Someone Who Makes You Laugh

Tonight when I was putting Sam to bed, she said, pulling the covers up to her chin petulantly, “I want a new Mommy. One that lets me do the things I want to do.”

“OK,” I said. And I thought, for the hundredth time today, “Thank goodness AC comes home tomorrow!”

AC has been in the UK for the past two weeks. I’ve missed him a great deal. Sam too. Right after she put in her order for a brand-new, permissive mother, she proceeded to detail everything that “her silly Daddy” was going to do once he gets home.

“My Daddy is going to throw me up in the air. And then he’s going to sit on my head! We will have lots of silliness.”

Sam doesn’t appreciate that her Daddy is going to be VERY tired when we see him tomorrow. Tired enough to sit on her head? Maybe.

I’m always glad when she talks about him, though. I felt odd last week when she announced that she was a princess and I was her prince and that we were going to get married.

“OK,” I said. (This does appear to be my standard Mom response to my daughter’s loopy proposals).

“Now, Mom, we have to get married. How do we get married?”

“We just say that we’re married,” I replied. I was not looking to get into planning a make-believe wedding.

“No!” Sam shouts. How does she know these things?! I feared there would be a tuxedo and cummerbund in my near future.

But then she said, “We have to dance. You said there’s dancing at weddings.”

When did I say that? Once, two months ago? Probably. The princess has a terrific memory.

So we danced and we were married.

But then today when Sam brought up our “marriage” again, I started to feel strange. Doesn’t she remember that I have a husband? And that he’s her father?

“Mom, we need wedding rings. I am going to make them.”

Sam spent the next 20 minutes with ribbon and tape and fashioned us each a purple wedding loop. Mine had to go around my pinky.

I must admit, I wore it proudly. And when it fell off while I was washing dishes, Sam noticed and made me another one.

So there we were later today, mother and daughter, the royal couple, walking home from the park when out of the blue Sam asks me, “How was Daddy funny when you met him?”

It took me a minute to realize that she was again referencing an old conversation of ours– one where she’d asked me why I loved her father. And I think I had said something like, “Because your Daddy makes me laugh.”

So I told Sam the story of the moment I knew I liked AC… liked him with the spark that would become love.

“We were students in college and we needed to get our pictures taken for ID cards. An ID card has your name and picture on it. Your Daddy decided to get dressed up silly for the picture. He wore a bandanna over his hair, a gold hoop earring in one ear, and when the photographer snapped the picture, Daddy winked one eye and stuck out his tongue. He was imitating a cartoon character named Bill the Cat. I thought that was very, very, very funny, and I laughed a long time. That’s when I knew I liked your Daddy.”

Sam stopped me 10 times so I could show her how AC did the wink and stuck out her tongue. “Daddy was being SILLY!” she cried.

“Yes,” I said. “Just like he is with you.”

Lights were out and we were talking softly. We were talking about what the next day would bring. “Mommy,” Sam said breathlessly. I could see her eyes shining in the darkness, “Tomorrow MY Daddy and YOUR husband comes home!”

Thank goodness.