Still laughing

We all sat around a table last week, and my father turned to my mother and said something like:

Well we were driving somewhere together, in the early days, I have this memory quite clearly. We were driving around in Sydney and we were laughing about something, I’m not sure what it was now, something that wasn’t particularly memorable, but we were laughing about it and this went on for quite a while. I remember thinking, yeah, this is the lady I’d like to marry.

That memory of my parents happened over fifty years ago. It’s their 50th wedding anniversary in January and we gathered last week to tell stories and celebrate the occasion. My siblings and I all wrote them letters, there was a theme of laughter that came through in those letters, particularly laughter around the dinner table.  The kind of laughter that starts because something is funny or joyful, and then evolves into laughter about the laughter and finally matures into laughter about this whole thing happening again. The meal last week included a lot of laughter too. After 40 years living in my family it is clear to me that one of the central bonding elements is laugher. The 5 of us all seem to prize that piece of our family composition.

Do you get to decide which pieces make up the fabric of your family or social group, team or work crew? Are you able to select and program elements of your connections or are the real central components of our groups somehow essential, inherent and can’t be fabricated into existence?

Regardless of the answers, I’m grateful for my parents and the laughter. Happy anniversary Mum and Dad.