Always smile, Always laugh

Last night, as I was stripping wallpaper at the house, I realized I was smiling for no apparent reason.  I find it oddly therapeutic that I get to strip stuff off the walls, and it's what I'm supposed to be doing.  I also find that while I am stripping the wallpaper, I don't think about anything serious - I don't think about work, I don't think about things that frustrate me; it's just me, and the walls.  Last night, I started thinking about my grandmother.  It's been almost 10 months since she's been gone, but I find that I think about her a lot.  I think about random things, like how she loved picking us up from school (even if we called her at 10 at night to pick us up the next day), what an awful driver she was, how she never listened to what people were talking about - even if she asked the question first, how she bragged about my sister and brother and me to the point of being obnoxious, and how she was convinced that no matter how well I did in high school, I would never make National Honors Society (which I did, by the way, lol).  I look back on everything that happened throughout our lives together, and I always smile - even at the things that annoyed me in the past.


As I was thinking of Clara last night, I remembered something that my mom once said.  She said that she was talking to her mother and Auntie Theresa once about how Clara was doing while she was in the nursing home - and that no matter what was going on around her, Clara was always smiling and always laughing.  And that held true for her entire life - she was always looking for the positive in things, always smiling, and always laughing (even when she was nervous, she laughed).


I decided that it's time to employ the Clara way of life.  Always smile, always laugh, always try to find the good in every situation.  My cousin's husband, Wassim, said something along those lines on Easter....He described a particularly difficult situation that happened to them when they were moving, and he said something to the effect of while it was a bad situation, he always looks to find the positive in the situation instead of constantly talking about and remembering the negative.  It's the healthiest way to go through life.


So that's it.  My new mission.  Always smile, always laugh, always try to find the good in every situation.

Grandma Clara (on the right), with two of her favorite ladies, Anna (left) and Nonni (center) at my wedding in May 2010