The Mannerless Laughter

I have this mannerless laughter that doesn't read the room or wait for permission. It usually just arrives exactly at the absolute worst moment and I genuinely cannot do anything about it.

I was on the phone a while back with my mum and dad on our everyday 2pm calls. My dad sounded tired so I asked him what was going on. With the voice of a person who was carrying the weight of a man who had suffered and wanted that acknowledged, he told me his eyes hurt. Apparently, this was because he had walked twenty kilometres doing the Way of the Cross. I immediately started giggling but managed to control myself. Just before I could say anything, my mum's voice came through from somewhere in the background and she asked very calmly and matter of fact, "were you walking with your eyes?"

And there came the mannerless laughter. I couldn't stop. The laughter rung through the house…. My dad was so pissed he stopped talking. I hung up. My husband was in the room and had heard the conversation and he told me what I did wasn't nice. I knew he was right, and did feel guilty but despite acknowledging I was wrong, I was still dying with laughter.

For three days I could not talk to my dad. Every time I tried, it started again. I eventually apologized and he accepted my apology, but I don't think he fully understood what had happened and honestly I am not sure I could have explained it even if I tried.

I was not laughing at my dad. I was just laughing at the shape of the moment. The gap between how seriously he was holding his suffering and the way my mum had completely dismantled it with six words.

I have been trying to understand this about myself for a long time. Because from the outside I know in these kinds of situations I come off as someone who doesn't take things seriously and cannot feel the weight of what is happening in front of me. I have watched people's faces change when it happens. The hurt and the confusion. I have seen it and I have felt terrible about it and it has still not stopped me from laughing.

I wonder sometimes if the laughter demonstrates that I am present. Because in order to find something absurd, I had to be paying very close attention. Because when you think of it, I was present enough to catch the contradiction and close enough to feel the texture of the moment. I don't think I would have laughed at the structure of something without really seeing it first.

And this makes me think about Trevor Noah. His comedy is built exactly out of this, seeing dysfunction and absurdity so clearly that the honest response is laughter.

Anyway, I am still learning that not everyone is in the same place in a moment. Some people are inside the emotion of something while I have already moved outside it and I am watching its shape. Neither of those is wrong. But they need different things. And sometimes the most generous thing I can do is stay inside the emotion with someone, even when I have already seen the absurdity waiting on the other side.

For what it's worth, my dad's eyes are ok. My mum knew they would be. That was actually the whole point of what she said. I knew that and that's why I couldn't stop laughing and I still am while writing this.