Family

Sunday mornings have recently brought a break from being in the choir loft.

There's a whole different perspective from the Amen pews, which are where some of the choir refugees have settled until time comes for their return to the musical land. From the choir loft, one can look out on a slew of faces, some smiling, many not, and a few with eyes drifting heavenward as if they're waiting for a second opinion on the sermon or are trying to decide where to grab lunch.

The back rows offer a shifted vantage point. For a mind prone to wander — whether it's pondering lunch or deconstructing football plays that were blown on Saturday — the back row is prime real estate for mental meandering.

You look through the hymnal and find songs the congregation hasn't touched in, oh, 15 years.

The psalms and proverbs come under perusal. And it's often a good time to sort through the items people hand you on Sunday morning, snippets of paper that get tucked in the good book, seemingly, for just such an occasion.

This particular morning, the featured in-Bible insert was a listing of animals that might have been on Noah's ark. The children's Sunday school class had been put to the challenge to name an animal for every letter, and the 6-year-old embraced it with gusto.

There was the typical cat, rat, bat lineup. Also on board were the less-easy-to-spell ostrig, jak rabet, unekern, kanguru, and, of all things, a perfectly titled marmoset.

Where the marmoset came from, we don't know, but it and the unekern were enough to set off a stifled bout of laughter — you know the kind. It's almost painful. The natural inclination is to default to a belly laugh, but it's hard to do that in the middle of a Sunday service without getting the Evil Eye.

As it was, we got enough of the Curious Eye to make us smother our lips between our teeth and hope for a fast benediction.

These fits don't understand ceremony or occasion. They've often come upon the alto section while we were up front and anchoring the left side of the choir. Raise that songbook a little higher. Maybe folks won't notice. Too much. Although, shaking shoulders and a deafening silence in harmony can be a dead giveaway.

There's a pack of Kleenex that hangs out on that end of the front row. Stifle laughter too long, and you start crying. The harder you try to stop crying, the more the tears come, and the next thing you know, there's an epidemic that a billboard can't cover up.

Laughter's funny that way.

As is the process of children learning to spell, name and recount all these wonderful things that share this planet with us. The cats. The bats. The marmosets.

They notice and pick up on a lot more than we give them credit for. Like sometimes laughter strikes at the oddest of times and for no apparent reason — like many of the people and events that come our way during life.

Let's hope they notice all of us smiling a little more often.