Six Sentence Sunday!

So I finally made it to Six Sentence Sunday...  Not sure how, exactly, this works, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to screw it up the first time, but hey -- you live, you learn.  Check out the other Six-Sentencers here and, if you have a blog, maybe you want to participate next week.  The more the merrier, toch?

And [drumroll] the Six Sentences with which Quiet Laughter participates this week are taken from a story called "Red & Black":

The boy and the dog hunker under the shrubbery.  Dim green light dapples the boy’s reddish hair, the matching coat of the setter panting next to him.  The boy’s arm is around the dog; the dog doesn’t need the restraint, but the boy needs the warmth, the sense of complicity.

-“Sshh, Shandy.”

The green light catches a welt on the side of the boy’s face.  His grandfather’s hands are big, heavy.

If you liked it, you can read the full story here, and when you're ready to go back to the Six Sentence Sunday blog, just click that link.  Thanks for the visit; hope you enjoyed it, and look forward to seeing you around!

Sasha's Story of Rescue and Terror

Last year in September we vowed: “no more kids.”  No matter what.  We simply do not have the space, or the time, to devote to the four we already have.  True, they’re all adopted, and at least three were originally intended as foster children, a temporary situation that sidled into permanence without us really noticing.  But we love them intensely; even Cor, who believed for years he was allergic to them (until Panchita arrived to prove him wrong).  I’m amazed at the wonderful dad he’s become.  I never thought he had it in him to wake up in the middle of the night for them, or cut a party short because it was feeding time, or retell their escapades like a proud father.  Amazing, truly.

So yes, we decided no more.  So what, I keep asking myself today, is that little white furball, all teeth and growls and terror-stricken eyes, doing in the corner of my porch?

An Ex-Pat in Curaçao

Being an ex-pat (expatriate) comes so close to being homeless.  When I left Mexico eight years ago, I believed I’d become a Citizen of the World, a universal person, a true product of globalization.  What, indeed, is “citizenship”?  What does “my” country mean?  In this day and age of internet, of Skype, of email and blogs and social networks that spread over the entire span of the Earth and wrap it into the wet dream of instantaneous gratification, what is the meaning, the relevance, of the issuing country of your passport, really?