Where's my smile?

     When stress builds up and I need a release, I usually find it in laughter.  More often than not, it comes from a memory of something our three year old granddaughter has said or done. But one memory comes from back in 1981. 
     My husband Jim and I were dating at the time. His nephew David was two years old and we were babysitting. As we entertained David, he entertained us.  David put the cover of a plastic terrarium on his head like a helmet and began to run around my apartment like a robot. Before we could react, David headed straight into a wall and was propelled backwards on to his butt. He sat there for a moment, didn't move and didn't make a sound.
    The whole scene was so silly that Jim, who is normally quiet and reserved, couldn't stop laughing.  His face turned purple from the laughter and noise actually escaped his mouth. Until that moment, the most I had seen or heard of his joy was a narrow smile and a nod of his head. Great memory for me but not the best.
    My favorite memory to date, is an event that I didn't even witness, but my mind's eye has made hilarious. When our granddaughter Abi, was an infant, on an evening we were babysitting, our son and daughter-in-law had asked if we would give her a bath. No problem ...we had raised three children from birth and had managed baths without a hesitation. That was my thinking at the time.  Later I decided I was too generous with the "we" in that thought.
     Jim arrived at their house before I did that evening.  I had an errand to run with our son Josh, who was eighteen at the time, so Jim decided to tackle the bath.  When Josh and I got to the house, I began puttering around on the main level and Josh joined Jim upstairs with Abi. Several minutes later all three came back downstairs. Abi was scrubbed and pink, dressed in fresh clothes and smiling. Jim and Josh were talking quietly. Josh stopped and asked me if you were supposed to fill the little bathtub with water when you give a baby a bath. I told him yes, knowing full well he had just tried to tell Jim it wasn't so. He turned to Jim and said, "See?" 
     Suddenly confused I looked at Jim, searching his face for a clue.  I asked him how he bathed her without water. He told me he had put her in the baby bath, put the baby bath in the main bathtub and filled the main bathtub with water. Then he said he 'kept wondering how to keep the little bathtub from floating around long enough to get her washed.'  Basically, he had taken her sailing.  I'm sure she thoroughly enjoyed it and picturing Jim trying to wash that baby while she was floating around gives my mood a real boost to this day.