“Life is a game measured in false proxies – money, beauty, talent, brains – when the only victory condition is survival. When the rest of the world cowered in terror, you dared to hurl your genes across the abyss. The world belongs to people who love more than they fear, and your daughter is living proof. Well done, all of you. Merry Christmas!”
December 24, 2025 – Sun City, AZ
“Can I pet your puppy?”
I had been waiting for that overture, but I wasn’t sure it would come. All kids are curious about dogs, but some of them are afraid.
“Her name is Cleo, short for Cleopatra. If you give her your face, she’ll give you lots of kisses.” To prove me right, Cleo stood forward in her little doggie stroller and kissed the little girl thoroughly. This was met with gales of giggles, and just like that Cleo had her paws on her shoulders and was ready to hop into her arms. She loves everyone, but she loves children best.
We were at DollarTree in Sun City, and I had heard the little girl all over the store: “Dad! Did you know they even have dog toys?” “Mom! Did you see all those spatulas?” It’s true, too: Every DollarTree has everything, but where 99th Avenue paradoxically intersects with 103rd Avenue in Del Webb’s Original Sun City, the largest DollarTree on earth offers up extra everything.
But it was she I was interested in. You may not have noticed, but children are thin on the ground. Even so, that DollarTree is the perfect place to let a kid off the leash: Creeps will be creeps, but that store is filled with people who love children – and at least half of them at any given time will be carrying concealed firearms.
And Cleo can’t actually escape her stroller. She’s a charcoal ‘blue’ French Bulldog, twenty-two pounds of diminutive Mastiff muscle, but she’s strapped in on both sides. But the two of them were arm-in-arm, as much as they could be, and Cleo was licking at the little girl’s ear.
She was taller than I was expecting, and thin as a rail, with long, straight brown hair. She wore a khaki jumper over a white turtleneck – not a school uniform, but a cut above typical kidware in Greater Arrowhead – the Northwest suburbs of Phoenix.
When she had extricated herself well enough to talk, she said, “Why do you keep her in a stroller?”
“She’s not really supposed to be in here. If I put her in the stroller, they look the other way.” This is in fact the unwritten law of all retail commerce in Sun City: Dogs are always welcome. “What’s your name, sweetie?”
What she said was “Elizabeth Grace,” and the ‘Grace’ came across pretty cleanly, but the first word was a mash-up made from ‘deciduous’ and ‘indivisible’. And yet by her I was graced, I was sure of it.
“How old are you?”
“I’m gonna be five.” I had already guessed that.
“Just right: Always make the number bigger. When’s your birthday?”
“How’d you know?!?”
“How’d I know what?”
“That tomorrow is my birthday!”
“Christmas Day? How cool is that!” I had guessed she was a Covid baby – born late 2020 or early 2021 – when I heard her talking to her folks. “Christmas minus forty weeks is right around the first day of Spring, March 21st.” I was talking more to myself by then, marveling at her parents: With the whole country locked down and with the television blaring nothing but fear, they had gamboled off together to grace the world with Elizabeth Grace.
She was back to nuzzling with Cleo, and that was fine. She bears the entire weight of humanity’s future on her tiny shoulders, but all she has to do is live her life and we are all of us redeemed.
“We have another dog at home, but she can’t come to the dollar store.”
“Why not?”
“Well, she’s twice your size, for one thing. She’s not mean, but she scares people, anyway.”
“What’s her name?”
“Sadie. She’s a Belgian Malinois, like a German Shepherd, but darker and prettier.” She’s Previous Leon’s dog, or she was, named after his Grandmother. And Leon is the reason I owe so many stories I have not written, because his secrets are not mine to share – not yet, anyway.
From an aisle away, there was a woman watching us – tall, thin, long brown hair – and I figured she had to be my young friend’s mom. I nodded to her so she would know I knew she was there.
She said, “You talk to her just like an adult…”
I shrugged. “That’s what she is, for the most part, minus book-smarts and accumulated experience.” To Elizabeth Grace, I said, “Do you remember waking up in your mind?”
“Huh?”
“When you think without talking, it’s just like you’re talking to yourself in your head, isn’t it?” She had her hands buried behind Cleo’s huge ears, but her eyes were fixed on mine, wary and on high alert. “Do you remember when that started?”
“…No.” Now she did not want to look at me.
“But it did start, didn’t it? It wasn’t happening, and then, all at once, it was just there in your head all the time. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“…Yeah.”
“Did you tell anyone, when it happened?”
“…No.”
“Have you told anyone since then?”
“…No.”
“What are you talking about?” The mom said that.
“She woke up in the thinking brain – maybe as long as a year ago, maybe longer. We all do it, and mainly we don’t think about it afterward. But it’s scary when you’re going through it, because you don’t know that it’s true of everyone around you, everyone who has graduated from toddlerhood.”
To Elizabeth Grace, I said, “Dogs are perfect, but they’re dumb, dumb, dumb.” She giggled at that. “Because you woke up, you can do everything they can never do – including taking care of dogs.”
In all those years of driving the shopping mall choo choo train, only once was I on the receiving end of a baby’s first steps. But I have been the first to know a child has woken up dozens of times. I made a business-card-sized diploma to herald the event, and I handed one of them to Elizabeth Grace.
Her dad had joined her mother, and to the two of them, I said, “I owe you my thanks. The whole world owes you its gratitude, but I may turn out to be its sole ambassador.” They smiled at that. “Life is a game measured in false proxies – money, beauty, talent, brains – when the only victory condition is survival. When the rest of the world cowered in terror, you dared to hurl your genes across the abyss. The world belongs to people who love more than they fear, and your daughter is living proof. Well done, all of you. Merry Christmas!”
Words of grave wisdom? A crazy old coot at the dollar store? I’m easy every which way. The future belongs – ONLY – to the people who survive for it – the people who live UP to it…
