Laughter

Yesterday, I woke up early with Anna and we read  Matthew 27 as the darkness turned to blue mist outside. Later,  I went to a church with prayer stations and walked from room to room, station to station, and prayed and wrote and picked up a nail and taped a seed and tore out a heart and added to a list on a wall.

Later, Anna and I went into work so I could hand off a translation. The man from Chad brought his wife, smiling and beautiful with shiny silver on the hem of her scarf, and we laughed in French as I gave them some coupons for the Vera Bradley outlet sale, telling them about the enormity of the event, the Americanness of it, how it's so big that you are given maps of the tables.

Then Anna and I went to lunch and Half-Price books, where she bought a few manga, and I found Vincent Van Gogh notecards so I can write notes on actual paper to friends.

We headed over to my parents' place in New Haven, where my brother and his son are visiting from Terre Haute.

And I laughed.

Anna with the beginnings of her tricolor Colombian flag-inspired egg.

My brother makes me laugh. From yesterday morning when he called to verify plans and let me know that they had gone ahead and painted the eggs, and we could come over and help dry them, and I told him it was good to have him back in town.

Putting on the smiley face.

To when my mom panicked, "Don't touch it!" as my nephew held onto the egg as he lowered it into the coloring instead of using the wire egg holder, and we laughed about the dye not being poisonous.

Grandpa in the background, about to lend a hand and save Julius from Easter egg dye poisoning.

As Jack watched and lent a hand and made video of the coloring of the sixteen eggs.

My kid brother

To when my mom picked up the phone when her sister called and her first sentence was about a colonoscopy and I put my fingers in my ears and started singing.

A little colonoscopy chat

To when my mom said she wouldn't be using the colored eggs for deviled eggs. And we laughed about the eggs that had been left at room temperature and put in our Easter baskets when we were kids and eaten, at room temperature, in the days that followed. But were unsafe to make into deviled eggs.

As she took out an egg to peel to make her point, that the dye would have stained the egg, and I said she couldn't use my egg, the blue polka dot one, and Steve said not to use Julius' special one with the smiley face, and she rolled her eyes. And Jack and Steve and I  watched and laughed as she peeled an egg, and it was white inside.

To when we played cards, and I mostly lost until the end. And laughed about cupcakes and dating and combovers and everything else.

We laughed. And it was good.