It’s January in Michigan, my least favorite time of year. I’ve been tackling paperwork, sorting through accounts, sitting on hold for what feels like hours on end and adding things faster to my to-do list than anything I’m crossing off. I took the advice several people have offered and have accepted invitations out with friends. Nothing, and I mean nothing has been easy, but I’m putting one foot in front of the other even if it is with tissues in my pockets and tears streaming down my face most times.

This weekend I decided to address the walk-in closet which has been anything but. When we moved the hospital bed and all its accoutrements into the bedroom, I shoved all kinds of things into the walk-in that didn’t belong there. Even since the departure of all that equipment, I have continued to shove odds and ends behind the closed door promising to deal with it all later. This weekend felt like “later” and if I ever wanted to actually be able to get to my clothes again, I needed to address the disaster. But that meant dealing with James’ clothes, the most personal of all the items I have been through thus far. It was more painful than I had even prepared myself for. Even keeping a stack of his things to keep for now, I struggled mightily with the cleaning out and all that it means. It’s obvious, but worth noting that James would have made a hard situation easier by finding a way to make me laugh. Only, he clearly isn’t here to do so even though I could really use that right now.

Which is why, today, when my son texted with the opening line of, “…in the spirit of living up to how Garrett and I are apparently fearless when it comes to embarrassing ourselves…” I jumped at the chance for distraction from my melancholy state and eagerly read his latest story.

Jacob, and his uncle Garrett are nothing alike other than the curls on their heads, but even then, Garrett keeps his hair cut remarkably short and Jacob has grown his out to this massive wave of curls down to his shoulders. That said, I have often remarked to them that they both possess the same ability to laugh at themselves with enviable ease and grace. Given the same embarrassing moments, I would hide from the world, deny all involvement and never tell a living soul what horrible thing I did to reveal my own vulnerabilities. But these two not only live the moment without shame, they unabashedly announce to the world what crazy thing they just did, and are able to laugh right alongside the rest of us while rendering the story. And today, and this month, and this year, Lord knows I need to laugh. Jacob will always be my greatest blessing, but today, he delivered via text message a blessing of a story which caused me to laugh straight from my belly, in a way that was long overdue and much needed.

The story, in Jacob’s own words was this:

Last night, Carissa’s work had a party at a shuffleboard club, which is basically if you took a roller rink and filled it with a bar and a dozen shuffleboard courts. Fun! Also, though some miracle, open bar! Even more fun! So we’re hanging out, and in classic nerd fashion, I’ve found the geekiest guy at the party and he’s telling me about the roof bar he rigged up…(this isn’t important to the story, I’m just setting the scene…)

After thirty minutes of me chatting with this guy while Carissa is catching up with her work peeps, her boss comes around and reminds everyone to grab food (which is also paid for). Food at this place is provided by a food truck that they’ve built a dock for on the side of the building. So, effectively, a giant open window in the side of this not-roller-rink, against which a food truck has parked and opened its awning into. So, we amble over and eyeball the menu and it looks baller (editor’s note: that means delish for anyone not in their twenties). It’s like a Cuban sandwich slash street taco crossover truck and everything coming out of it smells incredible.

A bunch of us order and settle in for the wait. (I later learn that the truck is staffed by one guy. It was supposed to be three, but one called out sick and another had to peel off to go do event setup or something, so for like half an hour, it’s just this one guy slinging sandwiches.) My nerd friend and I pass the time talking about how there’s a particular division of high frequency trading that considers the CPU’s they use to be expendable because they overclock them so hard, and before we know it, our food is ready. In classic food truck fashion, my sandwich looks delicious but it’s a little lacking in sauce. I take a few bites, and it is damn good, but really could use something more. Then I look up and see they’ve planned for this eventuality and provided a spread of hot sauces.

Now, Carissa and I lately have been working to build our spice tolerance a bit more. We’ve been having crunch wraps with Cholula (weak, I know), and bagel sandwiches with an amazing carrot and habanero sauce and knockoff gochujang on our stir fry. I am also tipsy verging on drunk at this poing and the idea of looking before I leap was one of the first to go. So, I grab the bottle labeled “habanero” and give myself a generous layered drizzle, plonk the bottle back down on the counter, and look up to see the food truck guy staring at me wide-eyed.

“I, uh, do you like spice?” he goes.

I shrug. “I’m always down for an adventure!”

“Okay, cuz that’s one of the bravest things I’ve seen in a minute.” He gestrues at the bottle of habanero.

Drunk me just grins, grabs some napkins and saunters off to find Carissa. I relay my apparent bravery to her and she frowns, looks at the sauce and goes, “Y’know, I would have tried the sauce first before slathering my sandwich in it.”

My addled brain processes this advice, decides it might be wise at this juncture to gain some understanding of how far up Shit Creek I might be, and I dip my pinky in and have a taste.

The pain was exquisite. It felt a bit like someone just poured molten gold into my mouth. My breath felt cool on my singed esophagus. Some distant part of me quailed at the notion of eating an entire sandwich liberally drenched in this hellfire, but mostly I grinned to Carissa and prepared to do battle with God. Sensing perhaps that this wasn’t a battle I should join unaided though, I did detour by the bar to pick up a frozen espresso martini, which I had determined to likely have the strongest calsacin inhibiting capabilities of the drinks on offer.

I made it through half of that sandwich. It was glorious. I could feel the sweat on my brow, this growing fire in my stomach. My lips had long since gone numb. I could still taste, in large part due to the generous gulps of espresso martini slush I was using to cool my mouth down. (Carissa, amused or concerned, stopped by and sipped on said martini, pulled a face, muttered something about it being insanely strong and disappeared back into the crowd. My ability to taste alcohol was long gone, I knew only that what little salvation I might find was at the bottom of that glass of slush.)

Eventually, I did give up, if only because some rational part of my brain did the math and realized that over-committing to that level of spice while obviously tipsy and apparently sprinting down the path to actually drunk would likely end in disaster. So I ran up the white flag, gave up on the sandwich and went in search of water.

You could be forgiven for thinking this is where the story ends, as I assumed as much, too. Our night continued without major incident, we returned home, slept, and so I thought, were more or less none the worse for wear.

Until phase two began.

You see, I’ve known the memes about when you get spicy food from Taco Bell and it’s delicious at the time, but you have to prepare yourself for the consequences later, typically in the form of an extended stay on the porcelain throne: I just always assumed that just meant, like, your gut would just be unhappy from eating crap quality food, or that the spice would upset your stomach or something, but nothing more. Nobody told me that for some unknowable, insane purpose, known only to God or the machinations of a universe with nothing better to do that to fuck with us, buttholes can feel casaicin, which is still present on the way out of the body.

My ass is on fire and I can’t feel my legs.

I hope you all laughed as hard as I did. Thank God for Jacob (and his uncle Garrett) who can both make me laugh at the crazy things they do. Especially today. Especially now. I sure needed the laugh.