center.

I am nervous because these are Pennsylvanians. Pennsylvanians, I’ve heard, only laugh on the inside.

As it happens, my intel is inaccurate. The crowd laughs well. Thank God.

The biggest laughter of the night, however, comes from a woman named Kris, who is from Thailand. Kris is here with her friend tonight, named Oat.

“It is pronounced like ‘OAT-meal,’” says the young woman with an air of grace and properness.

Oat is maybe four-foot-eleven. She stands next to Kris, who is perhaps a quarter inch taller.

“We drive long way to see you,” says Kris, the older of the two.

“We in car for very long time,” says Oat.

I am touched. Here I am in Pennsylvania, far from home. And these women are from the Eastern Hemisphere.

“How

do you even KNOW WHO I AM?” I ask.

“Because I love you,” is all Kris says.

Kris has something for me. A gift. She hands me a small, ornate coin purse containing two pennies.

“This is just my two cents,” Kris says. Then she bursts out laughing.

Kris does not merely laugh on the inside.

And I am moved. I don’t know why I can’t speak, but I am mute for a few moments. Maybe it’s the cold weather allergies.

I respond by speaking only a few words. I am surprised I still remember them.

“Khap kum krup,” I say.

The two women are sort of impressed to hear an awkward bearded dude who looks like the fat guy from “The Hangover” speak Thai.

“YOU SPEAK THAI?” they ask, using the same tone you would use to ask…

“Dear Sean, I’m writing for advice,” the message began. 

“I lost the whole lower right side of my face [due to cancer] before having it rebuilt. My surgeon was a genius. 

“...I’m five years without cancer, but my 12-year-old constantly worries about me, and is afraid my cancer will come back. We’ve been through a lot. I tell her that I’m okay, but it doesn’t always help. What do I do?”

Dear friend, you’re asking the wrong guy for advice.

I have no children. The closest I ever came to having a child was when my wife got me a goldfish for Christmas. His name was Gary. 

I travel for a living, so I took Gary with me everywhere since Gary would have starved at home alone because, sadly, Gary never learned to cook. 

So I carried Gary in a Mason jar when I traveled. He rode in the passenger seat. Late one night in Texas, I was checking into a hotel. I plopped Gary’s jar on the counter and started digging through my wallet. 

The teenage clerk

stared at Gary and said, “Is that a fish?”

“Yes.” 

The clerk blinked, then replied—and I’m not making this up—“So I guess you want to upgrade your room to two kings?”

So anyway, eventually Gary died of natural causes. And by “natural causes,” I am, of course, referring here to our cat Cuddles.  

So I am not qualified to raise a goldfish. Let alone give kid advice.

Still, I have this theory. And I realize this is going to sound ridiculous, but bear with me. My theory is that every human is a 12-year-old, waiting for his or her life to begin. 

When I was a 12-year-old, I underwent a lot of trauma and tragedy. My father died by suicide and our world was upended. 

Ever since, the one feeling I craved was security. Security was missing in my life.

Our plane touched down, mid-afternoon. The flight attendant said, “Careful opening overhead compartments because shift happens.” 

We deboarded, got our luggage from the carousel, leapt into our rental car, and we aimed the front bumper toward the wilds of Pennsylvania. 

I like Pennsylvania. They’re nice here. They say “yous” and “yinz” and “soda pop.” They have Appalachian manners, a steelman’s work ethic, and potholes big enough to swallow Peterbilts. 

Soon, we were driving back roads beneath an impossibly blue sky, dodging potholes like playing a video game. But after we got out of the congested areas, the landscape changed considerably. 

The potholes disappeared. So did the billboards, warehouses, blast furnace smokestacks, along with all the Dick’s Sporting Goods, Outback Steakhouses, Ultas, Best Buys, Red Lobsters, and other American franchises that make each American town look just like every other American town.   

Soon, we were weaving through the rearmost byways of Pennsylvania, past the hinterlands of Appalachia. Riding two-lanes without yellow lines, where motorists are nice enough to stay in their own lane using

the honor system. 

Our tires bumped over the occasional patch job on the antique pavement. We whipped past hundreds of unnamed offshot dirt roads, top dressed, leading heaven only knows where.  

Gracious farmland, dotted hillsides. Scalped pastures of fescue and alfalfa, golden brown, peppered with little red barns, timber fences, and millions of parked RVs. Goodness, Pennsylvania seems to love their RVs. 

We passed cattle, standing near fence rails, all huddled together, watching intermittent cars go by, moving their heads in unison to follow your vehicle as though they were watching a tennis match. 

The roads were lined with heaps of residual snow, akin to giant tufts of dirty cotton. The faroff hillsides were blue, with Purple Mountains Majesty standing behind them. 

Smoke rose from distant chimneys attached to imperfectly white farmhouses, two-stories, big porches, no frills, manicured yards.  

We passed a young man driving a John…