Member-only story
The Daughter of Laughter & Chaos
My Journey With Laughter — from weapon to survival skill
Text Version revised:
Many of us have somewhere in an old photo album, attic storage box, or just in our memory, an image from our babyhood, and a time when we began demonstrating important early survival skills. Skills such as Sitting Up and Laughing. We all understand the importance of developing the ability for independent movement, but laughter, not so much.
By the time I started doing those things, my father was dead, the cancer that would kill my grandmother was already eating through her body, and my mother was spending her nights listening to Pat Boone’s My Special Angel — crying and wondering what would become of us. Our lives seemed doomed to chaos. It had been my mother’s companion for many years, a small hungry animal demanding to be fed. Over the years, that Chaos would grow into a huge dragon, whose teeth could both smile and bite, and in whose mouth was both fire and laughter.
But, as a baby, I knew none of this, and just kept on laughing and…
