fight with laughter

I've been quiet, I know. Since 12/14 I have focused on the wounded coming into my practice, my family's recovery, my friends', my town and my own. I felt that I had nothing significant to add. The common voice of reasonable guns laws booms loudly, mental health needs and acts of kindness are prominent and that is true and rightfully placed in center stage.  Then Boston happened. And you know what, I am done. I am done allowing the sadness to win. The lesson of "look for the strawberries" solidified. In all things we must look for the good, we must stay focused on the uplifting we must stay connected.

And we have to find ways to laugh, reasons to laugh. So here are a few of the moments that living this life, riding in cars with these boys, have brought to me.

My youngest, my poky puppy, as I like to call him, has long existed on a different plain from the New England stress fast paced existence of myself and his brothers. I see this as a good thing for him. Although I have been known to threaten to glue his shoes to his feet since he can never find them from afternoon when he gets home from school til the next morning. And I do not understand the missing beats in time between a request and it's execution, where he seems frozen just considering what has been asked of him. Along with his mellow approach to involvement in life, is his mellow approach to personal hygiene. Not to the point of public acknowledgement, until now, but certainly an issue in the family. On a particular day when he decided to ignore my suggestion to shower, I beseech ed him, to at least put on some deodorant. That evening, while watching one of "our" shows, he told me he thought he was allergic to the deodorant, it had burned his pits for the first three periods of the day. I paused for a nanosecond to consider this possibility, then I was overcome with laughter. I shook, and could not speak, He started laughing to with contagion but didn't know what we were laughing at. When I was able to regain composure, I asked him to go look at what he put on, I was pretty sure it was the Icy/Hot roll on gel I had purchased for him at Christmas. It was.

Then there was the time I was picking up my poky puppy from an event down the road. We were gone no longer than 15 minutes. In that time his brothers decided to work together and rearrange his bedroom in it's entirety, and hide his most revered possessions in Easter eggs that they placed around the room. Their high jinx did not end there. I was an intended victim of the old, rubber band the spray nozzle at the kitchen sink prank, only it was facing #2 son when it went off, LOL!!! And the trusted, yet poorly executed plastic wrap over the toilet prank, he used blue painters tape to secure the weather resistant window plastic wrap to the toilet.(~ he couldn't find the plastic wrap) And finally his older brother walked into a wall of plastic wrap when going into his closet, not sure what that was supposed to accomplish, but it all had us all laughing and giddy with anticipation of the next prank. Until, until I found my missing make-up and cell phone charger in a bowl of jello on April 3rd.

So I leave you with this, find things to laugh about. Laughter is healing. Laughter is an anecdote. And when you don't see them, create them. Or I can send my boys over for some poorly executed stunts. That's be fun too.