I didn't say anything. I never say anything. I just smile.

I smiled when our eyes met. Two strangers sitting on a bench in front of an old library somewhere in Virginia.  She was a native, freely greeting the pastor of her church as he came out of the library. I was, out of place, stuck in a city of unfamiliar familiarity, of diversity.

Then she said it. "You have a beautiful smile."

I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. My smile just grew a little larger and my cheeks turned a little pinker than they already were on the hot, humid afternoon. 

Somebody asked her if the bus heading back to the main Fredericksburg bus station stopped there. She said she didn't know. She was a native taking the transportation system for the first time. Like me, she could only hope. 

She noticed my interest when the question was asked. "You don't live here?"

I shook my head. "Washington...State."

"What is it like?"

I glanced around. Green. Trees. Old buildings. Everywhere I looked.  There was nothing
I could use as a foundation on which to paint a picture of my home for her. I could say things like 'dust devils', 'tumbleweeds', 'sagebrush', 'antelope bush', 'rabbit bush', 'cheat grass', 'high elevation desert', but the words would only create vague pictures of a scene from a Western. Like a John Wayne or a Roy Rogers, but home wasn't like that. It was much more.

I tried. I tried to create an image in her mind with my non-definite words, only puzzling her more as I added words like 'snow' and 'single digit temperatures'. It was a contradiction. An enigma. She was fascinated by this area so unlike the places she knew. 

A bus pulled up. We glanced at each other briefly before realizing we would be sharing the first trek of our journey. Back towards her home. My motel. 

We shared a seat and smile as a friendly man told anyone who'd listen about feeding raccoons in the woods behind his house. Of living off of welfare. Of ending up at the hospital after being stabbed. Half true. Half false.

She told me about her family. A handful and a half of kids. Twice as many God-children. I told her about my family. I was young. I only had a father, a mother, three brothers, one sister. 

We reached the crossroads where our pathways split. Her bus towards dinner and home. My bus towards a motel on the edge of town. Our goodbye was hasty and yet hesitant. She wasn't a stranger. I wasn't in the unfamiliar familiar. 

Then she was gone, and to think, we met only because I missed the bus I was suppose to take. 

(This is a somewhat fictionalized version of a memory from about six years back when we were on the East Coast for a brother's graduation from OCS. I was 14.)