What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you see tears in another’s eyes? For me, it’s a pain. You?
I know the tears can come about for one of many reasons. Even I’ve cried tears of joy. I recall one particular moment when I was a kid.
It was Christmas, and I was in middle school. It was the early days of CDROMs, and I had just become aware of how much fun a computer could be. My family got a pretty standard personal computer, but it didn’t have a CDROM drive. I can’t remember the trade magazine, but whatever it was, there was an ad to purchase an internal CD-ROM drive, sound card, and over 500 different programs.
I had no idea what most of the programs did, but I didn’t care. I don’t recall why I wanted it so much. But I did.
My parents always got me something that I wanted for Christmas, but this felt way outside the bounds of reason. So when I walked into the living room Christmas morning and saw it spread out under the tree, I immediately burst into tears of joy. In a matter of hours, I have that drive installed. In the coming years, I learned to love computer systems.
I know the tears can come about for one of many reasons. Even I’ve cried tears of joy. I recall one particular moment when I was a kid.
It was Christmas, and I was in middle school. It was the early days of CDROMs, and I had just become aware of how much fun a computer could be. My family got a pretty standard personal computer, but it didn’t have a CDROM drive. I can’t remember the trade magazine, but whatever it was, there was an ad to purchase an internal CD-ROM drive, sound card, and over 500 different programs.
I had no idea what most of the programs did, but I didn’t care. I don’t recall why I wanted it so much. But I did.
My parents always got me something that I wanted for Christmas, but this felt way outside the bounds of reason. So when I walked into the living room Christmas morning and saw it spread out under the tree, I immediately burst into tears of joy. In a matter of hours, I have that drive installed. In the coming years, I learned to love computer systems.
As an aside, the CD ROM drive didn’t work right out of the box. I knew it couldn’t possibly be anything other than how I had installed it. There was a single line of code that you could enter into a command prompt. Having no idea whether or not it would work, I ran that line of code, and huzzah! The CD ROM drive came to life! A programmer was born. Anyways, I digress, back to tears.
My (almost) three-year-old has discovered a new tactic: crying. She’s pretty good at it; I have to say. She can turn on the waterworks at the drop of a hat. It’s impressive. She doesn’t get the show she likes; she cries. I don’t open the box the way she wants me to; she cries.
But, this is not the only time the tears stream down her face. She falls, she cries. She touches something sharp or hot, she cries. She’s afraid of the darkroom, she cries. She loses track of either of us in a busy store; we cry, then she cries.
It’s hard to differentiate at face value which is which: Is it a tactic? An emotional response? or both? And there’s the rub.
Tears without context have no meaning. So, the search for meaning begins.
As I sit rocking my second daughter, after an erratic bout of crying and screaming, I think about the hunting and pecking that I went through to diagnose why she was so upset. There was no obvious explanation (diaper changed: check, fed: check, comfortable position in my arms: check). I doubt she’s practicing her manipulation tactics on me at such a young age. I doubt she is bursting into tears for absolutely no reason. But, she can’t tell me what that reason is; there’s no context.
So I start to piece it together. Putting a timeline together in my mind; what happened one minute ago? What happened 10 minutes ago? What happened an hour ago? What happened this time yesterday? What happened to our other daughter at her age? What happened to other kids I read about at this age?
It’s incredible to me how many questions I ask myself to get a little understanding of what she might be going through that’s throwing her into such a fit. But then, just like that, she’s asleep. Whatever it was doesn’t matter to her now.
So, do I dig for the answer or let it go? Do I carry this forward?
Do I move on?