Love Makes Room: And Other Things I Learned When My Daughter Came Out by Staci Frenes

Author:Staci Frenes [Frenes, Staci]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO031000 Biography & Autobiography / Lgbt, REL012030 Religion / Christian Life / Family
ISBN: 9781506468631
Google: whcsEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress
Published: 2021-05-11T23:48:10.084817+00:00

8

The BLTs

Making Room for Laughter

Every family has a kind of chemistry, a mixture of light and dark, optimism and pessimism, seriousness and levity, that balances out family life when it’s all working and feels a little off-kilter when it’s not. In our case, having really different personality styles under one roof has always kept things interesting, and I became aware of how fragile that balance was and how easy it was to upset in the months after Abby came out to us.

My family loves humor, and at the risk of being judged, I’m going to be honest and admit we like it a little off color. We like jokes about slightly inappropriate things you’re not supposed to laugh at, which usually triggers some riffing and spinoff jokes that result in yet more laughter over the plain wrongness of laughing about something you’re not supposed to joke about. The whole thing goes downhill so fast you don’t have time to stop it.

Dutifully, I’ve tried, I really have, to refine my family’s taste in humor over the years, but my kids come by it honestly. My husband’s humor defies taming and defining. It’s sideways, lowball, out of left field, sarcastic, and sometimes so obscure that literally no one gets it but him. He’s fine with that. He thinks it’s proof that he’s so funny his jokes can’t be decoded or explained. Sometimes all we can do is laugh at him, and he’s okay with that, too, because if there’s one thing Abe lives and breathes for, it’s to make us laugh.

In the rough patches we’ve gone through as a family, laughter has been our escape hatch, our release valve, a way to let out pent-up pressure and clear the air. A good laugh somehow opens up the space between us and allows us to get a little more honest, be a little more vulnerable and tender with each other. Some families experience this when they watch sports together or do something outdoors—it’s a collective sigh, a stress reliever.

Being married to someone who makes me laugh daily has its perks. Abe surprises me with his observations, his take on things, and especially his out-of-the-box, irreverent humor. I still, after all these years, don’t see it coming most of the time. He looks at the world, communicates, and thinks so differently than me it’s a wonder we ended up together and lasted this long. Or maybe it’s exactly why.

I knew this when I married him. Even when we were teenagers, I was the straight man in his comedy act. I was earnest; he was sarcastic. I was the good girl; he was the bad boy. I was the wallflower; he was the life of the party. When we were dating, our phone calls consisted of 80 percent giggling (mine) and 20 percent actual conversation.

It worked, I’m convinced, partly because even though I was a serious person, part of me secretly wished I could get away with the outrageous things he said and did. When

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.