Mercer County Celebrity

Katrina calls my dad a Mercer County celebrity.

Her dad is one too.

Not because either one is famous in any normal sense. I mean something smaller, funnier, and probably more important.

They know people.

If you go to the Italian American Festival at Mercer County Park, or the Hamilton St. Patrick’s Day Parade, or out to dinner on a Friday night at some simple place like Conte’s in Princeton, there is a good chance one of them will see someone they know.

Someone may come over to the table.

Or one of them may have to say to his wife, “Hold on one second. I have to go say hi to someone.”

That is what I mean by Mercer County celebrity.

It is partly a joke. A family joke. The kind where, when Pop-Pop comes back to the table — and both of them are Pop-Pop now — someone says, “Big shot celebrity. He knows everybody.”

And then he sits back down without much ceremony and says something like:

“We coached Little League together. You’d recognize the wife. He’s friends with what’s-his-face.”

Or:

“I worked with his brother.”

Or:

“I saw him last week.”

Or:

“I saw him on the golf course.”

“I had to say hi.”

In the moment, it can be a little nerve-wracking, even for calm and collected guys like both of our dads.

He might come back to the table, and when someone asks, “Who was that?” the answer might be:

“I don’t know.”

Sometimes you don’t remember the person’s name. Or you do — you swear you do — but it is slipping your mind right when you need it.

Especially if you are tired, or not in a social mood, or preoccupied by something small, like a kid not cooperating, or something larger and heavier.

But you get through it. You have the conversation. You navigate whatever awkwardness is there.

And later, when you think back on the day or the night, it makes you feel connected to a place.

There is something good about seeing someone where you did not expect to see them. Someone you usually know from one setting appears in another. A person from church appears at the park. A person from work appears at dinner. A person from the golf course appears at a parade.

The categories blur for a moment.

And the place becomes more real.

I think there is a kind of common grace in that. To be seen. To be noticed. To have someone recognize you and decide, even briefly, that you are worth stopping for.

We know this is true because of how we react when it almost happens.

Someone tells you later, “Hey, my brother thinks he saw you at such-and-such last week, but he wasn’t sure if it was you.”

And the first response is almost always:

“Why didn’t he say hi?”

We pretend not to need it.

But most people like being noticed.

Being seen makes a person feel like he matters. It makes him feel like he belongs.

And when you move somewhere new, that matters even more.

On Sunday, I took Nicky to Croft Farm Park to tire him out before his nap.

Croft Farm is one of those places that makes Cherry Hill feel older and more rooted than people from the outside might expect. It is the last remaining piece of one of the township’s historic farms, with old buildings, fields, arts programming, soccer fields, wedding pictures, township events, and walking paths all layered together in one place.

And right beside it is John Adler Memorial Park at Challenge Grove, part of the Camden County park system.

That is part of what makes the place feel special. Township open space and county parkland sit right next to each other there, almost multiplying the good either one could do on its own.

There is a little ecological border there too — a small bridge where kids learn to fish, near the place where the Cooper River widens into Evans Pond and Wallworth Pond. Croft Farm, the county park, Cherry Hill, and Haddonfield all meet there in a kind of confluence: pond, fields, trails, old buildings, playgrounds, soccer fields, arts programming, county parkland, township memory.

I parked down at the far end, near the ponds, and we walked along the sidewalk while he pointed at things and babbled.

We passed the baseball field, where there was a Special Olympics event going on, and stopped for a moment to watch.

Then we kept walking down to the playground.

He ran up and down the slide. Explored a little. Bumped into some kids. Waved at some. Got shy with others.

He was good boy.

He ate his snacks. We sat on a park bench, and he ate the little peanut butter mini bagel I had ripped up for him, along with some Goldfish crackers Katrina had told me to bring.

I would be clueless without double and triple reminders about what needs to go in the bag.

The diaper bag.

That’s what it’s called.

And then, as we were leaving, I noticed my friend Pete from the men’s group at church. He was there with his older daughter.

We stopped for less than two minutes before his kid ran one way and mine ran the other.

It was nothing.

And it was not nothing.

Because even that brief encounter made me feel a little more connected to the place.

It made the park matter more.

It made the town matter more.

And, in some small way, it made me feel like I mattered to the place too.

Not because I had been noticed.

But because I was there to notice someone else.