“At least the light is nice…”

When I was working on my undergraduate degree in Fine Arts, I spent a summer studying abroad in Paris. For several weeks, I walked through the city with a camera around my neck. Most of the time I walked alone, though occasionally I went out with another student.

I remember one walk with a graduate student in his late forties, about fifteen years older than I was. During that walk, we were stopped several times—nearly twenty-five years later, it feels like dozens—by tourists asking us to take their pictures.

Every time, they asked him.

Some even waited while he took a photograph for someone else, then approached him next, even though I was standing less than five feet away.

Today, I was walking along Lake Erie with my camera—grey hair and beard, a bigger belly, and far less equipment. Several people approached me for a little conversation and, yes, to ask me to take their picture in front of the lake. As I was taking a picture for one couple, a light rain began, and that walk in Paris came to mind.

A few minutes later, a gentleman about my age approached with a smile, walking his dog. “At least the light is nice,” he said, just as the rain began spitting at us again.

I smiled. “Yes, the rain and the light are nice today.”