A busy time of transitions

Dear Amy: I’m a 50-yearold freelance graphic designer. My income has dried up, and so I recently moved in with my mother (Dad died nine months ago).

My ex-wife is in a serious relationship. She lives a halfhour away from me. Our youngest daughter, 17, is special needs and lives with her most of the time. I get our daughter every other weekend and every Wednesday. She will start staying with me an extra day each week (Tuesdays). This schedule works for us.

My girlfriend lives two hours away in New York City and just got a full-time job. She has a sister in the city that she cannot move away from, so she can’t move to live with me.

My girlfriend and I don’t see how we can maintain any type of relationship with the responsibilities I have with my youngest daughter. I would move to Brooklyn and could get work in the city in a heartbeat, but I won’t be able to see my daughter as often.

Do you have any suggestion? Devoted

Dear Devoted: You have experienced several important transitions over the last year: your father’s death, your own professional reversals, your decision to move back home, and your new coparenting plan.

You have a lot of imponderables stacked up right now, and your anxiety is directing you elsewhere.

I suggest that if you are financially able, you should not make any sudden moves and devote this next six months to your family relationships, staying where you are and concentrating on your duties as a father and a son. Your girlfriend is starting a new job; she will need to devote time and attention to her career. If you are living two hours from New York, you should be able to visit her for long weekends. You can get the lay of the land and make a longer-term plan.

Your daughter will soon be of an age where her choices and options will change, and you should be close by to help guide her through.

Dear Amy: I’m at a loss how to respond when random men order me to “Smile!”

I’m sure these guys think they are being playful and debonair, but to me it feels like I’m not measuring up, and that I must try harder.

These men have no idea whether I just lost a dear family member, or I gambled away my child’s college fund and don’t feel like smiling.

What do you do when this happens to you? RBF

Dear RBF: When this happens to me, I quietly seethe, thinking about all of the awesome comebacks I could deliver and then forgetting them all. I definitely don’t smile.

I don’t know what motivates people (I have had women do this) to demand or suggest that complete strangers should “smile.” It’s not playful. It’s definitely not “debonair.” To me, it feels like a casual assertion of privilege — as if someone can basically demand that a stranger should change her face around to please them. I don’t believe there is a lot — if any — forethought put into these commands, which is part of what makes them so maddening. I have read that some people who issue this command believe that they are being helpful in some way.

I think the next time someone demands this of me, I’ll just say, “No.”