Reluctant Tears

I come from a long line of stoics – people who just never cried. Heaven forbid you should “break down”, as they referred to the loss of control that would allow someone to visibly weep.

This “no cry” policy was ever present when I was growing up. I can remember my mother crying just one time, after she had lost a baby at 3 months. My father never hugged and never cried, not even at my mother’s funeral.

Can I possibly have a lifetime of tears stored somewhere in my body? Just as we females are born with a finite number of eggs, do we also have a fixed number of tears? If so, my supply is largely still in tact.

I’ve come to wonder about this as I felt the levees starting to crumble in my recent bouts of sadness. I’ve even had the feeling that a good cry might clear away a lot of old emotions.

I often envy people who can cry at the drop of a hat. They are the ones who are always sobbing at the end of a sad movie. They cry over birth, death, and many things in between.

But that’s not me. I’m the one who still marvels at the saltiness of the occasional tear that slips out of my eye unnoticed by the rest of the world.