A Good Cry

          Yesterday, after I posted my depressing blog, I took Walter for his walk. When I came back, I poured myself a drink and the phone rang. It was my mother.  I admitted to her how miserable I was, missing my friends but that I hadn’t been able to cry about it.

          “There’s nothing worse than dry tears.” she said. What a wonderful phrase. It summed up exactly how I felt: all bottled up with grief.

          When John first let me know that we would be leaving Coarsegold I took my usual walk and sobbed the whole way. I stopped to stroke the manzanitas, admire sunlight coming through their canopy, gazed out over the elephant-like mountains and felt that my whole being was crumbling.  After we moved, I sat with Walter in the patio and cried because I missed the rabbits. But I had not yet cried because I missed my friends.

          Back in the 1980s I used to listen to Farley Malorus, a radio astrologer. At the time I was dating a Scorpio man. I called in to the show and asked if perhaps my attraction to a water sign was because I didn’t have any planets in water signs in my chart.

          “I bet you don’t cry much.” he said.

          “No, I really don’t.”

          “Ah, Mary Lee!” he responded, “You must learn to cry. Crying is orgasmic!”

          You can’t tell someone to cry. Plus, there are different kinds of crying.  When I was in first grade and didn’t want to go to school I would cry, scream, and kick as my father carried me on to the school bus. This was very different from the tears I shed when I heard that Martin Luther King was killed.  The first was a selfish, angry cry. The second was joining in the collective grief of society.

          Recently I shed many tears watching Dancing with the Stars. These were tears of joy and pride in the accomplishments of the contestants.  I often cry when I hear beautiful music, or I hear of something bad happening to an animal. Yesterday I asked my mother, “Should I watch a sad movie or something?” 

          “Yes!” my she said.  Then she told me that after my father died she didn’t cry for a long time. She just couldn’t. She felt terrible but tears would not come. Then my niece brought her a photograph of my dad, one that she had never seen, taken by someone else. As soon as she saw it she started to cry.

          Telling me this story, her voice cracked and that was all I needed. My own eyes filled up and the tears began to run down my face.  Before I knew it I was reaching for a Kleenex. “Hold on,” I told her and as I set the phone in my lap I blew my nose, a big honking clown-like blow. The tissue was soaked.  “Did you hear that?” I asked her, “That was my sadness coming out. Thank you mama!”

          After that I did feel better. John and I went out to dinner. I got a great night’s sleep, waking with Audrey cuddled up against me. The streets were empty when Walter and I took a new route up the hill, passing two herds of dear who scrutinized us with their big wet eyes. It was a beautiful morning.