Tears of Everything

I have leaky faucets. I also have a tendency to say things that sound unintentionally dirty, so just to clarify, I’m talking about my eyes. Get your mind out of the gutter.

It seems like tears are my body’s natural way of reacting to just about any strong emotion, including HGTV. See elaborate chart below.

Clearly, I am a deep and complicated individual. With killer Excel skillz.

Of course I get misty over the usual stuff - a soldier reuniting with his family, random acts of kindness, an abandoned baby porcupine getting adopted by a three-legged, surrogate goat mom. Don’t think I’m alone there.

But where it gets annoying is my inescapable waterworks around everything else. I’ve always been sappy, but since I’ve had kids, I’m a full-on tear factory. It’s not that I go around sobbing all the time, I just well up stupidly easy at unexpected, inopportune times. Like seeing my daughter make s'mores at Girl Scout camp or watching House Hunter’s International, the Arctic Circle Tiny House Identical Twins episode.

Here are a few more random things that can get me experiencing sudden and uncontrollable allergies, only in my eyeball region:

The part of Nemo when the mom gets eaten. An upset toddler on a plane. A capella singing. Two guinea pigs sharing a single piece of grass in slow motion. All-staff meetings where heartfelt words are spoken. Seeing someone else cry. Talking about crying. Remembering that time when someone cried. Putting a donation in the can. Highlights Magazine. Coaches being supportive when their teams lose. People crossing finish lines. 4th Grade xylophone and recorder concerts. Motivational speakers. New parents. My own 10th grade poetry. Sunrises. Sunsets. John Denver. Gift exchanges. The Muppets. Two or more glasses of wine combined with the right/wrong words out of my husband’s mouth. Budweiser Clydesdale ads. Horses, period. Touchdowns. Kindergartners. Friendship.

A have a friend at work who gets teary even more than I do. But when she does, she looks like an adorably sad Disney princess. Her big brown eyes well up and her eyelashes clump together and giant, heartfelt tears roll down her freckled cheeks and we all love her for it. It’s so damn cute, it’s irritating. (Hi Steph!)

This does not happen to me. Sure, my eyes well up, but then my nose turns red and blotchy, my lower lip quivers and my voice shifts into this shaky transgender version of myself. I don’t want to brag, but I may have inspired the term “Ugly Crying.”

As a result I’ve learned several ways to combat the Weeps, or at least hide them. Because a trembling lower lip and face blotches are not good for inspiring confidence at work or sexy times at home. Here are a few:

• Pretend you’re yawning

• Take frequent sips of water.

• Fake a coughing fit like you just inhaled the flavored powder from Fun Dipps.

• Look up and breathe in through your nose, while simultaneously thinking of Spongebob SquarePants. (Don’t know why this works, other than he annoys the crap out of me.)

• Adjust your real or fake contacts. Bonus points if you touch your eyeballs!

Or, if you’re cute like my friend Steph, just go with it. It’s endearing to see someone who so genuinely wears their heart on their sleeve. Even thinking about it makes me... hang on. There's something in my pretend contact.

It's "General Leia" to you.

The other day, my daughter and I were talking about the newest Star Wars movie, which I liked but can’t remember the name of. Sorry. Huge fan though, really.

Anyway, I mentioned Princess Leia.

Immediately, my 10-year-old corrected me with, “you mean General Leia.” (In the same tone I used with my own mom, circa 1986, when she asked me if I’d heard “Whitney Springsteen’s” new album.)

Okay, yes. I stood corrected. GENERAL Leia.

And then the awesomeness of that hit me like a truckload of Tina Fey/Amy Poehler/Jennifer Lawrence/Amy Schumer quotes.

Because it was nothing special to her. Nothing out of the ordinary. It was just a fact, like bruschetta is delicious, flip-flops are a poor choice around horses, and if she loses me in the grocery store, check the wine aisle first.

Lucky for me, she has always been a kind and generous boss.

“Girl Power” isn’t a thing to her. She hasn’t grown up in the “anything boys can do, girls can do better” era, where it was even a question. In her 10-year-old world, #glrlboss is no different from #boyboss.

Of course women will be strong and powerful and driven and have the lead in the movie and fly the spaceship and speak their minds and bring home the bacon. Of course they will. And then hand that bacon right over to their spouse to cook cause they tend to burn the shit out of everything. (Hypothetically.)

Of course a woman can be a scientist or astronaut or stand-up comic or CEO or the effing President of the United States, while also being a wife and mother (or not, totally her choice) with a highly successful female empowerment/lifestyle blog on the side. No big.

My daughter doesn’t yet know all the battles that have been fought, or are currently being fought, or still lie ahead, to get to this place. 

She doesn’t know that just 30ish years ago, Carrie Fisher was mostly famous for cinnamon bun hair and a gold metal bikini that launched a trillion teenage wet dreams.

She doesn’t know that pay inequality is still a thing. That despite my relative success and happiness, I still struggle (as do most of my female friends) with being all the things I want to be and feel I should be, every day.

And she doesn’t know how inspiring and powerful it is for me to realize she is growing up in a new world, and I am part of making that world even better for her as a woman.

She just knows that Leia is a General.

That Rey is a badass with cool hair.

And that she can be or do anything thing she sets her mind to.

Because...of course she can.

My Daughter, the Quitter

Never give up!

Try hard until the end!

If you want more sweet potato fries, you better finish that organic corndog!  

I was taught, and also impress upon my kids, that it’s important to finish. Quitters never win, and winners get all the full-ride scholarships. Or something like that. But the other night, during our sacred lights-out-she’ll-tell-me-anything-time my daughter and I share at bedtime, she made me reconsider.

Apparently, my daughter and a handful of school friends had recently formed a small, um, "band" called The Specials. Maybe you’ve heard of them? (Kidding! I promise you haven’t.) They practiced on sporadic bus rides home and at second recess. My daughter was Lead Guitarist, which she informed me with a level of sincerity normally reserved for Supreme Court nominations.

Two important notes: 1) My daughter doesn’t play the guitar and 2) the guitar was a rubber band attached to a pencil.

But if there’s one thing parenting teaches you, it’s how to play along.

The reason she was telling me about The Band was because she was quitting The Band. Not because she didn’t get to be the part she wanted. Or because they weren’t playing the right songs. Or that all of their instruments were made from half-used school supplies, which you’d think would have messed with the vibe a little.

Nope, she was quitting because they had failed to include another girl who my daughter was friends with. She felt bad for her other friend, who also really wanted to be part of the band.

If my daughter is ever in a band, I hope this is her album cover.

She was quitting based on kindness. Because in her heart, she empathized with how her friend felt, being left out. She understood how bad it would feel if the tables were turned.

My kids don’t roll their eyes or blatantly ignore me (yet), but after a long, heartfelt soliloquy on the importance of being kind above all else, it’s not uncommon for them to say something profound like, “Does this shadow look like a camel to you?” or “I wanna add Space Batman to my birthday list!”

So while it sounds small, her act of kindness and compassion and bravery even, (4th grade girls can be little biotches, let’s face it) made me so proud. It showed me that my husband and I are getting through, even if it doesn’t always seem like it.

We may not be cultivating a rock star, (or maybe we are?) but we’re definitely helping form little people who will spread joy in so many other ways. Sure, music is important. But I think the world could use a lot more kindness and a few less lead guitarists.

The Specials, as it turned out, quickly disbanded altogether. I think the remaining members lost the microphone (a pencil) and the drums (an eraser you hit with a pencil.)

My daughter is still friends with all her former band mates, and is currently exploring a solo career in fashion design. Which also involves lots of pencils.