When we consider what we’re dealing with currently as opposed to what people like my parents lived through in the 1930s and 40s and dealt with daily, it’s crazy for us to believe our problems cannot be solved or swallowed until a situation can be resolved by us, without SHARING our tears.
I’m not saying we can’t cry.
No. We MUST absolutely cry.
We just need to shed our tears with purpose.
Everyone doesn’t need to be nor should they be privy to all our intimacies and crying is or at least it used to be one of the most expressive vulnerable things any human could do. Has that changed? What is going on now where we expose ourselves and our vulnerabilities daily without any guard?
All of my tears have served to move me along like rivers carrying me to the next place where I could disembark from the sad rowboat I was on to board a different seafaring vessel with another destination.
Did you see the unobstructed sunset from that balcony of a special place I found after one eyeball waterfall led me to seek shelter/solace on the bay?
Do you feel that ocean breeze blowing on you because my tears helped me find peace in a quiet place with palm trees I can now call my own?
These children and young adults today cry as a matter of course, anywhere, anytime, in front of anyone, for any reason, several of which I’ve found to be whack and unworthy of unwarranted tears. I’m in awe of this being acceptable behavior but it seems to be what’s in vogue now. We won’t even get into the mascara mishaps this causes. Those are minor when we explore this newly accepted behavior in general.
Let me be clear about my viewpoint because this written discourse has an origin and a comparison.
I’m a multiple decade veteran of the television broadcast industry and if I had even ONCE cried on/at/about my job while on the job in the 1980’s, I would be doing something else in another line of work starting 40+ years ago.
This is not to say either approach is right or wrong before some of the town criers seek to AT me with opinions.
This is to say times have changed and a lot of it has to do with perspective and upbringing.
My colleagues and I “grew up” in television during a time when women were far and few between and black women in our end of the industry were even fewer.
“Colleagues” actually called us “the little girl directors” just like I’m fake calling them “colleagues” when they were, some, actually tormentors, and others just waiting, hoping, and sometimes wishing we would fail.
Fortunately we did become a bit hard-boiled as simply being black and surviving was already a challenge so this was merely another thing to do, another hill to climb.
It all started somewhere else for me.
My mom and dad didn’t encourage tears but they never told me I couldn’t cry.
I just didn’t. I’ve only recently leaned into being a big softie. I’m still figuring out if it’s just a byproduct of aging.
Our family strategy always seemed to be the proverbial finding a silver lining thing except we dug for gold. There would be a story, saying, joke, or look that made things make sense instead of just being sad. Many years later and being more inclined toward knowing things about my parents’ years in this country and the climate in which they had to navigate life before me, I’ve come to a greater understanding and appreciation of their personal struggle as it fits into the story of our ongoing striving to be treated fairly.
I can’t speak for my cousins who got their share of “let me give you something to cry about” spankings. Perhaps it was my witness to those which made me a more stoic child.
There was one time in college, I vividly recall consciously containing my tears after a particular event which made me feel betrayed by a friend. I was walking down the last block of Bryant Street before it intersects with Georgia Ave between what was then the bakery and the outer edge of the hospital. I can still put myself in that very spot at that exact time (good memory blessing/curse or vice versa).
I was walking and stuffing tears down my throat with every step, determined not to let even one drop, while I recited The Lord’s Prayer under my breath and that’s the amazing time the words about “forgiving those who trespass against me” really hit home. My still forming tears became past tense and in that very moment I felt amazing release and relief. That person is still a friend today, because in an instant I had a better understanding of them and their definition of friendship. I’m not completely certain I had the best understanding of my own definition of friendship.
Privately, I’ve had my Scarlet O’Hara moments where something hurt so bad I had to throw myself on the bed and flat out wail, or roll along the shower walls while the water washed the tears away. That kind of crying usually happens when someone is dead and can only be accessed in my heart or memory. I saw my mother cry with gulps for air one time and it was at a funeral. She didn’t even cry in the hospital when they told us it was terminal, so neither did I.
She barely let her eyes water when they put the tube in her nose while I held her to help keep her steady when they did it. There must be something about growing up as the daughter of a Georgia sharecropper and a Seminole mother that made her tougher than the average bear. She never flinched when they told us no matter what the law said we could not try on shoes in the store and the sale would be final. This was in Cleveland, OH. The northern states had their own Jim Crow ways in the 1960’s.
No tears were shed.
While my parents’ story has always influenced and informed my life, I’m periodically surprised by a new perspective I hadn’t realized yet.
So many of the things I think and do, say and believe, tolerate, dismiss, accept are all down to me being in league with them.
I watched them make a way for us in this life and that’s just the part I saw, after they’d already had to fight even harder to get to that hard place. Okay?!
What kind of s*#% is that, when you’ve already had to fight through some hardships like living in the southland only to move north and have Jim Crow follow you, to get to another hard place that’s a little less hard? Hunh?!
What about my father being in service for this country after a stint in the British Royal Navy and still being denied some basic dignities because he had an accent and was often thought to be here illegally? Come on man! He’s got a frickin’ thank you letter from Franklin Roosevelt!
We always had a harder time entering the states after our Canadian summer vacations because my dad had to prove he belonged here with more than his license, unlike all the other dads at the border. I still have the envelope with mama’s handwriting that says “Eric’s papers”. His naturalization certificate and birth certificate are still in there, along with his discharge document.
I believe it used to hold some then current pay stubs and bills with his name and address on them. As soon as he’d open his mouth to respond to the border officer’s question about how we enjoyed our time in Canada, I would immediately get out my book and start reading knowing we were going to be stuck a while. There were some summers when I’d be saying to myself “don’t talk to them Daddy” because I wanted to go home but if you don’t talk you’re often considered even more suspect.
The issues didn’t stop there.
I know my father wasn’t treated properly medically over the years. Most African Americans his age weren’t so that’s not surprising, but to ignore when someone is disclosing a pain, not solving the problem, should be illegal as a physician. It wasn’t until we got him to Maryland that a cadre of Howard University educated doctors and a few others sprinkled in among the group were able to fix some things the quacks in Cleveland weren’t professional enough to handle. A few of the problems had existed for too long and couldn’t be repaired.
My mom didn’t have that same problem with doctors because she never went to them. It wasn’t until she was 82 that we convinced her to go to the hospital and by then it was time to go. She already knew.
She had prepared her clothes in advance to make it easier on us when it became necessary to hand them off so she could be dressed for burial. It was the outfit I’d given her the previous mother’s day. She kept telling me she just needed to find the right shoes for it because she wanted to wear it “someplace special”. She did find the shoes and she put everything together in a box including all the items required for burial in the state of Ohio. Heaven is a special place.
Now, I try to always use tears as fuel, the way my mom and dad did to get to the next, better, less hard place.
It has occurred to me, even when black people are happy, deep down I think we’re still a little bit sad.
It’s like we’ve become accustomed to the very deeply buried painful possibility that our happiness could only be temporary.
We don’t speak on it or give it any air. We never mention it aloud. We don’t “claim it”.
I’m thinking we don’t consciously recognize it because it is simply a thread that has been woven into the fabric of our very existence on this soil. It is an unseen sheer flimsy kind of a shadow thread loosely sewn to one small edge of us with about three stitches, fewer than needed to secure Peter Pan’s actual shadow to him, and it’s just there.
Even while we’re believing it, shouting thank you to God about it, rejoicing and dancing about it, inviting our friends to share in our joy, there’s a small sliver of the happy pie that is uncertain. It’s a “who made this pie” question and a “do we trust their cooking” kind of situation.
It’s akin to those few little bubbles and burps of a volcano letting you know it is still active while dormant and the devastation could be very real if/when it erupts and erases all you’ve loved, built, cherished.
That’s no way to live.
Yet, we do, happily.
No other group of people adapts, morphs, or improvises like black people. That is what makes us so remarkable and soulful. Plus, we do it without shedding many tears.