Types of Tears

I can’t remember how it came up, but my children and I were talking about crying the other week.   Considering that the conversation was over a week ago its no wonder I have no memory of the specific details.   I’m getting older and my memory just isn’t what it used to be.   I wrote down the trigger phrase, “types of tears” in my blog post idea list so for now I’m going to have to wing it, synthesizing things from multiple conversations to try and make you believe it was one single conversation.   So here goes…

My daughter made a birthday card for our next-door-neighbor, Bryna.  The card was very sweet.   I know this because when my daughter was done with it she asked me to interline it with text so Bryna would be able to read it.   When she took it over for Bryna to read, Bryna started crying.  Only a little bit, that bit where a tear or two rolls down your cheek.   She told my daughter she was crying and my daughter didn’t believe her, because she wasn’t wailing crying in the way children do when they’re upset.

Bryna took her hand and let her feel the tears on her face so my daughter would believe her.   Bryna saw me later and told me about the card and how touched she was by it and about the crying bit.   My daughter is exasperating, a crybaby, a drama queen and a tattle tale sometimes.   But she’s also a very kind, giving and caring person.   She can touch you in a very special way, perhaps in part because we see her as blind and persevering, or perhaps because that’s just the person she is.

It was the next day though that I was telling my daughter in the car how special her birthday card was to Bryna and that she told me she had cried.   My son was in the car with us and he asked me something that brought back memories from my childhood.   He said, “was Bryna sad?”

I remember when I was young we had neighbors that always had cats.   They were indoor/outdoor cats and it seemed like they had bad luck with them because they had more cats over my childhood than most people do.   And by had more, I mean lost more due to cancer, illness, old age or car accident.   They’d lost a grey cat named, I think, “Fluffy”.   Lola, the mother, had said she wasn’t ready for another cat when her daughter, Veda, asked when they were getting one.

It was Lola’s birthday about a week later.   We were at the dinner party when one of Lola’s best friends came in the door, holding a tiny kitten in her arms.   She handed it to Lola and I watched as tears streamed down her face while she gingerly held the small kitten.

I didn’t understand, I told my mother, “why is Lola sad?”  My mother told me that sometimes you can cry when you’re happy too.   I asked if she was sure Lola was happy?  My mother said she was positive, Lola was very happy.

So I told my children that we can cry if we’re sad or if we’re angry but that sometimes, when something special happens, we can cry when we’re happy.

The Big Boy Chronicles:  My son told me, “Mom, you might not know something.  When we grow up the world might not be what you think it is.”   I told him I thought he was right.

The Tiny Girl Update:  My daughter discovered a funny thing to get Alexa to do.   Or at least get our Alexa’s to do.   Or at least get our Alexa’s to do if you sound like my daughter or me.   She said, “Alexa, how do you spell thought?”   Alexa responds that you spell fart f-a-r-t.   She and I tried every way we could with exaggerated pronunciation to try and get Alexa to spell ‘thought’ but we could only get her to spell fart.