I cry in movies now
Growing up I wanted the ability to cry in movies. I wanted to be so moved by what was happening onscreen that I could eke out some tears, like other people seemed to. My sister sobbed when the horse in War Horse tore through No Man’s Land, getting caught in barbed wire. I asked her, you didn’t cry when any of the people in this movie died, but the horse?
I cried at my own plights a lot. Migraines, boys, arguments with my parents most of all. I didn’t cry at my Grandpa’s funeral when I was 12, despite the care he took of us. Taking photos and putting them into little pink and purple albums for my sister and I, respectively. He was a woodworker, and so he printed poems that I wrote about butterflies and how much I loved them, the titles in WordArt fonts, and made pink and purple frames for them so I could hang them on the wall of my purple bedroom. I wanted to cry then too, but the same thing, no matter how I screwed up my eyes, I couldn’t cry. I thought, how selfish I must be, to cry at my own problems but not at the bad things that happen to other people.
Have you ever seen The Descendants? It’s an adaptation of a book from 2007. In it, George Clooney’s wife (not Amal) is in a boating accident and goes into a coma. He and his wife had been distant for a while, and he comes to find out his wife had been cheating on him. He has a teenaged daughter and a younger daughter, Scottie, both of whom he has to learn how to parent for the first time. The story is sweet and funny in light of the subject matter, and set against a backdrop of Hawaii in a utopian contrast to the tragedy. Towards the end of the movie, George Clooney finally has to tell Scottie that her mom isn’t going to wake up. When I watched this movie a few months ago, I started crying profusely at this scene. To be 10 years old and not have your mom anymore. To be a parent, heart breaking at the loss of your child’s mother and also at the loss your child feels, unable to protect them from that pain.
I’ve cried in lots of movies now — and annually at those Google “Year in Search” ads. I cry when I think too much about how my cats love me and trust me. And of course I still cry at my own problems. I think I thought as a kid, since I never saw my parents cry, that one day I would grow out of crying. Not so!
There’s an obvious missing part of this story, and I feel like I still need a few years and distance to talk about it in the right way. I’m a kid in a long line of kids with a hard shell. Ever since I moved away from home, the shell has gradually softened and fallen away in little pieces. I saw that the person I wanted to be when I grew up was Julia Child, my costume design professor and work-study boss who got her YTT in her 60s, and other women I’ve met who as they get older remain open to new experiences and never take themselves too seriously. I gained friends who are frustratingly good gift givers, ones who are side-achingly funny, and ones who despite always having the most insane emotional turmoil in their lives are the most even-keeled, loving people I know. I learned how to be a better listener, validating rather than cutting in with a similar story of my own. The underlying thread is, of course, empathy. And so, I cry in movies now.