This is my daughter Jocie. Her last writing assignment in 4th grade was to write a memoir. Not just a collection of thoughts or an essay about who she is, but to zero in about something specific she would want others to know about her.

If you were to write your memoir and could only write about one specific characteristic, trait or quality, what would it be?

Here is Jocie’s memoir.

Laughter

By Jocelyn Berry

Laughter is like a large wave in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It crashes down, pushing you into the giant pool of excitement, happiness, and giggles. The pressure of laughter pushes you down, down, down into into the endless surroundings of happiness. The feeling is sensational. Before you know it, the pressure becomes too much. You shoot to the top, bubbling over, spitting out giggles.

Laughter is never stoppable. It is possible to hold in the noise type of laughter, but not the laughter on the inside. Laughter is a sign to an emotion everyone knows: Happiness. Laughter is like a dog waiting for the right time to dash for the hot dog. Inside you, the dog runs for the hot dog and grabs it. At the same time, you burst out laughing. I rarely go a day without laughing. Whether its funny book, a strange joke, the combination of pizza toppings they have at restaurants, or just a simple mistake I made, I’ll take the pleasure to laugh.

I know laughter is the key to having fun. I remember, one day in the backseat of the car, there was two sister time bombs. My sister told one joke, causing us to explode with laughter. Laughter helps to top off my day, like the cherry on top of a mountain of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream, surrounded by two ripe bananas, chocolate syrup lava dripping down the sides. That makes it a wonderful day.

Laughter is like a fisherman luring you to take the bait, pulling you to the very different world of laughter. Laughter is a joyful cry bringing moisture to your eyes. Laughter is tossing away your fears away, seeping into your body. Thoughts of clear happy images fill your mind, until the laughter fades away.

Laughter is a tool impossible to lose, or throw away. You can spread, or give away laughter; still keeping it yourself. Laughter is your friend, there to brush away a tear, or to clear away upsetting thoughts. Laughter is like a towel for your mind, wiping away thoughts of anger, sadness, and loneliness.

To me, laughter is a shadow, waiting for sadness to fight. Laughter helps me get through tough days. Laughter is the key to having fun.

Oh how I enjoy watching this creative soul unfold.

“I have no stuff to imagination with”.

My daughter made this declarative statement over a month ago as we were discussing why she wanted to bring her toy kitchen up from the basement and back into her room. Since then those seven words continue to rattle around in my brain.

“I have no stuff to imagination with”.

Everyone has imagination. As kids, imagination may have created friends who stuck by no matter what. For others, imagination is what carried them to far away lands right within the four walls of their home. Imagination is what made stuffed animals talk, turned shoes boxes into treasure chests and countless other ordinary items into the extraordinary.

Imagination doesn’t abandon us when we leave childhood. It’s still a part of us. A gift our Creator God gave us when He created us -an integral part of our creativity. But we can get disconnected from it. Busy schedules, mindless activities, stress, discouragement, illness, notions of how adults should be versus what actually is….all these things and more creep in, pile up and block off access to the creative side of us.

I don’t have all (or even most) the answers to connecting with my creative side. I know my story and am learning how I fit into God’s story and how He is shaping me into the person He meant me to be, imagination and all.

For a beautiful illustration of how creativity, humans and God are connected, read Paul Richardson’s poem Ode to the Fallen. There is a copy of it here.

It’s raining tonight. A gentle rain. Quiet enough that I didn’t notice it as I was going through the bedtime routine with the girls. Only when I opened the front door to take the dog outside did the rain capture my attention.

I heard the rain fall on the broad leaves of the hosta plants next to our front porch – each drop gently and firmly announcing its arrival as it landed on its intended destination. To my surprise, it wasn’t the sound of the rain I noticed first. It was the smell of the rain.

The smell, if I was forced to use one word, smelled like summer.

Sometimes when rain comes, it comes with cooler temperatures. Sometimes it comes with more humid weather. Other times, like tonight, the temperature is much like it was before the rain. This evening the rain smells thick. Thick, like the warmth of a blanket just after it’s taken out of a dryer.

The rain also smells fresh. The smells of grass, newly grown plants, freshly turned soil all mingle in the air with the water droplets before hitting the ground. 

Standing barefoot on the porch, I closed my eyes and breathed in the thick, fresh smell of the rain and realized it’s one of the smells of summer.

What are some things that bring summer to mind for you?