laugh out loud

life is really funny but if we live it too seriously, we miss it. and i want to go back to laughing- i mean laughing a lot.  i'm tired of stressing and fretting and feeling the weight of the world.  things need to be lighter.

tonight i got to go out with the girls after a much too serious day.  it was great.  one girl i've know since i was zoe's age, 11, and the other girl i just met tonight.  it was so fun to r-e-l-a-x and laugh and to remember that for most of my life, i was not so serious.  i might have even, used to have been, funny.

but it's hard to have objectivity on myself and the things that sit close to me.  maybe i never was funny-or maybe i still am.  maybe zoe's doing great- or maybe she's not.

i like saying things are good.  i like feeling that things are good, believing it, holding onto it, looking backwards and saying how thankful i am that we're not there anymore.  but then there are moments when really, we are there again.  i don't want to write bad news.  i don't want to report on my fears of her future, her now, our now, our possible future.

but i will.

this weekend- there was an un-witnessed episode of trouble.  it involved zoe and lily and a store and a sticky thought. there was some public crying and yelling and sliding around a store on hands and knees and some stranger staring and one 11 year old having to drag another 11 year old out of the store- to walk back home- to calm down.  then there was more crying (the appropriate embarrassed type from lily) and some consequences dolled out by a parent and some separate time for the two of them.  

when we heard about what happened, how she'd wanted some american girl doll paraphernalia, how lily had explained they had no money, how she'd melted down and expected lily to deal with her pieces- her pieces which were spread all around the floor of papersource as she crawled around and cried. we felt despondent- deflated- defeated.  a  temple grandin moment. overwhelmed by her need- by her inability to understand another perspective-her inability to make a good choice. her immaturity, and infantile level of understanding reciprocity.

sometimes it feels like she's her own worse enemy.  sometimes i wonder how hard she'll have to fall before she gets it- or if she'll ever get it- or if she'll be so broken by so many falls that she'll just hurt a lot.

and with all of that, it can be hard to find 'funny'.

someone once told me a mother is only as happy as her most unhappy child.  oh, i hope not!  i don't want my happiness entwined.  i mean, i want for all my kids to be happy, but i want my own version too. i want to be able to laugh when they eat earthworms at age 9 and cut their hair off at age 11.

there was a time when i really forgot how to laugh because i was drowning in zoe's drama.  i'd thrown myself so much into her world- cutting way back at work, homeschooling her, obsessing about her outbursts- that i'd lost my world.  i don't think i was depressed, or maybe it was, but i forgot how to laugh.

i'm re-reading 'cutting for stone' for our book club- and it's taking me right back to ethiopia - a trip i almost didn't take because life had become so serious.  but i went and i desperately needed it because i found my smile.  one night it was pretty late and lisa and i were hanging out in our hotel room- i can't even remember what was so funny, but we laughed like we were back in the 7th grade- for hours- the kind of laughing where your stomach muscles hurt.  there is nothing like that feeling- like being worn out by joy.

the seriousness will always be there. bad things are going to keep happening, small and large scale, war and illness and natural disasters - but there are funny things too and i want to find them.  i want to laugh out loud everyday for the rest of my life.