Where do tears
come from? The head or the heart? I can’t always tell.
In my staunch
religious youth, if a song was sung or a prayer said aloud and Ruth cried, it
was deemed a winner. Even today, in my not-so-religious middle years, I cry
when reminded that I am loved. I dislike crying; it makes my head ache and
waters down my resolve to, well, not cry. Tears of joy, tears of sadness, tears
of empathy, tears of frustration, tears of pain, tears of hay fever—I guess
they come from everywhere: head, heart and itchy nose.
Seated in a
prayer circle during a workshop seminar on addressing the needs of Aboriginal
kids in care, I suddenly, unaccountably, welled up and started to weep. Most of
the people around me freaked out a little, unnerved by the European show of
weakness, but the native facilitator smiled and accepted my apology with words
I will always remember:
“Tears are a
gift.”
A few years
later, when I became a regular at the local tea shop where Joelique worked, he
announced one day that he had cried the previous night. “Why?” I asked. “Did
someone hurt you?”
“No,” he replied,
philosophically, “I’m teaching myself that it’s okay to cry.” Though he was
roughly half my age, his parents, like many of their generation, had employed the
Stop it now or I’ll give you something to
cry about tactic to turn off the tap in a highly emotional child.
I laughed at his
thundering impression of his dad, then I shared my experience in the prayer
circle and told him what the facilitator had told me.
“Tears are a
gift.”
We held each
other’s gaze for a heartbeat, and just as tears rose in both pairs of eyes, the
timer went off and saved us.
I wrote this
tiny poem as a tribute to the moment:
a confession
I’ve had a day
and you told me
you’d cried
so we talked
about tears
until duty called
which was
probably good
else I’d have
dissolved
April 28, 2011
With love,
