I remember the first time I heard that little laugh. Somewhere there is a video, I hope, of my little peanut, just 3 or 4 months old on the changing table, squealing with laughter. She loved her cheeks “bitten” and I was glad to do it over and over again to hear that sound. There are two sounds that can stop this mom in her tracks and send a jolt through me, the sound of my kid(s) belly laughing in pure joy and the gut punch that is their cry of pain. It does not matter how old they are, how they mature and change, those sounds will always bring me to my knees.
The days leading up to and certainly following last Christmas bore a heaviness. Truthfully, the last few years had a depth of darkness to them, like a spell of gloomy days one after the other after the other, punctuated by tiny bits of sunlight that seemed so fleeting that I often wondered if I knew what sunshine even looked like anymore. The sound of laughter in the house, those audible moments of pure joy, were so few and far between that when they happened it was almost like someone speaking a foreign language, immediately recognizable and yet strangely incomprehensible.
This Christmas and New Years was full of the stuff. Sure there were moments of grief, of tears over who and what were missing, over the sadness that lingers still, but they were outweighed by joy and it was so good. I look back through my camera roll and almost wish that I had pictures, I am currently earning a solid F by modern mom documentation standards. I decided at some point this year that being in the moment far outweighed looking back at those still frames and feeling the pang of that slight distance that the screen put between myself and the experience. Instead, I laughed, right along side my people. People for whom I am eternally grateful. You know who you are.
As we get closer to one year since that last goodbye, they continue to rally, the old as well as the new. They continue to hold us up in ways they cannot even know. They help us to find our way back, through their amazing ability to love us and to point us towards the joy in what is. They help us to open our hearts to the music of laughter, the prayer of youth, the joy of being.
In the years to come I may not remember what was given and received or the meals that were prepared in celebration, but I will most assuredly remember that this holiday season was the one we were given the gift of laughter. This Christmas my heart was bursting at the seams, flooded with that most precious sound, and it carried me straight into the new year. And it was good.
Finding Om in the OMG 