Tears are trick tricky, quick and sneaky
Spreading out when the heart is leaky
Tears show up most announced, but wide awakey
Makeup goes drippy and words go shakey.
Often when I'm unawares
that my heart is full of extra cares.
My heart's remembery is better than my brain
When missing loved ones gives it pain.
I can go for crazy days-ies
Busy-beeing all sorts of place-ies
Then in the commonest place so random
Discover tears fall out unabandon
Where do they come from and where do they lurk
Why are they sneaky and how do they work?
Tears are cleverly inconvenient at best
Their pranks and surprises seem never to rest.
Popping and dropping all over the place
Drip-dripping, sniffsniffling and stinging my face.
All that to say, so misunderstood
For tears I believe are most oftenest GOOD.
For tears are designed for our hearts-
Our hearts hold on to things that are tough
And when the heart feels that enough is enough
Kindly asks tears to get rid of the stuff.
Tears speak a language the whole world knows
That are emotions inside that need to just goes.
They do not discriminate
Tears are poor planners and most often late
And most silly ridiculous to articulate
But they take junk-junky-junk
Sad sadness and funk
even Tenderness, Fond fondness and sweet things I say
The Good goodness that is so hard to say.
When words are too hard for the heart to think up
Tears will come out and mess everything up.
But I like them I do with my heart whole
And I declare tears are good for the soul.
I wrote this poem today, 12/15/11.
I have a very different relationship with tears than most people.
In 2005/06 I had an inspiration and an entrepreneurial dream
to change the way the world cries. I was going to give the world permission to cry by creating little gift boxes filled with all of the thoughtful things a person might need to just cry.
I won't go into detail because it may still happen one day but in the process of planning, I had done a LOT of research on the subject. Even though I understand the science of tears, how they work, how they eliminate emotional toxins from our bodies, I am still often mystified about how they seem to come out of me at the most random and inconvenient times.
For instance:
Sunday I cried at the Disney Museum. When you enter the room where they are announcing in 1966 that he died on an old tv set, you turn around and there is a giant wall of cartoon characters grieving his loss. I thought about how all of the artists influenced and employed by him had used their art to process their own grief, help others process theirs as well as to honor him.
I cried.
Yesterday I cried at the end of speech video on the life of Dr. Suess. It was not a sad speech, in fact it was inspirational, lighthearted and fun. At the end of the speech, the student quoted a poem that Dr. Suess had written late in life, most likely during his fight with cancer. This is the poem.
How did it get so late so soon?
It's night before it's afternoon.
December's here before it's June, My Goodness,
How the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?
Dr Suess
This poem touched me so deeply that tears came out to play.
I had to ask myself "Why am I crying?"
Have you ever had to ask yourself why you are crying?
Do you ask your heart, "What's going on in there?"
I am mystified that there are parts of me, all of us, that are feeling and carrying things that I am completely oblivious to.
I realized that in one week I had been reminded of two very special, creative men in the world that had passed on leaving the world with living memories that are warm and lovely. I realized that "Oh!!!! They are reminding me of my dad! He was super fun like them, creative, a great story teller, and he also has passed away leaving us with living memories that are warm and lovely."
You see, every day I walk through my house and see things that he gave me, talk about what he would think about such & such, see his eyes in my daughter, think of all the things that I appreciate, and then just one day
you'll be listening to someone's kid give a speech
and
somehow rhyming words will unlock all the
feelings that are deep inside.
So that's one level his poem reached.
In my powder room hang two of my favorite pictures of Jake and Calli. A photographer friend took them when Calli was 4 and Jake was 6. They are precious.
I love these pictures.
I look at them and wonder how they got so tall, why am I 40 when I feel like I'm 20, and all of these things rush through your head. I know you all do it too. And then Dr Suess gave it words:
"How did it get so late so soon?"
It's what every parent feels when their kids start kindergarten, graduate 8th grade, go to prom, get their driver's liscense, go to college, get married, have children. It's what we all feel. Tomorrow we will take the homeschool group to go Christmas Caroling at the Nursing and Rehabilitation Home, something we do every year and love, love, love. I bet every ancient person in there (last year there was a man that was 103!) is asking themselves the same thing:
"How did it get so late so soon?"
So this morning as I sat down to post something on my blog, I thought I would just put the poem up there and leave it at that.
I wonder that sometimes these posts are so long that people just lose interest. Plus, there are no pretty pictures to put up of me crying. As I sat here collecting my thoughts, looking at my Christmas tree, remembering sometimes Christmas is the hardest season of the year for people. My heart felt heavy for the people like me who miss their daddies during Christmas, people who are experiencing their first Christmas without someone, people who have families that don't know how to show love, people who don't have homes, food, jobs, or anything, and people who just don't get it-that Christmas is really, really, really, a BIG DEAL! They don't get that they are
soooooooooooooooooooooooooo
loved by God.
I'm not sure what was happening
when I sat at my desk
except I do know that I should have had coffee in hand, inside me, before I began blogging
AND
I do know that I wrote a Dr Suess inspired poem.
Key word "inspired" because it's not easy.
He was a master.
It's not a huge stretch for me to try to write
a Suessy-style poem since
I am a BIG, wait BIG fan of Dr. Suess. Jake is doing a humorous interpretation of a Dr Suess these days, and of course as I said before, I know a lot about tears.
Tears are a gift.
Just roll with them when they show up.
Check in with your heart.
Find a comfortable place.
Give yourself
permission
to
cry.
P.S.
When I sat down at my desk this morning it was 7:35am,
oh jeez! I'm about to hit "publish" and I see it's
10:06am.
How did it get so late so soon?
