Well, honey, I think you must have heard me last night – because Today supplied me with a generous dose of LOL.

I called my friend about some serious news, and when she said, “How are you doing?” I sighed SO HARD I’m sure she thought I had sprung a leak.  She started to laugh her contagious laugh, and I realized I had said everything.  I was looking up at the tree outside my window – grey sky, grey blinds, black branches filling the view.  Inside, though – full color was shaking us back to life, propelling us across the unknowns surrounding scary things we cannot change. We were laughed until we couldn’t anymore.  I bet it was 2 full minutes before we said another word.

Then tonight a different friend called me.  Her warmhearted voice conjured bitter-cold L-platforms and cigarette-fumed books – our shared vocabulary from very long ago.  “Bee,” she says, “are you taking my advice for keeping a journal about what’s happening?”  She calls me Bee, like a punctuation mark, and takes so much mutual joy in my rants, I can’t help pouring out my most preposterous opinions, just to hear her laugh.

And then I also heard from a friend who has discovered that the way to my heart is to laugh at all my jokes.  Who could resist that?

Oh honey, I would love to hear you laugh.  The both of you were so funny, but when you loosened your grip and let yourself be broken into laughter, that was the best thing.  To feel you join us back on this absurd earth, where your striving so often boomeranged against your best intentions. To feel you let go of the impression you wanted everyone to have, and to hear you bloom with your own cheery song.