As I fly back home to Portland from my family visit to Virginia, there are two great family moments I will recall with fondness. Both involved all the adults from the four distinct households sharing stories and laughing around the dinner table. Each of our four households has its own stresses and dynamics, but in those two evenings we were able to let those go and just laugh. I laughed until my stomach hurt. It felt so good. The last night, they said I hadn’t laughed like that since I was a boy. It was a laugh that couldn’t be controlled, a laugh that was unlike the usually in control me.

Laughter doesn’t cure your ills. Laughter doesn’t solve your problems or stresses. But what laughter does do is take you to a place where those don’t exist. Laughter transports you almost involuntarily to a space with no conflict or tension. It is a space that realizes that so many of our judgments are absurd, turning them on their head in a hilarious fashion.  A space that perceives the ridiculous and amusing aspects in all our lives. It is a magically jovial space. Laughter and the place it takes you to is also fleeting. I hope to revisit in more often in the future.

40 Years in the making…

I just arrived home today, as last night I missed my connection in Minneapolis due to weather and was stuck over night.  I wanted to share a small moment that was over 40 years in the making.  My stewardess from Detroit to Minneapolis came up to me and freely gave me several extra bags of peanuts, unsolicited.  She said ‘you looked hungry to me.”  Bless her heart, I was hungry. I don’t know if it was her extra sensory perception, her witnessing my attempt to tear open my single super small size peanut bag with my teeth, or the tired and pathetic look on my face, but she didn’t offer extra bags to anyone immediately surrounding me.  I was touched in no small way because in over 40 years of flying I have never been offered anything extra without requesting it myself or it being something they were offering everyone else.