Permission to Cry
Alone in
the wheel of light at the dining room table, surrounded
by an otherwise darkened house, I sat in tears.
Finally,
I'd succeeded in getting both kids to bed. A relatively
new single parent, I had to be both Mommy and Daddy to my two little
children. I got them both washed, accompanied by shrieks of delight,
crazy running around, laughing and throwing things. More or less calmed
down, they lay in their beds as I gave each the prescribed five minutes
of back rubs. Then I took up my guitar and began the
nighttime ritual of folk songs, ending
with "All the Pretty Little Horses," both kids' favorite. I
sang it over and over, gradually reducing the tempo and the volume until
they seemed fully engaged in sleep.
A recently
divorced man with full custody of his children, I was determined to give
them as normal and stable a home life as possible. I put on a happy face
for them. I kept their activities as close to how they had always been
as I could. This nightly ritual was just as it had always
been with the exception that their mother
was now missing. There, I had done it again; another night
successfully concluded.
I had
risen slowly, gingerly, trying to avoid making even the least sound
which might start them up again, asking for more songs and more stories.
I tiptoed out of their room, closed the door part way, and went
downstairs.
Sitting at
the dining room table, I slumped in my chair, aware that this was the
first time since I came home from work that I'd been able to just sit
down. I had cooked and served and encouraged two little ones to eat. I
had done the dishes while responding to their many requests for
attention. I helped my oldest with her second grade homework
and appreciated my youngest's drawings
and oohed over his elaborate construction of Lego blocks. The bath, the
stories, the backrubs, the singing and now, at long last, a brief moment
for myself. The silence was a relief, for the moment.
Then it
all crowded in on me: the fatigue, the weight of the responsibility, the
worry about bills I wasn't sure I could pay that month. The endless
details of running a house. Only a short time before, I'd been married
and had a partner to share these chores, these bills, these worries.
And
loneliness. I felt as though I were at the bottom of a great sea of
loneliness. It all came together and I was at once lost, overwhelmed.
Unexpected, convulsive sobs overtook me. I sat there, silently sobbing.
Just then,
a pair of little arms went around my middle and a little face peered up
at me. I looked down into my five-year-old son's sympathetic face.
I was
embarrassed to be seen crying by my son. "I'm sorry, Ethan, I
didn't know you were still awake. "I don't know why it is, but so
many people apologize when they cry and I was no exception. "I
didn't mean to cry. I'm sorry. I'm just a little sad
tonight."
"It's
okay, Daddy. It's okay to cry, you're just a person."
I can't
express how happy he made me, this little boy, who in the wisdom of
innocence, gave me permission to cry. He seemed to be saying that
I didn't have to always be strong, that it was occasionally possible to
allow myself to feel weak and let out my feelings.
He crept
into my lap and we hugged and talked for a while, and I took him back up
to his bed and tucked him in. Somehow, it was possible for me to
get to sleep that night, too. Thank you, my son.
from A 4th
Course of Chicken Soup for the Soul
Copyright 1997 by Jack Canfield, Mark
Victor Hansen, Hanoch
McCarty & Meladee McCarty
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