A little girl ran along her backyard fence, waving furiously at the passing train.

It was my train – Amtrak’s Empire Builder, which runs from Washington State to Chicago. I’d climbed aboard in September as part of my “Two Years of Paula,” eager to start seeing the handful of states I hadn’t yet visited.

It was a gamble, though. The Empire Builder has the worst on-time record among all long-distance trains, and the Amtrak system in general has been suffering from an increasing number of woes, including an aging fleet. My friend Lisa had flown into Chicago to meet me at Union Station in two days. Would I even make it there on time?

I was hoping it wasn’t an omen that the trip had started on a “Classic Paula Bocciardi” note. I’d flown alone into Sea-Tac airport and then caught a taxi to the train station. Because I can be a scatterbrain, I’d kept up a steady internal mantra: “You’ve got three bags; don’t forget ’em.” I had a small purse, a backpack for the train ride, and a suitcase for the rest of the trip. “Three bags; don’t forget ’em.”

Well, I didn’t forget ’em.

Instead, I forgot my brand-new LL Bean jacket that I’d bought just for the trip. I left it in the cab while I was gathering up my three bags that I made sure not to forget.

***

Once the Empire Builder leaves Washington, it heads through Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois, offering views of the Cascades and Glacier National Park. It’s a two-day trip, with two overnights.

We departed on time and kept to the schedule, which, it turns out, was a miracle. The train that departed a day after mine was delayed multiple hours by a derailment and then, because of the holdup, a mandatory rest period for the crew kicked in and the train was delayed another three hours! To make things even worse, the dining car shut down because of a/c issues, and some of the toilets stopped working!

Much of the Empire Builder’s scenery, unfortunately, is a snoozefest (save for a few hours through Glacier National Park). Eastern Montana was surprisingly flat, dusty, and empty. I missed the exquisite beauty of the California Zephyr. But the young people in the dining car kept me entertained. One couple, in particular, charmed me. Granted, she had a huge hole in her earlobe, which always makes me queasy. He had a throwback handlebar moustache like an 1880s Wyatt Earp. They got a lot of facts wrong, about just about everything, but they were delightfully dewy-eyed. She had never been out of Wisconsin and had never seen an ocean, so she spoke with disbelief about having just stood on the Pacific coast, admiring the imposing rocks and the cold, roaring vigor of the waves.

At another meal, a quiet young woman and her mostly non-English-speaking mother shared the table with me and a curmudgeon who was grumpily mute while munching a little too loudly on his salad. Uncomfortable with the silence, I rattled on about which entrée to order, eventually eliciting a disapproving face from the mother when I announced that I was considering the salmon (she must have had it before). When I learned that the daughter was a pediatric nurse, I peppered her with questions, including whether she’d be able to save my life if I keeled over from a heart attack right at the table. At that she cracked a smile and joked that all she knew about was babies but that she could at least attempt CPR. When the waitress came around I ended up ordering the chicken, and the mom flashed me a secret and knowing smile. A breakthrough! I gave her a playful wink.

All in all, it was a decent journey. The only “Classic Paula Bocciardi” moment of ineptitude came when I was on the toilet in my sleeper car’s tiny bathroom and for some reason decided to reach over and “tighten” the shower handle. The shower in a sleeper bathroom is directly above the toilet, and – because I turned the handle in exactly the opposite direction from the correct one – I unleashed a torrent of water onto my fully clothed body. I was extremely glad that I’d brought my hairdryer, which I used to painstakingly dry every item of my drenched clothing for two hours. It was quite the process.

***

Lisa and I spent a few days in Chicago, highlighted by an architecture river tour, a visit to the American Writers Museum, and a definitive conclusion to the “Which Regional Pizza is the Best?” debate. It’s Chicago-style, my friends, plain and simple. My rich, buttery, flaky, double-crust Giordano’s pizza was the best I’ve ever had. Sorry, New York, with your flat greasy slices.

Then it was on to Michigan, one of the three remaining states on my haven’t-visited list. We drove a rental car to Detroit, where we met up with Julie S. and Julie R. Mostly it was Motown Records calling my name, but we also spent two days at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village – bastions of Americana. Ford was an ardent collector and spent years acquiring historical relics and artifacts from around the country. Big ones. Like, entire homes. Like, the actual bus on which Rosa Parks made her stand for civil rights in the year I was born.

All in all, it was a lovely trip through the great American Midwest.

The biggest surprise, though, was the time I got to spend with Lisa’s son Ian, who hung out with us in Chicago for a couple of days. I’ve really been feeling the absence of young people in my life (and by “young,” I mean under 45). Our buoyant young next-door neighbor moved to Ireland with her new husband a couple of years ago, and I cried when they left. Still haven’t gotten over it.

Ian is an accomplished Chicago musician who plays in a DIY band called Mydge, which describes its music as “isolated explosive indie rock.” I’d never heard of the DIY concept, but from what I clumsily understand, DIY bands operate outside of the mainstream music industry. Making money is not necessarily a goal. These bands play in nontraditional venues like their own homes, record their own tracks, market themselves, and develop their committed fan bases through word of mouth and general lovability. Ian bakes cookies for his audiences.

(Hmmm. I played drums in a ragtag all-girl San Francisco cover band called Three Hour Tour for many years. We hosted gigs in my garage, guerilla-marketed ourselves, and gave away turkeys and bags of potatoes at Thanksgiving. I’m beginning to think that we were the original DIY band!)

Anyway, Ian’s musical talents notwithstanding, the reason that I loved my all-too-short time spent with him in Chicago is that, in addition to sharing his delightful knowledge of just about every subject on earth with us, he actually paid me some attention.

For the most part, no one sees me anymore, especially young people.

I know it’s a tiresome cliché to say that as we women get older we feel invisible, but it’s true.

When I was young, I absolutely peppered my older relatives with questions, and I hung on every word of their stories. Was I just an anachronism? Unusually curious? Were the times different? I don’t know, but no young person ever asks me anything at all.

Until Ian. We talked about music. He paid attention to what I thought about sports. He even asked what my Wordle starting word was. I felt like an equal part of the conversation. He wasn’t snarky and full of self-importance – at least, not when I was around. He didn’t school me about my lack of wokeness. He wasn’t gloomy. His head wasn’t buried in his phone. He was passionate about his art. He seemed to be curious, caring, and – I hope – happy.

What a splendid young man. I really missed him when we left.

***

A few weeks later, I turned 70 and added to my Two Years of Paula by spending a week in New York City. We stayed in a beautiful hotel on the Upper West Side – the Wallace – modern but with old-school service. We marveled at the free six-packs of bottled water that were left for us in our room every day. Downstairs is a classy lounge with great food, cool cocktails (heavy on the martinis), and live jazz. “This is the real New York,” the server told us.

For my birthday – what was to be our last scheduled day in New York – we’d gotten tickets to see Ego Nwodim in a tiny theater at Lincoln Center, a short walk away. Ego Nwodim was a beloved “Saturday Night Live” regular until she left the show after last season, and tickets were almost impossible to get. I’d blundered into scoring two of them – in the front row! – when seats mysteriously opened up after the show was sold out. Ego was going to be trying out material – kept carefully under wraps – before starting whatever she was going to be doing next. I COULD NOT WAIT.

Three days after we arrived at the hotel, though, Julie and I went for one of our mammoth daily walks, not knowing that it would be our last day in New York.

We were way up on the upper, Upper West Side when we walked by a young woman sitting outside her apartment.

“I really love the white hair on both of you,” she said, smiling at us.

My first reaction, of course, was, “Uh-oh. A crazy person.”

But she wasn’t crazy. Something made me stop, and she turned out to be a disarming young doctoral student named Nora who seemed sincerely interested in us. I told her that we were there to celebrate my 70^th birthday, and she was shocked – not at my appearance, but at the way I walked, she told me, with a strong gait and sense of purpose. (I’ve been told that I walk like a farmer, and maybe in this case it actually was impressive.) I mentioned that we were from San Francisco, and she was delighted about that because she and her boyfriend would be visiting SF next summer. I offered to give her my phone number, in case she were to need anything while visiting, and she practically squealed. Was she an alien? What was going on?

No, she wasn’t an alien, but she did say she was Canadian. That probably explains a lot.

Nora hardly said a word about herself. She was smart and humble and overall adorable.

She said that she loved “random encounters” like ours. She didn’t seem to care a whit about our age. She offered to let us use her bathroom, but Julie was reluctant to take her up on it, even though I was excited about the idea of seeing the inside of a real New York apartment. Instead, we just traded our contact info and went on our merry way. Within the next few minutes she’d texted us with links to her favorite cool Upper West Side dining spots.

***

Unfortunately, soon after we finished our walk, Julie felt some kind of respiratory illness coming on, and she was suddenly exhausted. We had tickets to see the play Little Bear Ridge Road that afternoon, but Julie knew she wouldn’t be able to stay awake through it, so I went in alone. But she insisted on walking with me all the way to the theater – nearly two miles – in the chilly New York wind.

Once I was inside, the New York audience was treated to two “Classic Paula Bocciardi” incidents.

After I’d settled into my seat, just a minute or two before the play was to start, a man in a suit marched purposefully up and down the aisle next to me, hollering out “Paula? Paula!”

What? Could he be yelling for me?

I slowly and meekly put up my hand, and he approached. For a few terrified seconds I assumed he was going to tell me that Julie was in an ambulance. I could feel the creeping reflux.

“What’s your last name?” he asked.

I gave him my name, still scared. The whole theater was watching.

“Where do you live?”

“San Francisco.”

What on earth??

“What’s your social security number?” Then he laughed, probably sensing my horror and mortification. I still didn’t know what to think until he handed me my driver’s license and health insurance card. I’d had them in my pocket and must have inadvertently flung them throughout the lobby.

I was glad that I hadn’t dropped my hotel key, too.

Not so fast. Two minutes later he came by again and brought my hotel key.

Red-faced and sheepish, I waited the agonizing two minutes for the play to begin.

Then, about 30 minutes before the end of the show, I heard two quiet dings. The scene was serious, the theater dead quiet. Was there a cell phone in the play? There didn’t appear to be. Did some joker in the audience forget to turn off his phone? I’d heard so many awful tales about theatergoers whose phones ring in the middle of a show, and how much the actors hate it.

It sounded like the double text tone I’d set up expressly for Julie, but surely it couldn’t be me, because I’d deliberately turned my phone’s little switch to “silent” and then turned the volume all the way off for good measure. I was responsible and courteous.

“Ding ding!”

“Ding ding!”

It persisted. There must have been 30 dings.

Oh, no. It was my phone, buried deep inside my coat pocket.

I flushed. I sweated. Slowly, ever so slowly, so as not to attract attention, I maneuvered my heavy coat into my lap and painstakingly extricated the phone from the pocket, all the while trying to keep it turned upside down so the light wouldn’t shine in the dark. Maybe nobody would know it was me, the very same person who’d strewn her I.D. cards all over hell, west, and crooked.

Eventually I got the phone successfully turned off. Then I just wanted to slink my California butt out of Manhattan.

***

I learned later that the dings came through because Julie had been gaily texting with her niece in a lengthy conversation on a group chat that included me. Apparently I’d long ago designated Julie as an emergency contact whose calls or texts could get through even when I have “Do Not Disturb” or silent mode in effect on my phone. MAJOR lesson learned.

Anyway, that night it was clear that Julie was feeling much worse, and because she has a history of viruses morphing into pneumonia or meningitis, I announced the next morning that we needed to fly back immediately to San Francisco. No sense in battling illness 3,000 miles from home.

We weren’t going to be spending my 70^th birthday in New York after all. And we weren’t going to be able to see Ego Nwodim, which was the worst stab.

And what could I do with those tickets??

Ah. Of course I knew just what to do with them.

I texted our new friend Nora.

She, of course, first responded with a link to the nearest Urgent Care. She was concerned.

Then she gratefully took the tickets.

After we were home, she let us know that she and her boyfriend thought the show was “phenomenal” and “absolutely hilarious.”

She also, of course, inquired about Julie’s health.

***

Let’s face it – it’s not likely that my young New York friend will contact me again. But she unknowingly enhanced our visit in a huge way. Sometimes we’re offered gifts or lessons that have nothing to do with anything we’ve planned.

It’s long saddened me that I know far too many people whose children suffer from mental health issues. I agree with psychologist Jonathan Haidt when he talks about the epidemic of anxiety and loneliness among the young – caused, he thinks, by the transition from play-based childhood to phone-based childhood. This topic has been on my mind for a while.

But the young adults I met on this trip seemed happy, well-adjusted, and curious, with expansive world views. And they treated me as an equal – with a level of respect that made me feel less inconsequential. They reassured my discouraged heart.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

***

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***

Due to popular demand, I am including, at the end of each blog post, the latest random diary entries that I’ve been posting on Facebook for “Throwback Thursday.” These are all taken absolutely verbatim from the lengthy diaries I kept between 1970 and 1987.

November 7, 1976 [age 20]:

“I went to Robin’s baby shower today. Only two other girls showed up. People have a different set of values from mine. I feel bad for Robin; it’s as if no one cares. No one bothers to tell her they can’t come. So I remain the true friend. I’m committed to everything I involve myself with, whether it be work, or school, or friends. This generation fails life miserably.”

November 11, 1976 [age 20]:

“Tonight got in a friendly argument with Mom about the fact that I’m going to get a stereo for graduation rather than practical things like a typewriter, etc. Then it reached the point where she accused me of having no aim in life. ‘You just have no direction. You’re going to be (be prepared for the ultimate disgrace) a professional student.’ I was really hurt and hid to fight back the tears, and Mom knew it because she quickly said, ‘But people find goals sooner or later; it just comes with time.’ That didn’t help in the least.”

November 15, 1976 [age 20]:

“My [21^st] birthday’s coming up… I know I haven’t talked about it before, but it is on my mind, for a number of reasons. First of all, I’ll finally be able to go to night spots, and I also think it’ll be neat to go up to Tahoe and gamble. On the other hand, I’m having anxiety dreams. I had a dream last night that some lady took over my office, the San Francisco picture on my wall fell down, and they took away my typewriter.”

November 23, 1976 [age 21]:

“Barb took me out for dinner at a fast-food Japanese place and then we hopped across the street to the Foghorn for my first bar as a 21-year-old! The margaritas were delicious, and I ended up having three of them, but I was nowhere near drunk because we were there for four or five hours. What did happen was that I came to some further conclusions about myself, and I was really happy about them. It’s just that I held my own for the entire time; sometimes I was serious and philosophical, and at other times I stole the show, clowning and doing Woody Allen bits. Sue & Greg joined us after some phone calls and I found I could actually converse with Sue on a mature level even though she is two years older and is a mature career woman.”

December 1, 1976 [age 21]:

“I think we are going to keep the little beagle we found a couple of Sundays ago – I guess I haven’t talked about her before, but she’s the most precious thing on earth. It’s actually incredible. Apparently, she was thrown out a car window by a teenage boy who wanted her no longer (though that seems beyond the realm of possibility). She now lives with us, a 7-9-month-old puppy, no name. Dad does not want her, and he kept insisting that we give her away despite the protests of the females in our family. Finally one day I was bold and said, ‘Well, I don’t think that’s all that fair,’ and I haven’t heard anything else since. Looks like we’ve got a dog.”

December 16, 1976 [age 21]:

“I feel bad today, in that poor Mom is downstairs typing a last-minute paper for [my sister] Janine, and she’s typed many many pages for me, and she’s slaving over Christmas cookies, tired, sore, old [ed.’s note: she was 44] – and I can’t help because I have a set of papers to correct for Mr. Gilligan by tomorrow morning. She’s unreasonable to complain bitterly, because there’s surely nothing I can do about it, and I got mad and yelled at her. I’m rotten, sometimes, just a stinking piece of sludge.”

December 21, 1976 [age 21]:

“I must have something akin to senioritis, because I rushed through my final today like wildfire. Then picked up an English Newsletter – I don’t know, little things like that make me happy, walking along in the cold reading about the publications and activities of the English profs. It’s dumb. Granted.”

December 23, 1976 [age 21]:

“A fairly quick car ride down to LA today [to visit our grandparents]. I can remember the days when we were awakened at three or four in the morning and carried out to the car in our pajamas, only to change clothes in the car zooming down the highway. Those were the days. It’d be a long, eight-hour drive down Hwy 99 – we’d awake to have a delicious pancake breakfast out (or once split pea soup at Anderson’s). Today it was a 6 1/2-hour sagebrush drive with a quick stop at a virtually service-less, horrible ripoff restaurant called “J’s” – ice cold raw greasy French fries, dry hamburgers, $12 bill. It’s revolting. The times are stale. I knew it years ago.”

December 24, 1976 [age 21]:

“It was a fine day. To make Grampy happy, and to make myself happy, too, I made Grampy take me down to Nick’s [Nick the Greek’s Café in Los Angeles] in the morning. He and Dad and I got up at about 7:30 and drove down there. The place had no name, sat near the railroad yards, filled with men, big 52-year-old mustachioed, good-looking Nick. He was really polite to me, even talked about movie cameras, pulled his wife’s picture out of a Shooter’s Bible he kept in his drawer. On the house he gave me 8 pancakes, an egg, a huge hamburger steak, and coffee. I ate it all. I loved the place. I expressed my fear to Dad of losing the railroad yards and the Nicks’ and the small towns, and Dad said that maybe New York will go and two years later SF will go, etc., but other places are way behind, and in thirty or forty years Gilroy & Olema & Morgan Hill will still be small. I believed him, but I’m not sure about what the progression of technology will do.”

January 1, 1977 [age 21]:

“So, the Bicentennial year is over. America had its 200th birthday, and I had my 21st. Both of us became adults, and both of us are scared…”

January 5, 1977 [age 21]:

“[I bought] my monthly record – today it was Richie Havens’ “The End of the Beginning.” Havens has more pathos in his voice than any other rock ’n roll singer, and on this particular album he sings the most pathos-filled song I’ve experienced, called “We Can’t Hide It Anymore.” It’s full of pathos because something about it exhibits the real human sadness involved in taking someone away from someone else. The singer plus the song. The saddest, beautifulest record in the world.”

January 26, 1977 [age 21]:

“The weird experience I had [today] was when [my friend Linda] took me to a meat place where she had in a freezer the meat (steer) she’d gotten as a wedding gift. It was so bitter cold in the freezer room that my nostrils froze (or, at least, everything inside them did) – they got dry as a bone. It was PAINFUL in there for 5-10 minutes. I wondered if I was going to die!”

January 30, 1977 [age 21]:

“Bought three more record albums today – the new Al Stewart ‘Year of the Cat’ album plus ‘B.J. Thomas’ Greatest Hits Volume I’ and the first Simon & Garfunkel album I’ve wanted for five years but never got around to buying – ‘Wednesday Morning 3 A.M.’ It’s a nice sweet folk album reminiscent of Bitter End days. I think I’m getting nostalgic tonight. Maybe I can curb my loneliness by hitting the ‘21’ places, and meeting someone, although I am not ultimate cool.” [Ed.’s note: Yeah, I can tell that by the album choices!]

February 6, 1977 [age 21]:

“Saw a good movie tonight, and I emphasize that because the slough [sic] of films which have presented themselves to the American public in the past few years have been horrible things – pure violence, blockbuster disaster flicks, ‘B’-grade adventures, or poor comedies. This new Italian fellow wrote, produced and did a damn good job of starring in his movie ‘Rocky.’ Sylvester Stallone is a decent-sort-of-guy fighter off the backstreets of Philadelphia who finds himself in the ring with the world champion, victim of a gimmicky Bicentennial opportunity-is-the-American-way publicity production for the champion. It’s really well done and will undoubtedly zoom off into Oscardom, sort of a refreshing reprieve from the stagnation of the 70’s.”