Tears

Melissa Fraterrigo

1.

We pick at sandwiches in the children’s hospital cafeteria because it is dinnertime and even though we aren’t hungry, the food gives us something to do. It’s been twelve hours since our thirteen-month-old daughter seized. The pit of night glares from the bank of windows beside us when a stranger approaches. “Excuse me,” he says, and as he speaks, he sweeps his arm across his chest and holds it there like a shield and says, “I’m so sorry for your child.” He does not know us. He does not know about the spinal tap or CT and MRI, the way Eva writhed on the bed when they held her down during intubation, the ambulance ride, Pete placing his mouth over Eva’s the night before, how her face had turned blue. But as the stranger walks away, both of us begin to cry.

2.

There are three types of tears—basal, emotional, and reflex. Anytime you experience an eye irritation, the tears that appear are basal. When someone is overcome with emotions, crying may stimulate the body to produce endorphins, so emotional tears could be a means to relieve pent-up stress. Reflex tears originate in the lacrimal gland and are mostly made of water. The body generates these tears in response to stimuli, such as flushing debris from the eye.

I am five years old and seated inside a Chicago theatre between Mom and Grandma; Aunt Mary is on the other side, and I am steamy faced, hands clenched and knotted. Tears slide hot and fast. Everyone tells me to shush. “Melissa, come on now, we’ll buy you another one. Please.” Everything about our downtown trip to see Annie had been enjoyable until I notice that the sugar cone that I had been unable to finish at lunch has shattered inside its nest of napkins. Now I can’t stop crying. Wetness seeps beneath my nose. Grandma hands me a sugarless candy and I grab it, fist the cellophane tight. Still, I cry. As the orchestra plays on, Mom takes my hand and pulls me up the aisle and into the vestibule. Behind the hush of the double doors, music from the stage muffles. The air a cool zing. Mom looks at me. Frowns. She doesn’t speak, but picks me up. I pin my chin on her shoulder and even though I am comforted in her arms, I cry even harder. She pats my back. She wants me to stop. I wish I could.

No matter her age or the circumstances, when Eva cries, I grow rigid, and in the concrete stem of my body I again confront the possibility of a seizure. She cries when I don’t give her the cookie she wants, when I lift her from her high chair, pick up her sister before her, and when I say it is time to go to bed. Each frustration begins the same way: her open mouth and crumbling lip, the netted visor of her brow, those deep brown eyes, skin shunting off to the side. So, each time I choose to withhold the cookie or pick her up and march away from the swings, my own breath thins. Each step with her in my arms seems like we are jogging across a partially frozen lake, my limbs heavy blocks, every nerve in my body attuned to her, the cotton of her overalls, fabric bunching as she squirms. In those moments, I listen for the warm plush of breath.

Since Sunday’s audition for the Nutcracker, both of my daughters have been awaiting the announcement of the assigned roles, but Eva is the one who every 15 minutes refreshes the website where her dance teacher has promised to post the results. By the time the roles are posted and I join them on the couch, Eva’s knees are folded up, laptop resting against them, her nose and eyes red and filling. Eva frowns at the page. She will be a soldier yet again.

“Oh, my gawd!” Jolie says, squealing. “I can’t believe Audrey is going to be a party girl!” Meanwhile, Eva scrolls up and down the screen, counting the number of roles for each dancer, finally bursting into tears.

 “Oh, honey,” I say. Eva shakes her head, unwilling to be comforted. “Jolie gets to be an angel!” she says.

 “Sweetie, Miss Parker has to make decisions for the whole production. It isn’t just about what you want.” My skin prickles and I feel the familiar edge that I won’t be able to help her make sense of her disappointment and that such a response might hasten her distress, and whatever is beyond that.  I finally shut the laptop and open my arms to Eva. She leans into me, shoulders trembling. Damp amoeba-like shapes appear where she presses her face to my shirt. “Oh, sweetie,” I say. “If I could take away this ache, I would.”

6.

They call them breath-holding spells or syncopate because Eva’s face becomes blue, her mouth ajar, as if letting out a wail, only no sound escapes. Eyes glassy and unmoving, crying precedes or precipitates such seizures. If standing, she topples right over, her arms and legs jerking, jerking, the staccato one-two beat. When she was a toddler, I’d hold her in my arms as she seized, but as she has grown older and larger, I ease her onto the floor, roll her on her side and hold her steady while her body executes its underwater dance. Thirty seconds, forty-two, they never last long, the jerks softening, the movement blurs until she stills, opens her mouth, takes in air, and cries.

Early on, I gave her whatever she wanted. Standing there at the park, I swatted mosquitoes, barely able to see my own hand in front of my face as I pushed her on the swings long after everyone else had left. A coward. Now when she cries, everything still halts, but I focus on her face. Take in her color. Is it red and growing redder? That’s okay. It means blood is circulating. More worrisome is if she looks pale and wane. Skin-tinged blue. It is a dance I do between giving in to her wants and holding steady as a parent, leaving the park or turning off the movie or saying goodbye to the friend, and then I pause. I watch her. I wait.

8.

I have my last all-out cry after I share my novel manuscript with my husband and he does not read it. Or a friend, who I share the manuscript with loses it in her inbox, or an editor takes a pass on the book, I don’t get the grant, no one likes the dinner I make and I forget someone’s birthday and they are none too happy. It could be any or all of the above. I slam the door to my room, throw myself on the bed and cry into the pillows about everything and everyone, even bemoaning my grandmothers, both of whom have been gone twenty-plus years now. When I raise my face, everything seems lopsided and my head feels as if it has been stuffed with batten. At some point Pete must have crept in and set a glass of water at my bedside. Still, I am ashamed. Of course, the girls have heard me. Pete did as well. Maybe a mother who cries like a child when her children are but a room away is nothing but a child herself. But the thing is, I feel better. I sip the water. Take note of its stillness. I marvel at my five fingers, the way they curl around the glass, the way a thought in my mind—lift the glass—generates an action. It’s a miracle of sorts, and I am at one with such mystery. Refreshed, I feel more like me.

9.

Things I Tell Eva:

-Don’t compare yourself to others.

-Remember that your thoughts are not facts. They are just thoughts.

-Focus on doing what makes you happy.

-Challenge the negative thoughts.

-If you are feeling down, show kindness to yourself. Do an activity you love or read a favorite book, maybe sit down with Dylan and pet the inside of his paws, that essential softness. You could also repeat a mantra, some sort of short phrase that’s all your own. Mine is Trust.

-Cry, I tell her. It’s okay to cry.

10.

Women cry an average of 5.3 times a month, while men cry 1.3 times a month. Yet there might be a biological reason behind these differences. Testosterone may inhibit crying, while the hormone prolactin, which is higher in women, promotes crying. When women cry, their anatomy makes their tears more pronounced. Women have smaller tear ducts than men so if a woman tears up, her tears will end up on her cheeks faster than a man’s.

I’ve only seen my husband cry on a few occasions:

-On our wedding day, when we said our vows, his eyes rimmed and a few wayward drops made their way down his face. I had my own tears that day, only I am quick to tear up, so that memory does not stand out for me.

-On the day of our twin daughters’ birth he bent over, dropped his head onto his hands and sobbed. The pediatrician came into the room just then. The girls were asleep in two bassinettes in the space between my bed and the vinyl couch where he had spent the night. “Is everything all right?” the doctor asked, gesturing into the air. “What’s wrong?” The two of us looked at one another. We were simply overjoyed.

When I am near Grandma and begin to cry, she pulls me onto her lap and sings a joyful tune without words, her arms around me, knees beneath her denim-colored polyester slacks knocking back and forth. I keep one foot on the floor to hold part of my weight aloft, frightened I’ll hurt her if I sit on her small lap with my full heft. She holds her face to mine and her smell—Sanka and buttered toast and mothballs pulse against her feathery wrinkles as she holds her face to mine. She places her hands with their red arthritic knuckles on my legs. When she embraces me like this, my body next to hers, the tears stop.

13.

There are the normal descriptions of Eva crying—red eyes and nose, tears wending their way down her cheeks, a crunched-up face—but it never feels wholly adequate; there is something deeply primal in the tunneled sound of a cry—a connection to something much greater than the person sobbing. When Eva or I cry, it is prompted by unhappiness in a present moment and yet it also reveals what remains unresolved—each wrong doing, each hurt. Maybe all tears are like this: dammed up inside us so crying is as much about witnessing—being exposed and exposing so each tissue swipe is both a stopping and a release. When we make such uncertainty known, there is a shift. The initial sadness shatters. Others join us on our gloomy rafts. We are not alone.

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Melissa Fraterrigo’s memoir, The Perils of Girlhood was published by the University of Nebraska Press in Fall 2025, and named by Literary Hub as one of “100 Notable Small Press Books of 2025.” She is also the author of the novel Glory Days (University of Nebraska Press), and the story collection The Longest Pregnancy (Livingston Press). She teaches creative writing at Purdue University and is the founder of the Lafayette Writers’ Studio in Lafayette, Indiana. Please visit melissafraterrigo.com and Between the Lines on Substack.