Dona Doesn't Giggle Anymore

Life is full of small adventures that occur when you least expect them, and some days before I’m even out of bed.

My apartment is on the second floor of a private house, which also includes a small pulperia (corner store) downstairs. The family consists of my landlords, Dona Lucy and Don Stephan and their adult daughter, though it’s hard to tell as there is a steady stream of adults, children, grandbabies and various other friends, customers and delivery people flowing in and out all day and early evening.

Dona Lucy is an older Honduran lady, not quite 5 feet tall with a lovely plump face, lively big brown eyes and dark wavy hair that she tries, (in vain some days) to keep under some semblance of control. She is a busy, hard working woman with a propensity for gossip, grins and generalized well-being.

Mornings start early in Honduras with the infamous 4:30 am chorus of barking dogs and crowing roosters, followed shortly by Don Stephan’s diesel bus firing up at 5:15 am. By 6:00 am it is full daylight and the pulperia has been a busy little centre of activity with children, youths and women coming in for their morning supplies, treats for school and other sundry items.

The phone rings off the hook, everyone who enters the patio or stops at the side gate calls out “Buenos!” to announce that they are there and Dona Lucy is in her element. She greets everyone in return, and there is the continuous babble of responses, requests, questions and tidbits of barrio and family gossip since they last saw each other. There is a flurry of bustling, joyful involvement of self with others, in greeting another morning that can be such an oddity for us solitary and self contained North Americans.

This morning I woke early, toasty warm under the fleece blanket and happily, because the rains had finally stopped. I curled up lazily in my bed, quietly listening to the morning begin downstairs. The dogs released their pent up vocal energies, the traffic started on the main road and I could hear the surging surf two blocks away. And just like clockwork, the bus fired up and drove off, the telephone started ringing off the hook and the voices began downstairs, with Dona Lucy the constantly chirruping, giggling metronome of the morning music.

As I laid there grinning sleepily, I realized something had changed. I could hear a man’s voice, rapid, sibilant and gaining in exuberance but I couldn’t hear Dona Lucy. No cascading giggles, no chirruping voice, no exclamations of surprise, simply silence -which is unheard of. Just as I was becoming concerned, with a quizzical frown on my forehead, the silence burst!

Laughter erupted from Dona Lucy, barrelling up through her round little body, chortling its way up her throat and bursting its way past her lips. She was trying to speak and the laughter simply overwhelmed her, increasing in volume and cascading upwards in sheer passionate joy! She started to gasp for air, with little shrieks of glee and you could almost feel the laughter rolling up and out of her. The man who was speaking cannot, and is laughing uncontrollably, slapping the counter top in glee!

The stairwell is echoing with laughter, the window slats seem to be shimmering with the sounds bursting through them and Dona Lucy is still building to the crescendo of raucous, uncontrolled, roaring delight and I am helpless.

I have no choice as I roll with glee under the covers, giggling, grinning and finally joining her in deep belly laughs that shake me from top to bottom. Finally, she slows, interrupting the gales of laughter, and regaining her breath begins to speak, still bubbling with small chortlings of glee; the man can finally speak again and I am left wiping tears of joy from my face.

Dona Lucy doesn’t giggle anymore…. She is a passionately erupting fountain of laughter that sweeps you along in the early morning dawn. What a wonderful beginning of a new day!