My son’s at an age when he has some difficulty maintaining his emotions. You can sense it in the crack of his voice or the quiver of his lip. When these times come, my wife and I know that if we can’t stem the tide quickly, the dam will overflow.

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The cause can be as inane as not getting dessert. Or it can be as understandably devastating as being left out by his peers. Whatever it is, when the tears start to come, save some miracle of parental adroitness, the tears come. They come hard and deep, and they can last a while.

At that point the only thing to do is either sit in the pain with him if the cause is legitimate or to more or less ignore him if the cause is something unwarranted (like wanting twelve M&M’s instead of ten).

But here’s my observation. My son does not have a shut-off valve. When I start to cry, I can shut it off at will. My wife will tell you I’m a sap, that I’m giving myself too much credit here. But even she would admit I have more tear control than my little guy—quite a bit more, actually.

Things We Lose

While I don’t want him to cry over silly things, I cherish how easily his tears come. I want him to hold on to some of that. I don’t want him to be ashamed of crying.

I’m reminded of my Classics courses in college in which I learned the ancient Greeks didn’t have the same hang-ups we have nowadays about crying men, especially in America. Tough dudes like Achilles and Odysseus didn’t mind showing emotion. Why should we?

I’m also reminded of that brilliant song “When I Was a Boy” by Dar Williams in which she reminisces about how it was okay as a girl to do things like climb trees and ride her bike without a shirt on. At the end of the song she’s a woman telling a man he won the gender game. “Now you’re top gun, I have lost and you have won,” to which the man responds, “Oh no, no, can’t you see? When I was a girl . . . I picked flowers . . . I could always cry, now even when I’m alone I seldom do.”

It’s true, isn’t it? Our gender role formation steals things from us as we get older—the normalcy of a tree-climbing girl or a crying boy.

To My Son

So, son, here’s what I want you to know. I want you to know it’s okay to cry. I want you to treasure the sensitivity you now have and nurture it. I want you to reject every form of shame, and if ever I do something that causes you to feel shame, please tell me because I don’t want to do those things.

I want you to hold on to this boyish ability to cry and cry hard. It’s okay. It means you’re human, you’re sentient (you’ll understand that word later), and you feel deeply. Feeling deeply is part of a rich life.

Men who stuff their emotions are not cool or tough, they’re certainly not more manly. They’re in danger of losing a part of themselves, a part that is supposed to be there.

I’m not telling you to use your tears to manipulate people, and I’m not telling you to be an infant. Babies cry more than adults because babies lack the diversity of expressive resources people accumulate as they mature.

You too will continue to develop a range of ways to express yourself, but don’t spurn your tears.

Let’s face it. There are things in this world that are worth crying about. I hope, for example, I will never come to a day when reflecting deeply on the poverty of a place like Haiti does not bring me to tears. It should. Crying over poverty and injustice is right and good and fitting. So is crying when we lose someone who is dear to us.

So when you feel like crying, cry. Let the tears come and feel deeply. Do this forever. You’ll be a better man if you do.

Love,
Dad