The Serious Side of Silliness

Leukemia
Stroke
Death of a parent (x3)
Sick child (x2)
Job loss
Job hardship
Anuerysms
Parental decline (x infinity)
Sexual-identity issues
Mental illness
Alzheimer's
Broken families
Broken relationships
. . .and those are just the ones I can remember.

--Is it any surprise that I chose to go to Boston to be a baked being?!

Like a headful of newly dyed hair, this is a strange season of life, accentuated by both high- and low lights. And, as with all heads of hair--and lives--there are times I struggle with what to do with my roots.

I try to be a good ear to people, but, in the weakness that is mine, when crisis piles upon crisis, my arms can flail in these deep waters, as I crave something simpler, something much closer to the shore.

I dare not imagine how many meals I have failed to make, how many questions I have failed to ask, how many folks I have seemingly let down as they wander through their own deserts.

Truly, it is not a lack of concern that causes me to crack a joke or play a game of Scrabble in the midst of all this hardship. For me, it is something much more serious than that. It is the absolute necessity to find the good when that good seems most elusive.

I can only hope that my own roots, this tendency towards laughter and joy, act as a salve to others in the same way that they have salvaged me time and again.