Laughing to Live

 

“Babes, look here,” I tell Sarah who’s sitting on the sofa, beautifully exhausted, doing a thousand things at once on her phone. 

All of her focus is on me as Her hands freeze in place and her eyes peer over the phone directly into mine. 

“Remember how I have these two lines on my face? I was trimming my beard and, LOOK!! Now I have two more!”

Staring intently at me, steal blue eyes let me know things she already she knows.  

“Yeah, I wasn’t going to say anything about that.”

“Hmmm,” I ponder, staring outside. 

“What?”  

“That explains why Johnny didn’t tell me how good I look this morning.”

John O’Neil stopped by earlier to give me something.  We’ve been friends a long time with a rich history of sharing lots of things and, knowing I hate it, he always greets me with, “Hey Mikey! You look great!” 

“John didn’t tell you? He always tells you,” Sarah gasps, sitting up in mock alarm, “he must see the new lines on your face too!”

We laugh because it’s where we find the humor. 

Laughing is living without caution or care and we crave it because there’s nothing like living!

“I don’t want you guys to die Daddy,” Che confides, crawling in my lap to watch television. 

“I know,” I sigh, hugging her.  

Every morning our 5 year old daughter gets up between 2 and 4 to be with me.  Like her mother, Che knows things I don’t know yet and she lavishes me with love cuddling until the sun comes up.  

She wears a locket with mine and Sarah’s picture in it, kisses our photos often so the clasp’s broken and her heart pendent‘s perpetually open.  

“Da,” she explains, “I lost you again today.“ 

This is the second time my picture’s fallen out.  Sarah quickly finds another image to replace me and I’m glad to still be part of the family.

“She hears everything we say,” Sarah sighs after Che’s gone to sleep.  

“Yeah,” I sadly agree.  “Who knows what all she feels inside?”

We fall silent unable to completely process our daughter’s fears because we’re both already consumed with our own. 

Masters of words, Sarah and I struggle mightily finding the right ones now, but every once in a while they come easily enough.  

“SARAH LOOK!” I yell. 

Her hands freeze in place and her eyes peer over the box of Christmas decorations she’s trying to unpack.

I’m standing in the doorway with the jeans that fit me for the last few years crumpled over my feet because they literally slid down my waist. 

Che laughs when she sees this.

Sarah does too.  

Then I join them.  

Sarah finds the words.  

“We have to get you some new jeans.”