Laughter and forgetting

I know I must be a parent because there's a nagging guilt that followed my "what a squeam" post and has made me worry I was too negative. So let me salve my conscience by hereby stating: I may have laughed more in recent times than ever before in my 44 years. Thanks to the sproglet.

I wrote somewhere on this blog how amazing it seems that babies smile so soon after entering the world, and so long before they have the ability to communicate in other ways. Anthropologists and psychologists may say this is simply a defense mechanism: mother nature's way of ingratiating the vulnerable little blob with its parents.

Maybe.

But maybe also it's just a touch more poetic. Smiling before speaking and, even more so, laughing before speaking is something indefinably perfect, requiring no further explanation.

You're on all fours, pretending to be a doggy, while being led around the kitchen floor by the ear - and then your 15-month-old guide and leader suddenly starts laughing, and so of course do you. What more needs to be said ? All life's riddles, worries, complexities, demons, angels, good, bad, past, future - all become meaningless, drowned out by the only thing that matters: the laughing moment.