Kind Gift

I got a gift yesterday from Shysmile and Chivalrous... a daily 2005 calendar full of legal anecdotes and lawyer jokes. It might seem like the kind of throwaway gift to get a law student, knowing little else about him... something you might expect from a distant aunt or other family member only peripherally aware of what you're up to in life.

But not so. It was chosen quite thoughtfully... I had been having an emotionally bad day several weeks back, which came up while Shysmile and I were discussing the content of her legal studies paper. Half an hour into an academic conversation mostly occupied with utilitarianism, religion, nonviolence, and Kantism, Shysmile suddenly asked me if I was alright. She noted that my face had lately betrayed a certain desolate sadness... I told her what had been on my mind, and she asked me what it was I wanted most in a girlfriend.

I typed without much conscious thought. The first thing that came to mind: the ability to make me laugh. I've not done enough of that in my life. Sometimes I don't even know if I know how to laugh - sometimes, when I hear the sound of my own laughter, I wonder if I did it correctly. I don't do it often enough to know what the sound of my laughter is supposed to be like, or how it's supposed to feel. I find myself wondering if it sounds forced, artificial, awkward, or insincere. Yesterday, something happened at the teahouse that made me laugh, and a few of my recent and newfound friends looked up and said, "Wow, I've never heard you laugh before!"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to startle you."

"No, it's nice. I've never heard you laugh!"

*laughs* "Am I really so morose all the time?"

"No, we've seen you smile - but never laugh. It's cute!"

I was talking to Moe, a friend of eleven years, today about Shysmile's Christmas gift to me. A short and simple rhyme found its way into my speech regarding Shysmile's understanding of my feelings.


and I don't live the life I want.
I want to smile instead of sigh,
I want to laugh instead of cry


I stared off into the flowers of his shop after saying that, gaze straying over and past buckets of stargazer lilies and freesias. My speech is prone to a certain ludicrous verbosity, overlapping layers of linguistic redundancy, haphazardly pounding certain thoughts into shape with a multi-pronged attack of artlessly arranged brute spoken force. I'm not a poet, and certainly not a spontaneous one. For the desire to be spoken so simply, circumventing the wanton affectations of my usual speech, it must lie close to the soul indeed.

I had just finished unwrapping the gift, reading the sampled courtroom excerpt on the back with geeky glee. As Chivalrous fixed up a few snacks for the evening's slacking, Shysmile reminded me of our previous conversation... said she wanted to get something funny and intellectual for me... that neither she nor Chivalrous really got many of the jokes within, that you'd probably have to be a law student to catch most of the punchlines... but she and Chivalrous wanted to get me something that reflected their view of me, particularly what they graciously view as my sophisticated wit, as well as their hopes for the happiness - or at least laughter - that they knew to be so elusive. As she continued to explain, I felt very touched... she'd spent a lot of time picking the calendar out from a number of alternatives, hoping to find something that embodied the sentiments she was trying to convey. Part of the fun in receiving a gift thoughtfully chosen is trying to puzzle out the symbolic meanings and subtexts, guessing at phantom messages that might or might not be there. But this time, it was nice having it all spelled out, given the compromised state of my rational thought processes. I vaguely remember some sort of apology from Shysmile about not being very eloquent, but it got somewhat drowned out by the background noise of my thoughts, like the placid sound of the sea meeting the shore... Shysmile's good with people's feelings. As much as I love the interplay of words, I'm more touched by being understood.

We spent the rest of the evening watching the Two Towers. From time to time I glanced over at them, the loveliest couple upon whom I've ever laid eyes. Couples are often hard for me to look at, usually being painful reminders of all the betrayals, rejections, and disdain I've been subject to in the past. I usually turn away even from talk of couples, not out of spite, but out of self-preservation. I don't begrudge them what they have, but I must avert my attention lest the stabbing pains of the past and present dominate my thoughts.

But not Shysmile and Chivalrous. They're beyond beautiful to me, and I am again reminded of how thankful I am that they have found one another.

There is at least one thing right in this world.