The Power of Tears

As a little kid I was considered tough and tomboyish.  On my first day of school at Borah Elementary, I recall, even at the tender age of six, that I decided that I wasn’t going to cry.  The reason was that I didn’t want to make my mom feel bad when she had to leave me behind in that classroom.  When I had to go from my mom’s house to my dad’s house for visitation, I refused to cry for fear that it would send the wrong message to my divorced parents, so I learned how to hold those tears inside until I went to bed at night.  When my dad moved to Maui and my sister and I had to travel over the Pacific Ocean for our six weeks visit, I remember holding in my tears until I took a shower that night, where I cried my heart out with homesickness and washed the evidence down the drain. 

I grew up telling myself that being able to hold in my tears was a sign of inner strength, and maybe it was to some degree.  But I’ve decided that letting the tears flow openly and without any shame or embarrassment might actually take more strength than keeping them locked behind stubborn eyelids.

Today my husband and I had to take one of our cats to the veterinarian to be euthanized.  She was around 15 years old and had been losing weight at an alarming rate.  This past winter we took her to the vet for a checkup; the vet was sure that she had a thyroid imbalance, but the blood work came back inconclusive – according to the numbers on her chart, she was just fine.  She had taken to caterwauling throughout the night, and began moving very slowly.  This morning as I walked past the laundry room I found her collapsed on the linoleum floor.  I gathered her up, put her in a soft cat bed, tucked a blanket around her, and waited for Chad to come home.  Once we arrived at the vet’s office, a vet tech came in to evaluate her.  The veterinarian hadn’t arrived at the office yet, and so the kind technician told us our options.  As she did, the tears started to flow down my face.  And I didn’t even try to stop them, even though somewhere deep inside me the old urge to “suck it up” struggled to emerge. 

I think I know what makes crying in front of others (especially strangers) so difficult:  Crying is a very vulnerable and exposed thing to do.  It reveals emotions that are deep and personal, kind of putting those emotions on display for others to see.  It’s also difficult to allow others to enter into our personal lives in such an intimate way.  For me, I also fear that by crying openly, I am somehow burdening those around me with feelings they may not know how (or want) to contend with. 

I’ve decided, though, that allowing myself to cry openly, even in a public place, allows me to be who I am and truthful with myself and others.  They are being allowed into a vulnerable place in my life, and I think I can trust most people to enter into my life with kindness and grace.  In fact, I think that allowing others to see me cry actually deepens my relationships with them.  It’s me saying to them, “I trust you enough to be unguarded with you.”  And ultimately it tells others that they can be unguarded with me as well. 

We made the difficult but merciful choice to allow our vet to put our cat to sleep, and as we sat in that vet office we both shed many tears.  Even my big, tough railroading husband openly cried for the loss of that stubborn, trouble-making, white Persian cat. 

Stay, Stay at Home....

Being a total literature geek has its perks.  Whenever something happens in my life, literature presents a connection that I can contemplate.  Trying to remain strong and pure despite what life throws at you?  Read Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.  Wishing you could do some good in a world gone bad?  Read The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay.  Need some sound advice for living well?  Read the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling.  Also, a smaller perk is that I can sound smart at gatherings by talking about what good old Thomas Hardy wrote about his wonderful heroine Tess d’Urberville, and people think it’s neat that I can say “d’Urberville” so nicely.  I mean, you kind of sound smart when you’re throwing names around like that.  Also, it’s nice to sometimes drive home from work and quote a meaningful line of poetry (and I’m really bad at memorization).  After a hurried week or bad traffic, it’s usually a line from a William Wordsworth poem:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: 
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

There’s comfort offered in Wordsworth’s poem, and it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who has felt that the world might be spinning out of control.  This is where a lot of literature’s power comes from:  We find ourselves and our situations when we enter the pages of a novel or poem or play, and it’s nice to find companions in our sorrows and successes, even if they are fictional. 

As I ponder the ways I can fill my summer with valuable, soul-filling things, it should be no surprise that I turn to literature.  Here’s a little poem from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called “Song”:

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest;

Home-keeping hearts are happiest,
For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care;
    To stay at home is best.

Weary and homesick and distressed,

They wander east, they wander west,
And are baffled and beaten and blown about
By the winds of the wilderness of doubt;
    To stay at home is best.

Then stay at home, my heart, and rest;

The bird is safest in its nest;
O'er all that flutter their wings and fly
A hawk is hovering in the sky;
    To stay at home is best.

This poem is imploring.  The speaker is begging his (or her) heart to find rest within the comforts of home.  Wandering and seeking are good things; in fact, everyone should travel outside their home country so that they can expand their world view.  But this poem reminds us that sometimes the best seeking and wandering can be done from the comforts of home.  This speaker is also very cautious of the dangers that lurk outside of the nest.  Sometimes the lure of far-off, distant things can be a treacherous trap.  We perhaps think, “If only I could go to Paris!  Then I would find my heart’s passion!”  or “If only I had gone to college!  Then I would have a more fulfilling career,” or “If only I could afford to travel to a tropical place!  Then I could finally relax….”

If only, if only, if only. 

It’s too easy to get caught up in the “If only” game.   I do it to myself all the time.  “If only I didn’t have to grade so many papers, I could….” or “If only I had more time to read for pleasure during the school year…” or “If only summer vacation weren’t so busy, I could…”  I’m starting to realize that I’m entangled and bound up by my “If onlys.”  They are becoming (to make an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”) an albatross around my neck, dragging me down and holding me back.  What does life offer you today, in this place, this time, and under the current circumstances?  Grab onto the opportunity that is within arm’s reach!

So, this summer I’m going to take Longfellow’s advice.  I am going to stay, stay at home and rest my heart.  It will be fun to “travel” through my own little town and act like a tourist (after all, lots of travelers from all over the country like to travel here for the summer!).  My husband and I can visit the local museum, eat at a café, and walk Sherman Avenue like we’ve never been here before.  To be honest, I’m pretty excited about the prospects available these next eight weeks. 

So here’s to making the most of the moments we are given and the places in which we live.  

It's (Almost) Summertime and the Living Is (Almost) Easy....

Well, it’s official:  Summer is upon us!   Next week my students will take their final exams, and then we are all free to skip into the summer sun.  Yes, days filled with promise await my students and me.  Hammocks, lounging on the beach, working in the yard…I have to admit, though, that there is one thing I dread about summer vacation:  the guilt. 

If I had a dollar for every time I have heard someone say, “Oh, you must have gotten into teaching because of the summers off,” I’d be retired by now.  If you want to know the truth, I’m tired.  Really tired.  Students work hard and teachers work hard.  Long nights of grading papers, preparing lessons, writing tests, reading the assigned texts…a lot of hours are required beyond teaching an 8 hour day to get it all done.  Last summer I also took several weeks of continuing education classes which took a lot of time and mental energy.  I’m looking forward to this summer vacation, and I’m going to work hard to not feel guilty.

Where does this guilt come from?  Some of the guilt does come from those outside voices that suggest that teachers have it “easy” because they have summers off, but I also understand that they might not take into account that a teacher’s workday is rarely a mere 8 hours long.  However, I’m still easily annoyed by those who seem quite assured that teachers really are on a cake walk.  We’re not.

Likely, though, much of the guilt comes from deep inside me.  I suspect I was a pretty easy kid to raise because my internal guilt alarms were going off quite regularly, and those alarms prevented me from getting myself into all kinds of trouble.  I felt guilty even before I had done anything wrong!  So yes, I am aware that I probably heap a lot of unnecessary guilt onto my own head as I look down the road for the next 8 weeks and contemplate what I will do with my summer.  I have my standard plans in order:  Volunteering two mornings at the Humane Society; spending at least one afternoon a week with my adorable 91 year old gramma; reading the books that have been collecting dust on my night stand; working in our yard…I’m excited about refueling my heart and mind and spending quality time with my husband, family, and friends.  I’m excited about waking up without an agenda staring me in the face.

But I fear the moments when I will feel guilty.  This world moves at a very fast pace, and I think I have somehow gotten trapped on the “busy treadmill.”  If I’m not doing something, I feel unease.  I catch myself multi-tasking even when the lazy days of summer are upon me.  I get anxious when I think I have somehow wasted the day.  But I’m starting to think that there is a lot of soul value in just learning how to BE.  This is on my to-do list for the summer (and yes, I do see the irony of this):  Quieting my mind.  Plan A is to slow myself down.  How can I get to a place where I can just sit and enjoy the simple pleasures of this life?  And even more challenging, how can I do this without a panicked list of to-do’s flashing through my mind or getting up from my quietude two minutes later to “do something productive”? 

I have a feeling this is going to be a bigger challenge than I have bargained for, but I am going to practice some porch sitting, let the birdsong quiet my heart, and feel and appreciate the sun on my face.   And while I have a summer calendar dotted with important and fulfilling things to do, one of the best things on that list is to learn how to just BE.