Tears of Something

Posted September 07, 2007

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"When was the last time you cried tears of joy?" Our friend Andrea is visiting us, asking -- as she always does -- the kind of intense questions that stop you short, even as you're pouring yourself another glass of vinho verde, helping yourself to a third piece of roast chicken. "Joy joy?" I ask. "Or melancholy joy?" This is an important distinction for me: if you want to talk to me about how beautiful and fleeting life is, how beautiful and fleeting the people living it are, I'll boo-hoo the day away. Or relief joy -- like when we found out that Birdy didn't, as we had been told, have cystic fibrosis. A total bawlfest. But the more I think about it the more I'm not sure about happy joy. I might feel really glad to lie in bed with the kids on a weekend morning, sipping from a mug of tea and chit-chatting about the difference between a zeppelin and a blimp ("Maybe Wikipedia it?" suggests my new-millennium kid). But what this feels like is contentment -- nothing that would send you into a fit of weeping.

I can think of exhilaration (leaping into a cold pond, skiing through snowy woods) and ecstasy (sex, great music, a lobster roll from the stand in Kennebunkport), gladness (watching my children's sleeping or waking faces, preparing dinner with friends) and peace (lighting candles in the twilight, resting my head on Michael's chest). These are not usually crying situations for me -- except for the possible exception of the lobster roll, but I was pregnant at the time.

"Joy joy," Andrea says, and I say, "Probably when Birdy was born." But I'm not sure this is strictly true -- I mean that was also relief, drugs, and a cresting surge of lunatic hormones, so who can really say? Ben, licking mashed potatoes off of his knife, practically shudders now, and I get this: grown-ups are so emotional and weird.

"Well," Ben says, when Andrea asks him. "It doesn't make me cry? But I'm happy if someone gives me money." Everyone teases us that Ben is going to be like Alex P. Keaton: a miniature financier among bohemian parents. I bite my bohemian tongue. "Or if someone gives me a big, ginormous pile of candy!" he adds. "Although if I had enough money, I could just buy it myself!" "What about reading a great book?" I coach, like the bohemian stage-mother jerk that I am, and Ben says, "Oh yes! A great book!" like the obliging performer that he is.

But this is not how it goes the next day. The next day we attend a bookshop reading by local writer Jeanne Birdsall, author of The Penderwicks, which is a chapter book so fabulous it caused Ben to say, in a whisper, "I think I might like this even better than Harry Potter!" Jeanne Birdsall is someone I am actually on the verge of being friends with, so, naturally, I spend the afternoon hissing at the children. First there's Ben who says hello to Jeanne out the side of his face -- or so you can only guess, since there is a curtain of hair hanging in front of his person and it's hard to tell where the sound is coming from. "Honey," I hiss. "When people are talking to you, turn your face and look at them." Later, when Jeanne asks him after the reading if he has any questions, he says "Nope" through the fingers that are pulling his lower lip down past his chin, his face tipped up on the back of his chair so that he can better study the ceiling tiles while he emits a quiet blub-blub-blub sound through his stretched mouth.

Jeanne introduces us to Jane Dyer, who may be my all-time favorite illustrator. "This is Jane Dyer!" I say to Birdy. "She did the pictures in Oh My Baby Little One!" This is Birdy's actual favorite book -- the book we've read every single night for the past two and a half years. "Hm," Birdy says, and looks levelly at Jane. "Did you draw the pictures for Pierre? That's the book I like." For some reason, the fact that she pronounces it so that it rhymes with "gruyere" and starts with a "Br" instead of a "P" -- well, it makes it all the more comically awkward. "Did you?" I say to famous, fabulous Jane. "I didn't think so." I forget that my style of humor is not for everyone.

It all seems funny now, and it is. But stepping out into the spring sunshine, a child's hand in each of mine, I was embarrassed, furious. "Do not say anything," I coached myself. "They are children acting like children. Leave them alone." I bit my poor bitten-up tongue which will soon be just a sorry shred of bad temper hanging inside my silent mouth. When I trusted myself to be calm, I did talk to Ben a little more about looking at people when you're talking to them -- he really is old enough to work on this, I think. But I just don't know. I am still confused sometimes about what it means to be a parent -- how much you advise, how much you leave alone. They are yours but also their own. They reflect me and surpass me. I am their trusted shepherd, and it is a privilege to have them in my flock. Love and grief, holding hands and skipping down the lane of my crazy heart. When my eyes fill with tears in the car, it's joy, yes, but I don't think it counts. It's way too bittersweet.

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Tears of Something

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by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Tears of Something

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