I met my friend’s second daughter, one week old, this evening. Nestled in the crook of my friend’s arm, she looked like a doll anyone in their right mind would understand wasn’t real (how much did she weigh? I asked casually, wondering if it would be revealed that my children were never that small — turns out, they’d weighed the same.)

Arriving home for dinner, a framed photo of my daughter when she was a baby caught my eye — we’re unpacking and someone had propped it against a windowsill. When was she so tiny? I asked myself again. I snuck a glance at her, chewing kidney beans beside me while adeptly rolling dice on the sheet of computer paper she’d drawn a board game on and was convincing me to play. (The game is called “Banana King” and contains extravagant banana themes, including players being awarded bananas depending on one’s roll and an impressively drawn banana trophy if you win.) Following dinner, I paused from my book to listen. She and her dad were cracking up in the kitchen; it was clear she was in one of those moments where she won’t, can’t, stop hooting with laughter. I thought about her humor. Perhaps I value it too much, but I’ve found her and her brother funny since they were young. I remember her at age three in her car seat, suddenly out-of-breath-guffawing as she repeated a joke from her grandpa about sitting on a cactus. “A cactus!” she kept trying to get out, but couldn’t. Or the autumn day at age four when she and I walked to the grocery store, her sporting amazing fringey bell bottoms my brother’s girlfriend had gotten her. Passersby relentlessly offered “Nice pants!”, and at some point she turned to me and quietly said, “The next person that says that, I’m going to do this,” and made a bizarre creepy face. A few moments later someone waltzed up and complimented the pants. I smiled a wide thanks, the person finally passed and … she slowly swiveled and enacted her best “I am a monster” face yet. 

Lately her humor feels influenced by some of the kids’ series she watches, yet it’s also her own. At age eight and a half it feels she’s teetering on a commendable understanding of deadpan humor. The jokes she relays often revolve around her demonstrating the “straight man” behavior in a sea of offbeat antics. She talks about a recent sleepover where our (adult) friend scared his kids and ours upon request, and takes us through beat by beat as she demonstrates her friend’s increasing reactions of fear, their DOG’s continued reactions, and then back to herself with ongoing “I ain’t scared” faces, but ones that are increasingly faltering as she winkingly lets us in on how terrified she was. Examples abound where she lights up acting out these feigned “I’ve got it covered” expressions that falter, or don’t quite stand up, amid continued chaos. She’ll often mimic or repeat being the quiet voice of reason amid shenanigans in a funny “uhh … guys?” type voice and laugh with us at her excellent delivery. She’s also prone to intrepid alien voices that remind me of her aunt (one day they’ll know how similar they are) and when mottled with excess energy, bops around beeping, humming, hollering crazily. It can be a challenge not to lose my mind, but it’s a struggle I enjoy.

I went to bed last night thinking about the children’s book I want to write and when I woke up, she was working on a comic book with a similar title to what I’d been considering for mine. I told her this, and about my idea, and she’s now deeply invested, drawing pictures related to my book all morning and suggesting names for all the characters. I often affirm to myself how these books will be well received, I’ll enjoy writing them and that they’ll bring me closer to the kids. I feel like it’s happening.  

When I was young I know I cultivated humor as a way to get by — mostly to be liked and to survive different social groups (admittedly, using my own weird little brand that maybe took the right person to appreciate …) As an adult I realize how much I continue relying on humor as a coping mechanism for anxiety, for uncertainty, for “please, please, let me be enough in this world!?” It’s a good tendency to be aware of; it is also good to laugh. I love seeing the practices and skills my children are developing and to not shun, shame or pathologize them (too much), but rather continuing to see how they and their creative expressions unfold.