Weekly Creative Writing #5

I remember the days when this ten year-old sister of mine was once a babe and naive to the world, yet she would still smile and giggle every waking minute of the day.   Back in the day... when our business failed and we struggled for years, when every other night ended in tears, when hopeless feeling echoed in the caverns of my heart, when the world was vast and dangerous to my young eyes.   Yet she always smiled.  She never stopped laughing, and, in many ways, we attribute the reason for our sanity during those days to her and her laughter.  All those days I sat by her infant rocker and fed her mushed up peas and fruits... oh, she would laugh at me - innocently mocking my desperate attempts to feed her.  The corners of her mouth were eternally secured to opposite sides of her face, as she giggled and managed to get a colorful, fruity-flavored and scented mess on my face. Constantly grinning like a cheshire cat and I, being only six years-old, honestly thought her face must hurt terribly from such lively exertion.   Her laugh reverberates in my memories the same way it once effortlessly and gleefully echoed through our home and charmed all who heard it.   Such jubilance amidst struggle.  

I put the old pictures back into my drawer and close my eyes for a moment.  That’s what I hope to never end and remain enduring - that which my sister made us remember.  Laughter.   Non-contained, mirthful, pealing laughter filling the halls of my future.  Filling my mind are images of what could possibly be.  I see myself in college, laughing with classmates and age-old friends over some conversation.   Then marriage - I can smell the perfume, flowers, and taste pastries made by my adopted Greek yayas who filled every buttery, calorie-packed pastry with hours of laughter.  I can feel my future children running in from the outdoors, laughing their hearts out, grabbing my neck and kissing my cheek.   And, in my old age, I can hear laughter frolicking with my grandchildren and daintily embellishing the conversations with my, then, timeworn friends and husband.   And my musing is interrupted by my family downstairs - amused at some reality.  The sound of their laughter mirroring my current thoughts.. 

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