Let me just say that there is no affirmation like the affirmation you get from your psychiatrist.

When he says you look great and you are doing great.

And isn’t it fortuitous when your psychiatric appointment coincides with a “good” day!

But mainly I just want to tick off the box that indicates that everything is just fine and to get my drugs, thanks.

Anyway, after my appointment today, I took the dog out to walk in the neighborhood. And we saw a little girl with a huge backpack waiting in front of the elementary school.

There was a little bit of eye-balling, but I liked that she wasn’t doing the stranger danger thing and all that.

She was pensive and serious, like a little droopy plant. She was maybe seven.

I asked her how her day at school went.

She went on a minor riff about math class and how she was the clear winner at solving math problems at the white board. I commended her.

Then the family minivan pulled up, the door opened and she bounced up into the backseat.

The tinted window scrolled down quickly and she shouted – what’s your dog’s name?

Huckleberry, I replied. And there was a huge six-year-old belly laugh as the van sped off.

It took me back to the long after school moments when our kids were in grade school.

How they would drag their sweaty little bodies up the porch steps, with shoulders sagging under bulging backpacks.

Like they had been roughed up. Or been to a war.

And any pep from the morning was long gone. Their energy packs depleted, they’d left it all out on the field.

And I felt a little sad that school was so hard, so demanding, of such small tender beings.

But that’s what the world does – we take our energetic youth and wring them out for all they are worth.

Yet, there was that de-compression time that had to occur every day – the flushing of institutionalization from their systems.

And I never knew where the release valve would be exactly.

But I knew I could never simply ask how was your day or how are you, even. That would be lame.

Yet talk was all I could think of to do.

Because I think we all have a need to report in to someone, preferably on a regular basis.

Pep-talks and positive words and all that.

A back rub, a bowl of mac and cheese. And sometimes a mom who is conveniently available for an argument.

Someone to listen at the other side of a slammed door.

In a deeper sense, it is vital to good mental health.

Like the conversation before bed with your husband, when you inquire about his job -the most incomprehensible, boring job you could ever conceive of, but still, you ask.

Because each of us want someone to notice us, to observe our days, to commend our small moments.

To get the scoop about all of that time we spend out there away from home, away from our people.

It’s as if we have been dispatched and are reporting back from some foreign country.

To know someone at home is waiting. Like the ellipses on the text message.

. . . . .

Someone is patiently waiting to hear about that crap day. Someone wanting to help you metabolize the rough spots.

We wearily tap out signals to check on one another. Texting coffee cup emojis and memes, slipping a carton of bright eggs into a friend’s back door.

Yesterday I got a text from an old friend who I haven’t seen in a very long time. She is struggling with the death of her younger sister. We texted a little.

I think I had sent her a sympathy card, but that was it. I had felt remiss, like I hadn’t done enough. But she remembered.

Sometimes small acts can transmit energy – like a virtual hug, a laugh or an ugly cry.

And so, after getting that A+ from my doctor, I will totally stuff that report in my backpack and run free every time.

And I may say that it doesn’t matter, but it does.

It means everything.

It means I’m good, heavy backpack and all.

And you?