For Crying out Loud

This will have to be quick and dirty this week. My mom’s going into surgery for cancer, I’ve got a bunch of students working on essays, my infant son is surviving a bout of indigestion, a couple of friends are getting married, and my Senior Project student was presenting last week and has turned in her final paper. None of this would matter but many of the above were crying at me one way or another to help them or I was crying at them. Now today’s writing is, as you’ve guessed, about crying. I’ve heard a great deal of it lately, including that an artist whose muse pulled her access and of a good friend who’s been drunk for about two years and is surprised that both his personal and professional life are suffering. It seems to be endemic of this point in Spring. Maybe the fine weather has us all up too late, but it seems like everyone’s crying these days.

Have you ever noticed that in movies if any director wants to indicate a condition of squalor in, say, a Third World country, a run-down apartment house in the ‘hood, family distress, or a really bad attack of the Blair Witch, the sound cue is a crying baby? Don Delillo in White Noise even included a section where J. A. K. Gladney’s son Wilder (pay attention to the names) cries for hours. The child just wails and keens, a sound that Gladney ( a professor of Hitler studies) says was “a sound so large and pure I could almost listen to it, try consciously to apprehend it, as one sets up a mental register in a concert hall or theater. He was not sniveling or blubbering. He was crying out, saying nameless things in a way that touched me with its depth and richness. This was an ancient dirge all the more impressive for its resolute monotony. Ululation.” (78).

Babies crying is almost an archetypal metaphorical language for something being very, very wrong. It triggers in most adults a sense of concern, depression or at least unease so strong that when played a tape of a baby crying, most will misjudge the length of the session by at least 200%.

The last time I nearly cried was about 4:30 am on the second day of a 48-hour, every-two-hour feeding blitz that showed no signs of slowing or stopping. A friend of mine, a Mister H, suggested (mind you, after hours of imbibing) that I’d become boring because I was recounting the hours Connor awoke the night before. Okay, not the most exciting discourse, but Connor has been crying a lot lately – sometimes every two hours. And it sure as hell is of interest if you’re the one trying to figure out why. As Dan wrote, it seems the baby he had a growth spurt and then some stomach distress. (for a detailed account about these misadventures and vast quantities of poo, go to: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=59775710&blogID=256753693&Mytoken=EFAE5B16-F659-4931-A013F10A65E817BC43895339P .

That much sleep deprivation is enough to make you weep in frustration. I’m not a weeper. I get pissed off, cranky, and impossible, but I don’t cry. I’m like the razor-packing chick in Neuromancer whose tear ducts are rerouted for her permanent shades and she spits instead. I spit, fume, grumble, grouse, groan, yell and throw things but it’s all a form of crying. Poor Dan, who has taken over a good portion of the daily operation here, spent a week ducking and dodging before he read me the riot act and told me in no uncertain terms to settle down or do my own goddamn dishes. We all have our own way of expressing distress.

Tracy Hogg, in the ever-famous Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, has a whole chapter on crying and in a separate block writes “A CRYING BABY DOES NOT EQUAL A BAD PARENT.” This is a useful book with a section from page 80-87 on how to interpret infant body language that I think they ought to send home with you from the hospital. But that message, that a crying baby is not the end of the world or a symptom of bad parenting is invaluable. Babies cry. It’s what they do, but it doesn’t make it any easier to hear.

So to all my friends, thank you for your understanding, and to those I’ve spit on, I apologize, it’s my bad temper, and it’s a crying shame.