We Celebrate Misfortune!

   When bad times get you down, it is extremely hard not to fall into.... a funk, it's natural. Major loss has a way of screwing with your head and how you see the rest of the world. I have had the pleasure of marrying into a family that has no place for hard times. I'm not saying that I married rich, which is how it sounds when I say it back to myself in my head.

My wife's family is headed by one hell of a matriarch. Not only has she been on her own since... I don't know how long it's been but its a really long time, running  her own career and blazing her own trails.

My wife's grandmother, better known as Nanny, has taught and practiced the family-ish tradition of celebrating misfortune. This is foreign to me and most likely many others, but it is a trait passed down. When times get tough,  when jobs are lost and accidents fall upon us, it is said that we must celebrate. Don't let them get to you. Things always get worse before they get better and a better door opens after one slams you on your ass and all the other puns you can shake your fist at. In the time that I have known this Nanny character, she has always been there when bad fortunes fall upon us and its always the same response.

"We should celebrate!" or "Lets go out to dinner!"

Celebrate? What is there to celebrate? Of course she and my wife always say that better things will come from this and believe it or not, it is pretty spot-on. We have dinner, we laugh, we talk and ponder on the next rather than the happened.

With that the terrible feelings of dread are ,for the most part, lifted. We get back on our proverbial horses and carry on. Since we have been dealt bad things only good things have come from them. We have obtained better cars, better jobs with better finances...and then we lose those jobs with the better finances and are forced to suffer, wait... not suffer, adjust ourselves to better accommodate the situation. Buy more pasta! Eat more pasta!  Pasta is cheap and goes a long way and damn, nothing is better than a bowl of pasta.

Now I'm hungry...

Learning how to cope with life's curve balls has been the greatest gift handed down to my wife and it is used quite a bit in this family. Boy did I luck out.

So never let the bad get you down. When life has you on the ropes simply smile, throw your hands up, dance around like an idiot and start swinging back. Everything will be alright.

Allon-sy! (For my Whovian friends.)

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