Blush and breathe, I laugh ‘til I can’t see.

It was a spectacular couple of weeks.

Nothing like far removing yourself from the comfort of your daily grind to completely refresh and renew perspective. I can’t remember the last time I was able to be away for so long, and this trip couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. The days were so full, and yet never more full than I wanted them to be.

Somewhere in Sweden I laid down in an icy drizzle, each frozen drop feeling like tiny pin-pricks on my skin. Nature’s acupuncture. I breathed a sigh of contentment and tried to remember the last time I’d taken such a moment for myself.

Somewhere in Finland the smell of the pines transported me back to another time and place—the only other time and place I’ve ever smelled that particular scent. And I breathed it in deep, marveling at how much is still the same, and yet how much is startlingly different than it was then and there.

Somewhere in Germany I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe, and had to stop next to a river to wipe my tears and catch my breath and try in vain to compose myself.

Actually, that happened more than a few times, in more than a few places.

See, I was traveling with my parents, my brother, and my sister-in-law. And while many people I know shudder at the mere thought of such a recipe for disaster, when we do it, we actually have a really good time together. We laugh. A lot.

And that’s what I always miss when I return to reality. The laughter. While it is, of course, always good to be home, it strikes me how laughter-free my daily life can be. I can go for stretches of days without ever laughing at anything. I mean really laughing. Like, laughing-til-I-cry-on-the-banks-of-a-river-in-Germany, laughing. In fact, there are times when I can go for days without even having a conversation with anyone who is not a colleague or somehow related to my job, let alone really letting go and cracking up.

But that’s ok, I guess. We all have our daily routines. Not everything can be all wine and roses. As one of my high school religion teachers (yes, you read that right) was fond of saying, “We cannot exist in a perpetual state of orgasm.”

True enough. But we can sure as hell look forward to it.

So until the next time...