all kinds

Most adults are familiar with a variety of tears.  The kind that come when you cut an onion or the ones that can't be held back when you're laughing so hard with your sister, the ones shed in pain and devastation and the sniffly, blubbering kind caused by Hallmark commercials.

I sob during hymns at church, at the arc of a good story, with the sudden sense of life's accumulating goodbyes.  I seriously burst into tears over everything and nothing.  The boys know this about me, and they know that their dad cries on occasion too.

Just this week, tears sprang when I saw the Facebook status of two ladies from Broad Street, partners for more than twenty years, wed over the weekend in NYC.  And again when I thought about Uncle John, who explained recently that he felt like he was spending all of his energy on staying alive.  Grief leaked from my eyes when I saw a redhead in a Little Orphan Annie costume, imagining all the could-have-beens, and I wept when I heard the news about a teaching friend's husband, diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Last night I sniveled a little as I read Jodi Picoult's most recent novel.

While we were in Iowa, with the big kids at school and the little boys napping, Tucker got to spend the afternoon with the dads, doing guy stuff.  They went to a bar for wings and ordered Tuck a "kid beer" to go with his lunch.  The root beer arrived, huge and frosty, and he took his first sip.  His face twisted, from what I hear, his eyes welled and he whispered, "You know Dad, when something's so good it makes you cry?"

That's my favorite kind.