It's Alright to Cry

Crying gets the sad out

We put out TWO great episodes of The Mother of it All this week on the experience of parents of trans children. Highly recommend them both.

Transparenting with Marlo Mack

As They Like it: Learning to Follow My Child's Lead with Nicole Graev Lipson

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This week, I hit the Gilmore Girls stage of grief. You know, the one where, after denial and rage, all you can do is stay in bed with the electric mattress pad set to high, watching a show dripping in nostalgia for something that never existed — a world where a narrow swath of people we pretended were a full society only had to worry about which boy to choose and whether to order pancakes or waffles. (If you want to spend more time thinking about fake nostalgia and what its done for this country, see Kathryn Jezer-Morton’s fabulous interview with The Way We Never Were author Stephanie Coontz from last week’s Cut).

It has been pouring in the Bay Area — absolute deluges seemingly every day. When I asked my kids to please not fight for five minutes so we could get to school today, my son yelled “I’m just so effing tired of this rain!” My daughter, of course, defended the rain, told us it hurt her feelings when the two of us (I gladly jumped in) yelled at it through the windshield. We need rain. It’s part of life! But, this week, it has felt like the weather mirrored our collective moods.

So many of my friends have been crying. There is so, so much to cry about it, it’s hard to choose just one thing. (I am not trying to be vague, I just think you know what I’m referring to, but if you’d like clarity, I am talking about the blitz). My kids’ school is holding emergency meetings to inform immigrant families of their rights. Children are being denied medical care. Systems are disappearing overnight. This is just the beginning. As I said, a lot to cry about, and my friends are having to explain to their children why they are crying, how much to share and how much to withhold. What is too horrifying and what will prepare them for their role in whatever world this is.

I have not been able to cry. I have been tense, distracted. When my son overheard us fretting the other day, we explained that if he noticed we were stressed or on our phones more lately, it was because of what was happening with Trump’s presidency. Yes, he told us, he’d notice. But for about a year now, I have taken Lexapro to treat my seemingly mysterious but actually very treatable vestibular disorder, and for all their magic, those little while pills won’t let me feel big feelings, orgasm (without great effort), cry, release. In some ways, it is a great time to be on anti-depressants! But I want to cry — to fall apart, really.

Not falling apart is convenient, yes. There are so many daily demands to attend to. Even as I write this, I am being called upon to retrieve a mischievous kitty from a child’s bedroom, to bring apple slices, to find Dogman: Fetch 22. We have larger work to do too, work that requires that we not cry all the dang time. What that work is, I have not figured out yet. That is, I’m hoping, the next stage.

Today I dragged myself out of my den of Lorelais, pried myself away from the cat, and went dancing. For almost a decade, since I was pregnant with my first baby, I have gone to a local dance studio, just for women, run by two sisters with amazing hair. Sometimes we do routines to Tina Turner, sometimes Bollywood or K-Pop. Always Beyonce. Sometimes we turn the lights off and are instructed to imagine we are writing our names with our pussies, usually to Usher.

My body has gone through two pregnancies, two births and what bodily and emotional madness came after those births, at least nine different bra sizes, in this place. I brought my daughter to childcare here while I danced, and then we waved to her beloved childcare provider over Zoom when quarantine hit, and then I danced in my driveway, and my living room, and with my son yelling at the screen to “please play Thunder Thighs!” and many days I thought it was keeping me alive. It is the kind of place where I am willing, after years, to be vulnerable, willing to ask if they wouldn’t mind turning off the disco ball because of my dizziness, even at the risk of seeming high-maintenance. When I come here, I see my kids’ teachers and other moms and cool young women who seem way more comfortable in their skin than I did at their age. I often hurt after class from smiling.

The teacher turns on a song that, if I had to guess, I would say is Pink, about loving yourself. This one is not my genre - I am here for the Usher and the pussy-writing. But I am sweating for the first time in days, in this dark room with a bunch of strangers, and a former colleague who randomly also likes Thursday mornings at nine, and the most gangly, adorable twenty-something who I always want to take out to lunch and buy a good vibrator or something auntie-like, and a woman who is visibly pregnant, and this teacher who remembers my name. Pink or whoever it is telling us to love ourselves, that that’s all that matters, and we’re punching the air and yelling, and circling up, and I see across the circle the pregnant woman, she’s smiling too, and all of a sudden I’m oozing tears. And I cry through the cool down, and the stretch to Etta James, and if anyone notices, they definitely don’t mind, but also no one would ask me why. In this room, everyone knows.

I am very, very sad about the state of our country. But I’m crying because we’re here, together.

My friend Christie George says do the thing you wish you could do for everyone for one person. A few people. Tonight, parents at my school volunteered to take care of other peoples’ children so they could go to the emergency meeting. My husband went to Trader Joe’s and we dropped off salad and cheese and crackers and the good peanut butter cups. I stopped and introduced myself to a new neighbor. I made cupcakes for my friend’s daughter’s seventh birthday, so many that the bowl of my mixer almost over-flowed. I could have made a hundred cupcakes, a thousand, a trillion, for everyone’s daughter, everywhere, with extra sprinkles.

It’s late, but I need the comfort of the girls — I watch the Season 3 finale, proud of how far I’ve come. It’s Rory’s graduation, and Lauren Graham and the criminally under-utilized Melissa McCarthy are trying not to cry. Even Luke, the monosyllabic diner owner who we are supposed be pining after even though he needs a lifetime of therapy, is crying. Even the men are crying! That’s how we know shit is REAL. “We’re not going to blubber,” McCarthy promises. “That’s what we meant when we said we weren’t going to cry.”

I’ve been interrupted again, this time because my daughter can’t fall asleep. The cat is too zoomy to be good company, and it is just so lonely sometimes in bed, she tells me, and I tell her I understand. I tuck her into my bed, the cat curled calmly beside her for now, and creep out into the living room to finish this. I predict that within the next five or ten minutes, there will be some new need to fill. But for now I can tear up again, thinking of all the people I love who are trying to galvanize and survive and care, listening to the rain pummel my back porch, wondering what will come after.

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Also, this:

The other bit of joy I had this week was seeing the delightful film Companion, which I would described as a “comedy with lots of blood.” Me and Tracy Clark-Flory, who wrote a wonderful review of it, got to laugh in the dark with strangers about the patriarchy and I was glad I made myself leave the house.

Also enjoyed The Hidden Lives of Pets on Netflix, narrated by Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville (or as my son calls him, Hug Bennyville) with my kiddos. Shout out to the unfurnished Airbnb they shot all their B-roll in!

And finally, the great Alice Wong and pals were on KQED’s Forum with Alexis Madrigal this week, talking about her incredible work and fighting for disability justice. If you don’t know, get a copy of this essential collection.