Sometime during the past month, I noticed: I’m laughing again.
And not only laughing. I’m taking part in witty wordplay with my kids. We’re wrestling and tickling again, resulting in convulsive giggles that I’ve not heard in nearly a year. I’m back to doing silly dances in the garage to make my kids laugh, as my wife backs the car down the driveway to take them to school. We even dance through the kitchen on occasion.
Noticing the return of these actions revealed, sharply, the scale of their absence during the past year.
When the brain fog was bad, when my body was in pain, or when I felt too fragile and too breakable, I was simply too tired to do things like wrestle or dance, and I didn’t have the endurance for witty banter. I didn’t laugh much, and I couldn’t respond fully to my kids’ invitations to play. I rationed my energy cautiously, and my kids learned to give me space to rest, and situations that might draw me into laughter or joy became fewer thereby.
All of this was necessary at the time, and my kids were incredibly understanding, kind, and resilient in learning to navigate the limits of my energy. But there’s no way around it: there was a lot less laughter and playful give-and-take around the house.
Their welcome return feels like a deep, unobstructed breath of the freshest air.
I’m not “out of the woods” yet. I still need a rest period in the middle of each day, and perhaps I always will. All I can do is keep tending to the conditions for my health.
But ease is returning. Physical exertion isn’t so exhausting anymore, and cognitive and social exertions leave me feeling merely tired instead of decimated. (I wrote this mini essay, for example!) All of this can change, but I’m enjoying this upwelling of functional energy for what it is.
I’m more honest with myself now about my limits and better and worse uses of the energy I have. My days of hurtling mindlessly from one action to another as if I were indefatigable are (hopefully) over. There’s no honor or prize in grinding myself to an unresponsive pulp.
Most of all, though, I’m grateful for my renewed responsiveness to my kids’ invitations toward laughter and joy. I feel as if I’m finally coming back into the fullness of my identity as a dad, and this is the single most meaningful improvement in my quality of life during the past 12 months.
I dwell in these occasions for joy when they arise, knowing concretely how precious they are.