Last night, just before he headed upstairs to bed, The Artist came to me with a confession that he’d had, what he called, a “crying fit” earlier in the evening. He told me he’d seen a Hallmark commercial for something – maybe a talking card or a picture frame – “…and these two little girls heard their grandma’s voice, and that’s totally something nana would have done and I REALLY MISS HER!” and then – much sobbing.
Dudes. How the hell am I going to get through this season when it’s only the 10th of November, and every other commercial is already about baking cookies with grandma or throwing the door open to eager grandchildren and enveloping them in the warmth of your loving grandmotherly arms? Fuck.
The poor kid. So we had a little cry together and then he and his brother went upstairs and got ready for bed. While they were gone, The Genealogist told me he’d come downstairs during the earlier “crying fit” and The Musician was trying to comfort him.
I love that all three of my boys are so sensitive, that they get emotional and they comfort each other without embarrassment – at home and in public. I love it so much, but I also know what it’s like to go through life as the kid/teen/adult who cries at everything from long distance commercials to those World Vision infomercials with the sad children of third world countries, to even really cute kitties doing really cute things or a song that just tugs at the heartstrings. At times? It sucks to not be able to keep it together, to lose your shit on a regular basis when your emotions get the better of you. It can really suck, and the sad thing is it can suck even worse for boys and men who are supposed to be immune to emotions or something. And that in itself is a whole other level of suckage, hooray patriarchy! But it’s who I am, it’s who they are. And I wouldn’t change a thing about us.
Still, it’s going to be a long holiday season.
The Urban Info Girl 