Smiles

I consider myself fortunate in that my kids wake up smiling. Every morning right before i bend down to pick them up, they look up at me and start smiling widely while pumping their arms and legs. And when they are being entertained by company, they look intently into the face of whomever is talking to them and then bust out a giggle. This makes them wildly popular with their dad, my friends, and their daycare provider.

And i gotta admit: it makes the 3 am feeding more tolerable.

When I think of their laughing faces, I think back to the childhood of some of my cousins. I spent a great deal of time growing up with one set of cousins. We were pretty close in age and our mother’s were very close. I remember as we grew up there being a great deal of laughter and joking amongst us all. Even as small kids, we had pretty hilarious senses of humor, evidenced in our rendition of “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang and our placing hair combs in our male cousin’s hair to make it stand up like a porcupine.

But I also remember that when their father was around, there was no laughing, no joking. I remember somber kids who wouldn’t even smile in photographs. And I just assumed that was how it always was and that this uncle was somehow a thief of joy.

My cousins’ mother died of cancer when we were all adults. My cousins were each married and most had children. My mother had come to live with my aunt during her final months and she kept a great deal of old photos of my aunt and my cousins from the early years of her marriage to her husband. I was struck by the fact that in these photos, my aunt and my cousins were filled with joy. Even with her husband behind the lens, I saw photos of my aunt smiling, my cousins smiling their baby smiles, being held and kissed by my aunt and their father.

I was shocked. I almost felt betrayed. How is it that these people I have literally known my whole life weren’t who I thought they were? These were chapters of their lives I didn’t even know existed. MY aunt? Wearing a Halloween costume?? MY cousins?? Laughing and smiling into a camera their father is holding???

When did their childhood joy disappear? And what did my aunt’s husband think and feel when he couldn’t make his children smile and laugh anymore?

Another set of cousins were equally smiley-faced when they were growing up. They were much younger than me and lived in another county, so I only got to see them occasionally. But when i did see them as little girls, it was easy to coax smiles and giggles out of them. All you had to do was give them a squeeze and tell them you loved them and their whole faces would light up.
And the women they are today does nothing to indicate those happy children even existed. One cousin is so filled with anger that she never smiles and more often than not yells at her children in frustration. Much of her adolescence and young adulthood has been characterized by conflict with her siblings and her mother and when you see her, you see a pretty girl who is so angry, it’s like she’s never smiled in her life.

Her sister does still smile and laugh, but still carries a great deal of sadness with her. She is a good person who often does hurtful things to the people who love her the most because she has a sickness. And when you see her, you wonder if the shy little girl she was is still hiding within her, just waiting for someone to once again tell her she is loved…and make her believe it.

When i think of all of these cousins and the unseen events that occurred in their childhoods which seem to have stolen that easy joy they had within them as children, I think about my girls and wonder to what lengths I’d be willing to go to ensure they have happy and secure childhoods. Or, more accurately, to what lengths would I NOT be willing to go.

What i know for certain is when my kids laugh and smile at me, I smile and laugh back. and I want to share moments like that with them for the rest of my life.