The Age of Laughter

There are seasons in life when people expect you to become quieter.

More measured.

Less easily undone by laughter.

At fifty-five, I know the shape of those expectations.   

The rhythm others assume your days will take.   

The quiet settling they call maturity.

But I have never been particularly interested in living a life defined by expectation.

I love spending time with children and young adults—not because I’ve forgotten who I am, but because with them, I don’t have to. There is no performance of age. No careful restraint. Just the easy return to unguarded lightness.

And then I spent two weeks with my twenty-three-year-old niece.

And remembered.

We left Philadelphia just after midday, the kind of departure that feels ordinary until you realize later that it wasn’t. The bus carried us north, away from routine, toward something lighter—toward Boston, but more importantly, toward uninterrupted time together.

By the time we arrived, it was evening.

That soft hour when a city begins to glow.

We took a taxi to the North End, not thinking we would need a reservation. A small miscalculation. The restaurants were full—crowded with couples leaning into one another, families gathered around long tables, the hum of celebration spilling into the narrow streets.

We were lucky to find a table.

Tired, but happy.

For several nights leading up to the trip, we had stayed up far too late—laughing in the dark like conspirators. Talking about men, about work, about the strange and winding paths our lives had taken. Everything, somehow, became funny. Not because it was trivial, but because we could finally see it clearly.

There is a kind of laughter that comes from distance.

And another that comes from closeness.

Ours was the latter.

So that night, in the middle of a crowded restaurant, we didn’t need to say much at all. We watched the world around us instead—a young woman celebrating her birthday, candles glowing briefly before disappearing into applause; couples on early dates, still performing the careful dance of first impressions.

And we sat in a comfortable silence that felt just as intimate as all those late-night conversations.

That, I think, is its own kind of love.

Later, we stepped back into the night and wandered the streets, catching a glimpse of the Bunker Hill Monument rising quietly in the distance.

A reminder of history.

Of time.

Of all the lives that had unfolded here before ours.

We were back at the hotel by 10:30—early, for us. A small concession to the next day.

Morning came quickly.

Too quickly.

We slept in and nearly missed breakfast, arriving just in time to gather what we could before everything was cleared away. After all those late nights, we had finally slept—only to wake into a small, self-inflicted rush.

From there, we made our way to Long Wharf and boarded the ferry across the harbor.

The air was crisp, the water bright with morning light.

For a few quiet minutes, we stood side by side, saying nothing again—watching the city from a distance this time, as if trying to take it in all at once before it slipped away.

In Charlestown, we wandered through the Navy Yard and visited the USS Constitution, its wooden hull steady and enduring.

It was a beautiful day. The kind you don’t try to improve.

We walked.

We noticed things.

We let time move at its own pace.

And eventually, we found ourselves drawn back—almost instinctively—to the North End, where we had started. Another meal. Another moment to linger.

My brother met us there, arriving from his own separate chapter in Maine. We gathered our things, returned to the hotel, and then the rhythm shifted—airports, goodbyes, transitions.

I dropped them off and began the drive home alone.

Boston did not let me leave easily.

I got lost—truly lost—for nearly an hour. The directions tangled, the roads looping back on themselves, the GPS offering confident instructions that somehow led nowhere at all.

It was frustrating in the moment.

And yet, in hindsight, it feels almost fitting.

A small resistance to the end of something good.

Eventually, I found my way

out—out of the city,

out of the traffic,

back into the long, quiet stretch of highway that carried me home.

Nine and a half hours later, I pulled into the driveway just before 11.

The house was still.

And I missed her.

Not in a heavy way. Not in a way that asked for anything to be different.

But in that gentle, lingering way that follows joy.

At fifty-five, I do expect to feel lighter in the company of the young.

They are unjaded. Honest in a way that hasn’t yet learned restraint. They laugh easily—at what surprises them, at what they are just beginning to understand.

And I laugh too.

At the things they are discovering for the first time,

and at the quiet recognition of all the things I once did the very same way.

Perhaps that is the real gift of these moments.

Not that we return to who we were,

but that we are allowed to hold it again—lightly, without longing.

To stand at the meeting place of then and now,

and find humor, and tenderness, in both.

And sometimes, all it takes…

is a niece,

a few late nights,

and a city by the water

to remind you

that growing older does not mean growing away

from joy.