My mother loved to laugh. She passed that to her daughters, especially my sister, Mary. There was nothing my mother went through—and she went through a great deal–that she could not find some humor in it. My sister has carried that gift on. If either she or I feel bad or worried over something, a telephone call between us can help cure it.
In fact, growing up, we laughed a lot as a family. My father was a joker from the word go. I remember one incident during Spring Break in Panama City, Florida, when my parents chaperoned a group of our girlfriends—my sister’s and mine. There were quite a few of us so my parents had taken two cars to go eat dinner at the Shrimp Boat in Panama City. Coming back over the bay bridge to the beach, my mother’s car was suddenly side by side with a car of teenaged boys who kept waving to the excited girls. But I was in my father’s car, and our whiny consensus was that since we were being driven by a man, the boys wouldn’t come up alongside and wave to us. Daddy fixed that.
One of my friends had a head scarf she’d used to keep her hair from blowing in the beach wind. “Hand me that scarf,” Daddy said and put it on. He was quite a picture! Very soon the car with the boys left my mother’s car and came up beside us. It didn’t even matter that Daddy was smoking his cigar at the time; he put on his best, and hilarious, impression of a girl. We laughed so hard, all the way back to the beach with Daddy in that scarf. I’ll bet not one of the girls ever forgot it.
Of course, those were good times, not bad ones. Still, my parents’ sense of humor remained, and sustained us even in situations too sad to talk about. Somehow though, we were able to laugh.
I think we all take ourselves and our circumstances too seriously. Humor can lighten us, if we let it. Yet even when everything is rosy, there are some who never laugh and barely crack a smile. At times, I may have been guilty of that, too. But I dare say my sister has not. She’s definitely inherited the gift of humor. Now that my parents are gone, I look to her for that trait, and the beautiful sound of love she creates with her laughter.
Translating a World on the Edge 