I Cry

I cry a lot. I’m sorry, I can’t help it. Oh, I don’t mean the kind of crying where tears run down the face and leave a trail like snail slime on the cheeks, although I do that too on occasion. My crying tends to be more subtle, a gradual accumulation of mist in both eyes that calls hay fever to mind or an attack of pepper spray.

Just about anything remotely cry-worthy can get me going. (The look on my wife’s face typically says: “Oh, no…”) I probably have a hormonal/mood problem that involves low levels of endorphins. I could take pills, I guess, or stay on a tread climber all day to counteract the condition. But I choose to accept my tears as evidence that I’m human, something I try to validate whenever I can.

Although the sheer range and versatility of my crying truly set me apart, my tears most often fall into two traditional boo-hoo categories: the kids and movies. For most parents, kids are the slamma jamma dunks of crying jags. Our kids are 12 and 14 now, ages at which they figuratively drive us to tears. (I know, I know: it gets worse.) But if I dwell on memories of them as little people—the cake-smeared birthday faces, the Santa Clause letters, the unconditional nature of their affection—real tears form and can achieve snail-slime status as long as Chuck E. Cheese isn’t involved.

And it’s not just the past: thinking forward in time to the kids’ inevitable departures from home also makes me choke up. Unless I get my act together fast, I’m going to be an utter wreck when they go off to college, much less graduate. Almost any school milestone melts me. Take last spring when the kids left the house to take the bus to elementary school together for the last time. They were 30 feet apart walking down the sidewalk and sniping at each other as they always do, but my tear ducts decided this was a lachrymal event. If my wife hadn’t been there with a demeanor consistent with feeding the dogs I might have lost it entirely.

While lots of people cry at movies, few span as many genres as I do. I cry at musicals, monster movies (King Kong utterly slays me), action and adventure movies, chick flicks, disaster films, romantic comedies, utter crap (I mean, Shark Boy and Lava Girl?), every animated film made since Snow White (1937), and any movie with a happy ending, which means 95 percent of movies rated PG-13 or under, the only kind I’ve gone to for the last decade.

Probably the most brutal film on me in recent years was Marley & Me, about an impossibly rambunctious Yellow Lab puppy that becomes the mainstay of a somewhat unsettled family. I love dogs and have had many in my life. One of my special favorites was Martha, a Black Lab our kids remember as their first dog. She had a quiet dignity, intelligence, beauty, and gentleness that won everyone’s hearts, even our cat’s.

I was responsible for exercising Martha, and we played Frisbee and ran trails together for years; when she got older I walked her on the same half-mile route every night, rain or snow. The whole family adored Martha and when it came time we all huddled around the vet’s exam table and pet her as she died. When we got home my wife and I walked Martha’s half-mile route in tribute, as I wept openly.

Except for his wild, destructive puppyhood, Marley reminded me of Martha: a Lab, about the right size, about the same smile, a six-letter name that started M-a-r. The movie moved along sweetly enough until Marley started to gray around the muzzle and there was still 30 minutes to go in the film. Then it became clear where Marley & Me was heading: to Old Yeller Land. Marley was going to die, which I hadn’t prepared for.

After another ten minutes of increasing discomfort, I couldn’t watch the screen anymore. So I looked away--at the ceiling, the wall, my watch, the beverage cup. I sang songs to myself, clenched my lips, fingered my Blackberry, bit my tongue, sang more songs. But nothing helped: my faucets started running full blast. And the tears kept flowing through the credits scroll. It didn’t help that my son was bawling in my wife’s arms when the lights came up.

As we left the theater my daughter glanced at me and stopped in her tracks. Then she touched my elbow and said: “Daddy, you’re crying. I’ve never seen you cry before.” And I’m thinking: “Where have you been all these years, Sugar? No wonder I can’t get you to clean your room. I have to cry to get your attention?”

Maybe so. Maybe so. Snail-slime style.