Humor by Gillian

My parents both had a wonderful sense of humor, though each quite different from the other.

My mother loved words, so much of her humor involved quotations, jokes, and stories. She filled up dozens of little notebooks with such things and, apparently as a reminder to herself, lest she should slacken, an embroidered wall hanging pronounced that the day is wasted in which one has not laughed. Painfully correct grammar for such a relaxed sentiment.

As an elementary school teacher in an old two-room school she reveled in stories told by or about the children she taught, laughing the more with every telling. She would start giggling like a little kid herself. “Oh, you will never believe what little Jimmy Owen said this morning……..” and she was off.

My father’s humor, on the other hand, was, like him, much more quiet. Most frequently it necessitated no word at all, but rather an almost imperceptible eyebrow twitch, or my favorite, the one naughty wink, in my direction. Somehow I always understood what the joke was, what my dad’s gesture was indicating. I think we shared some very special intuitive connection there. Unlike my mum’s happy giggling, which lit up a room, my dad and I sat in silence without even our lips twitching to acknowledge our inner laughter. Oh such delicious secrets we shared in our secret mirth.

Rather unfortunately, I suppose, when my father did use a few words to facilitate some humor, it was usually at my mother’s expense though it was just silliness, never mean. And in a whole lifetime she never stopped setting herself up. “….you will never believe what little Jimmy Owen said this morning….” Dad solemnly winks at me and rises from the chair, heading to the door. “Edward! I was telling a funny story…” “Well, maybe we don’t want to hear something we’ll never believe…” And they’re off.

“Oh, Edward, honestly! You know it’s just an expression!” He sits obediently back down and hears her story, which is wonderfully amusing in it’s own right. We’ve had our little bit of fun.

As I grew older, I sometimes initiated the silent joke with my dad, although it had to be via a wink as I never learned to do the eyebrow-twitch thing in spite of endless hours of teenage practice before the mirror. I also, from quite a young age, spent considerable time and effort making my mother laugh. She loved to laugh and I loved to laugh with her, but one of my main youthful entertainments was making her giggle at inappropriate times and places.

It was the equivalent connection with my mother that the wink was with my father. She pretended to try to make me behave but really she loved it. I made her giggle in church, at school, during concerts and speeches. I especially liked to get her going somewhere like on the bus, where there was no bathroom. Her bladder-control was nothing to brag about and laughter could bring about some challenging results. “Ooooh Gillian, STOPPIT!” She’d whisper, shuffling in the seat, crossing and uncrossing her legs.

A teenage girl of the Fifties I had heard rumors that when a woman said no she really meant yes, and I have to say that in my mother’s case, with humor, it was true. The more she fought to control her helpless daughter-induced giggles during the graveside service, the more she loved it.

My parents had lost two children to meningitis before I was born, and I truly believe some intuition told me that it was my job to cheer them along. In any case, it served to bring humor to all three of us, and that’s a gift from the gods if ever there was.

My father developed dementia in his eighties, and had no idea who I was. He no longer winked at me, and my wink to him brought no response. My mother, amazingly, still had the embroidered laugh injunction beside her bed in the Nursing Home, though a broken hip had reduced the humor, along with most positive emotional and physical abilities, to a minimum.

If you ask me what is the greatest thing I inherited from my parents, I would say my sense of humor. If you ask me what I miss most I would say their sense of humor. And my father’s wonderful, wicked, wink.

© 2 February 2013

About the Author 

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.