Posted by Arwen Mosher in FamilyJust me on Thursday, August 21, 2008 6:39 PM
My mother cries easily. When I was an adolescent, I used to roll my eyes violently when I’d see her wiping away tears over some cheesy story in Reader’s Digest about a re-united family or someone conquering an illness. When she noticed the eye-rolling, she’d smile and warn me that my time was coming. “I used to roll my eyes exactly like that when my mom would cry over stories in magazines, but soon enough I started doing it, and you will too, eventually. There’s nothing you can do to avoid it.”
I was like, Right, Mom, I am so sure.
Ahem.
I mentioned last week that I was re-reading the Anne of Green Gables series. I finished the last one a couple days ago, and I think my husband is relieved. It was a little off-putting for him to keep coming around corners to find me sobbing quietly over the pages of what looks, to him, like a perfectly innocuous book. I try to explain, but I think it just makes him more confused.
“She was an orphan, and no one loved her! (sob) But Matthew did, and he was so proud of her, and then he just died! (sob) It’s so saaaaad!”
My mom was not kidding. This crying thing has got to be genetic. I hit a certain age (I think it was around nineteen or twenty) and suddenly little things that I would previously have classified as “cheesy” could take me from “totally calm” to “wet cheeks” in about ten seconds. It’s also hormonal, of course, and I’ve definitely found myself more sensitive during pregnancy, and post-partum, and pregnancy again. Even without the hormones, though, I am a weepy girl. The littlest things can make me tear up, just like my mom, and her mom before her.
I guess I am proud to have a heritage. But I know it’s just a matter of time before Camilla is rolling her eyes at me.
Hey! I know exactly what I’m going to tell her.
Did your mother predict anything about you that turned out to be true in spite of you? Are you a weeper, or does stoicism run in your family?
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I usually do not weep out of happiness and do not recall doing that in my childhood. I cried during my vows five years ago and then was surprised again a few weeks ago when I found myself shedding some tears of joy at my little baby cooing and laughing. I definitely would not have been able to predict that.
weep, weep, weep, still trying to figure out how to hide those emotions with NO success, my grandmother, mother, sister, myself and now even in my kiddos, it is definitely genetic. I stock up on kleenex, especially for Mass!!!!
I too cannot stem the tide. Last night I read “I Already Know I Love You” to my infant son. Big mistake. Because this book is written by a grandfather and given to my son my his grandfather, all I could do was sob while reading it. I hope that my boy doesn’t inherit this gene, which oddly enough came from my dad! Not my mom!
I was born crying and have cried all my life. Still do and I am 90 years. My daughter did not inherit my genes, but those of her Dad. My son inherited my genes and is very tender-hearted like me. When I was a child, my mother would send me in to the walk-in closet when I cried, I think to break me of the habit. Didn’t do any good. If I felt like I wanted a good cry, I would take a dining room chair in with me so I could rest.
I’ve choked up reading In Flanders Field to my dd’s and also when reading Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever. (btw he is a very good canadian children’s author with a large number of readings available on his website http://www.robertmunsch.com )
I blame it on becoming a mother.
Well I don’t think it’s genetic in my case, both my parents cry at appropriate times, but not like I do. But around the same age, 19 or 20 I started becoming a real sap especially about mother/child emotional moments or isn’t God beautiful times. But even the whiny, frustrated cries come much more easily now in my early adulthood than as a child or teen. Weird! Maybe I’ll grow out of it again.
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