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Funny Boy
Alex can't stop laughing. It's
been a couple of hours now. Part belly laugh, part giggle,
the laugh of the extremely young for whom anything can be
funny: daddy's frown, a Cheerio on the floor, a vision
seen only by those little brown eyes and fed into that
little, new brain. A laugh like a bubbling pot, like Mary
Tyler Moore at the funeral of Chuckles the Clown.
First time I noticed that laugh
was six months ago, from another little boy on a sidewalk.
Some man, I guess his father, held him high. There it came
out of the boy, the giggle-laugh, heeheeheeheehee,
bouncing off the buildings. Too bad we can't bottle that
laugh. A special laugh, from a son to a dad, manly, wild,
scarcely under control. "That sounds familiar,"
Jill said, as the man and boy walked by.
 Alex was a quiet grinner - and a
silent laugher -- for a long time: gazing over the couch
at the D.... Bunny, gurgling to himself under the mobile
in his last hospital bed, tickled in the NICU. First time
I heard him gut-laugh at home was in his crib, when I blew
on his legs and belly after the bath and told him
"Guys like air!" I still do that. Up comes the
laugh. If it's going to be a really good one, sometimes
Alex will growl beforehand, or squeal. Then he'll settle
into that laugh, and laugh until seized with hiccups. Just
like dad.
But this laughing. He won't stop.
Or can't. When did this start? "About 4
o'clock," she replies, "in the drug store. Then
he started crying. I had to hold him for an hour and a
half. I have to lie down."
I trail Alex. In the bathroom he
touches the toilet and staggers. Hahahahaha hic,
hahahahaha hic. He reels by the cabinets under the sink,
floored by the utter wit of the childproof lock on
the handles, and he laughs and laughs and collapses like a
freshman at a kegger.
Of course I find it infectious --
Jill, who's been around it for two hours, inches toward
alarm, but she's already closed the bedroom door in hopes
of some peace. I follow Alex into the living room and sit
him for some, perhaps, quiet reading. But tonight Polar
Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? is the funniest
satire since Catch-22. He leans back against me; I
feel him shake. Some girl told me once that when a guy
made her laugh, it started with the crack of her smile,
then spread like an earthquake across her face until she
was helpless and hated it. This is how I feel with Alex
now. I feel the crack widen, my cheeks pull back and my
chest start to quiver. Who cares what's funny? I drink it
up from him like a gift. Heeheeheeheehee. Hic.
 In the crib, he finds the
railings a riot. I fill the tub and hear him in there,
idling in giggles, revving for bursts of laughter. My
smile fades as the water rises and I wonder, "Is this
right?" Jill wonders if he's too young for a
psychotic episode. Has his new little brain, overheated by
old hospital bills, endless paperwork to secure a new
apartment, the woes of jobs and sickly older relatives, at
last come off its hinges?
He has never been too young for
medical stuff. For 13 months, remember, anything new that
happened to Alex was often bad. Alex hasn't been to a
doctor for a while, though we are dreading what his
pediatrician will say about Alex's weight. We haven't had
a doctor for a while -- a lull in the firing.
I peel off his diaper to the
sound of tickled banshee. "Better than crying,"
I say to Jill.
Into the water, which comes up
just over the scar from his J-tube surgery. (Three nights
in the hospital. If we'd been stronger parents, would it
even have happened?) Tonight he seems to have found
delight in thrashing his legs and turning around and
around. Some baths ago I began trickling water in front of
him, with an eye to eventually teaching him to bathe
himself. Usually he just opens his mouth and sticks out
his face to drink the trickle. His own bath water, no
less! ("My daughter eats sand," comments one of
his therapists.) Alex's laughter echoes up from the tub.
Three hours now. I have stopped laughing.
With Alex like a hyena in the
background, we'll tell the pediatrician that Alex won't
stop laughing, babble our concern, two parents still raw
from months of medicine. I will peer into the darkened
room with the crib and think how this new wrinkle has for
a symptom unceasing happiness. And we will worry. And the
doctor will pronounce his prognosis:
Better than crying.
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