I’ve been crying all my life, I suppose I never really stopped from my youth when it was tolerated, into my adolescence when it was frowned on, and then through my student years when it was taboo. I remember crying at the Bolshoi version of the Dying Swan in the Gaiety in Dublin at 16, in front of mortified college friends the first time I heard Cohen’s “Hey that’s no way to say Goodbye” and again at a friends house while watching something crass with Jimmy Stewart- to the concern of the friend’s mother. (Is something the matter Martin ?)
When my children were small they used to watch “Little House on the Prairie” with one eye on the tele and the other on Dad (“He’s off again !). I don’t actually think I am altogether alone in this. Glancing around through tears at my mothers funeral I saw that my three brothers were weeping openly while my three sisters were white faced but keeping their upper lips in control.
It has to some extent been a sexist thing, not shaming for women but certainly shaming for men. I say has, because now, and quite suddenly, the rules have changed. It started with Trudeau and Obama weeping openly on live television and now! Jeez ! They are all at it. Biden last week blubbed his way through an award ceremony. Basically, for once I am ahead of the posse by crying copiously all my life.
I suppose the thing that I find most remarkable about this sea change is how the heck did these macho men manage before the amnesty ? American Presidents, English Kings- even bereaved husbands at funerals, were capable of delivering devastating words dry eyed. I could never start to imagine how they do this but never cared enough to try.