I grew up with the idea that only the weak cry. It worked
for me. I wasn’t one of those kids that cried all the time when they didn’t get
what they want, I sit and strategize and I always end up getting what I wanted.
I was a smart kid like that. I blame my father tho, he bought me books that
thought me to be smart.
Tears are like rain in summer, I look at it as beauty. You
know when it rains and you want to sit down and read a book or just go to
sleep, that’s tears for me. It’s a rare comfort I am not blessed with having
the company of all the time, whenever I cry, I always end up sleeping the day
away, I saw my mother do this when her friend died. As she cried out her
friends’ name, I sat on the couch and hugged my knees. I tried to watch the
show going on on the tv but all I could hear wear my mothers cries, I could
feel the tears streaming down her face forming a pool of anguish at her feet.
It wasn’t a pool I could swim, I couldn’t save her. I was only 5. I sat and
listened as her other friend hugged her and comforted her. That is how I
learned the beauty of hugs. Even in the most painful moments, I hug could lift
your spirits. My mothers’ sobs subsided and she wore her iron mask. We were not
a very touchy feely family. My mother taught us to swallow our pain and only
let it out when it was most necessary. Whenever I did something wrong and my
mother hits me, she always follows it up in her very cultured mother tongue
“swallow those tears”. I grew up swallowing my pain, at a point I drowned in my
pain. In cases when I was allowed to cry, I learned were when the source of my
anguish is beyond my control, I had to sit in the waiting room and listen to my
mother in the theater with the doctor while I held her purse. I listened as my
mother cried out for her own mother when the doctors’ blade sliced her finger
to remove the puss from her infected whitlow. I could not save my mother. I
felt the doctors lift of the blade and I felt it coming down on her finger and
I heard her blood flow from it, I listened to it flow like an ocean wave, it
was chaotic, between the sound of the blade, the flash of its silver tip, the
ocean of blood flowing from my mothers finger and her sobs. I sat in the
waiting room and held her purse and drowned in my ocean of emotions. I was not
allowed to cry. My mothers’ tears were gold, a rare form of gold that you only
get to see almost never. I wanted to lift a glass to her eyes and well up the
tears to stop them from hitting the ground and forming a pool that I couldn’t
swim across, I wanted to be able to save my mother, she came out of the theatre
with a smile on her face, I held her purse, I asked her if it hurt and she
looked at me dead in the eyes and said “a little bit”. She was titanium. I held
her purse. She bid the nurse and doctor goodbye. I held her purse. We walked to
the car and my mother, hand bandaged up all together got into the car, put on
her seat belt and drove us home. I held her purse.
