Parenting, Life Lessons, Memoir

A Cookie, Cry & Conversation

Don’t Hold Back: Life lessons during a pandemic.

An Empty Bedroom

This afternoon while I was composing an email, my anxiety overwhelmed me and my eyes watered. I walked into my 9-year-old son’s empty bedroom and shut the door. I stepped up the ladder to his loft bed, knelt face down onto his Minecraft blanket, and cradled my forehead in my palms. I cried non-stop for five minutes, body shuddering, yelping breathing, a snotty nose, wet cheeks.

My son walked in.

“Mom, can I have a cookie?” “Yes, go get it yourself, ok?” “Mommy, are you crying?” “Yes.” “Mommy, why are you crying?” “I’ll tell you later.” “Are you fake crying?” “No, D.” “Mom, why are you crying?” “I’ll tell you later, ok? Go get your cookie. I just need to cry right now, okay? Remember how we talked about alone time?” “But this is my room.” “Well, Daddy is using our room all day because he’s working from home now.”

My son left the room and returned in a few minutes.

“Mommy, are you done crying? Now can you tell me why you’re crying?”

I cried some more. D climbed up to the bed. I said, “You know how sometimes when you fall and hurt yourself or when someone hurts your feelings? Then you cry it out because it hurt?”

He nodded.

“Then, after you cry, you feel so much better because you let out your tears? Well, sometimes mommies need to cry too. During spring break, when all this Covid stuff started happening, everything’s changed. It’s been hard on me, you, and Daddy. Mommy yells more. Daddy yells more. I’m not working; you’re not going to school or seeing your friends, there’s no routine, and people are getting sick. It makes me sad and stressed out. I’ve been holding in all that sadness and stress and didn’t cry. So that means I’ve been holding back all those tears for five weeks, and today I was finally ready to let them go! Don’t worry. Mommy will be okay. I just needed to cry it out, and now that I’ve cried, I feel much better.”

“Okay. Now can I have a cookie?” “You didn’t help yourself?” “No.” “Okay, let’s get a cookie. I need one too.”

It’s been ten months since I had this conversation with my son.

I thought the pandemic would be over by now. My husband’s still working out of the master bedroom, but I’m back at the office sitting behind my new glass cubicle, and our son’s back to school with his face mask. My son turned ten, carries a hand sanitizer bottle in his school backpack, has returned to his “modified” extra-curricular activities, and stays within his assigned cohorts. He doesn’t understand why it’s “safe” to go to school with over 450 other students, but he’s not allowed to have a one-on-one outdoor play date with his best friend, who belongs to the same classroom and cohort.

I don’t get it either.

Our British Columbia Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, updates the province weekly with the latest Covid numbers and advises whether current restrictions will be lifted or extended. British Columbians understand that Dr. Henry is doing her best to advise our province on health and safety protocols, and her motto (and the title of her new book) is: “Be kind, be calm, be safe.”

We try to follow her motto and “the rules.”

Many restrictions and protocols don’t make sense, with countless memes and viral YouTube videos “mocking the rules,” but we follow the simple, straightforward ones. We wash our hands, social distance, don’t travel, wear mandatory masks in public indoor spaces and public transit commutes, avoid social gatherings, and do our best to stay home. We play outside for fresh air and exercise to boost our mental health.

Our family lives a simple, happy life. We have our health, a home, steady income, food, spending money, and the usual daily responsibilities and stress of working families. We’re more fortunate than others and try to help others better their lives in some way or at least brighten their day.

We’re doing okay — and this is what I tell people whenever they ask me.

How are you really doing?

Last month, when my mother-in-law asked me how I was doing, I was five seconds away from bursting into tears, but I didn’t. I held it in, let out a breath, and replied, “Yeah, it’s been tough emotionally, but we’re managing.”

I lost my own mother when my son was just over a year old. I miss her dearly and wish she were still alive to watch her grandson grow. My mother-in-law helped me care for my son when he was a baby and toddler, still provided childcare up until the pandemic, and we have a good, trusting relationship. Her motherly nature makes me feel safe; when she asks me how I’m doing, I know she wants the real answer and will take the time to listen. I’ve cried with her before.

But I didn’t break down and cry — that day.

My husband is a good man with a sarcastic sense of humor, and I trust that I can cry on his shoulder or at least joke about the surrealness of the pandemic. Still, by bedtime, we’re onto Netflix and downtime, have transformed into “zombie mode,” and are too exhausted to converse.

Keeping it together.

For the most part, things are getting back to “normal.” The vaccine has arrived in BC, and eventually, most of the province will be vaccinated. I commute to work, exercise, and write on most days. I look after our son, run the household, “hold it in,” stay quiet and keep it together.

Things are better today than they were during the early days of Covid during spring break last year. Businesses are slowly re-opening, line-ups are long but go quickly, playgrounds are open, and the streets and sidewalks are no longer empty. I have my health, family, and a home. I’m grateful for these simple, invaluable gifts.

Falling apart.

But why do I feel like I’ll fall apart the next time someone really asks me, how are you doing? Why do I pretend that I’m okay when underneath my skin there’s a quiet, jittery layer of anxiety (from a build-up of stress, uncertainty, sadness, fear, and grief that’s been sitting in the pit of my stomach since the onset of the pandemic) that I can’t shake off?

Everything is okay in my tiny bubble of a world, but at the same time, everything is not okay — inside and outside the boundaries of my bubble.

I feel it’s my duty to keep it together by staying strong, busy, and active. Inadvertently, this enables me to ignore that build-up of tears, pull them back in whenever I’m on “the verge” — instead of letting them go. I wonder — why do I do this?

I don’t know.

It’s okay to cry.

I know this. I encourage my son to “cry it out” and my friends and family members to cry. I say, “don’t hold back,” and “get it out!” It’s a tremendous stress release. Tears are a normal, healthy way to express emotion, whether it’s sadness, grief, or joy. My writer friend, Registered Therapeutic Counsellor Shaya Sy-Rantfors, often says, “find your tears.”

…the tears that are shed are actually important in order for the brain to rewire and find adaptation to the situation that can’t be changed… — Shaya Sy-Ranfors (on her revelation about crying)

Now that I’m back to my usual routine of taking the train back and forth to the office, I no longer wear my daytime pj’s weekdays and wander through the house looking for something “to do” when all I wanted to do was cry — during the early Covid days.

I’ve found my tears and know exactly where they hide, but I don’t have time for them. “Regular 9 to 5 living” along with squeezing in time blocks after work for everything else has propelled me back into that familiar place where the bulk of my waking hours are fully consumed — leaving me busy, preoccupied, scheduled, and exhausted.

Due to the “nature of tears,” I realize now that I can’t find the time to shed them because I simply can’t schedule crying.

Benefits of crying.

Crying can detoxify the body, dull pain, and self-soothe. It can also improve mood, help recover from grief, and restore emotional balance.

Emotional tears may have many health benefits. Whereas continuous tears contain 98 percent water, emotional tears contain stress hormones and other toxins. Researchers have theorized that crying flushes these things out of your system, though more research is needed in this area. -Healthline

I haven’t cried — unbridled — since that “cookie day with my son” last spring. Today, the walls are crumbling, it’s tough to breathe; I’m strong but silently overwhelmed.

I know those tears will come someday, whether it’s in the safety of my home on my son’s loft bed or at a random time or place that’s inconvenient or inappropriate, I’ll need to let them go, unscheduled — full throttle.

I can’t wait — it’s going to be one helluva a storm. I won’t hold back.

Get those cookies ready!

People cry, not because they’re weak. It’s because they have been strong for too long. — Johnny Depp

PS. Today, when I asked my son about what he learned from that “cookie and cry day,” he said, “It was weird, Mom. Your face looked funny, and I thought you were fake crying. I don’t get why you have to write a story about it.”

I had promised myself that day to let myself cry whenever I felt the urge. Life lessons don’t always work out the way I hope they will; sometimes, I need a self-reminder and therapeutic outlet by “writing it out.” We both still love cookies though; that’s something we can count on.

Question for readers: How do you let yourself cry? I’d love to hear some strategies to get those tears going!

About the Author: Mary Chang is an award-winning short story fiction writer, published memoir article writer, blogger, and newbie Medium writer striving to become a better human, parent & writer. Her stories are inspired by exercise, humor & people. Fueled by cartwheels, laughter, and a helluva good cry. Check out her blog at marychangstorywriter.com

You can read her most popular Medium stories here.