It would have been useful to get some warnings about the weeping.
When those of us (men, I mean) reach a certain age, I now understand there is a latent trigger that is pressed. And after it’s gone, tears come easily; frequently they flood, ridiculously.
Obviously, there are good times to well up – the success of your children growing and staking their independence as they find their own way in the world; your dog greeting you after it gets a post-operation neck-cone off; a curled goal to the top corner, from outside the box; a piece of great music that lodges deep within you. The quality control is a little off, though. Why get red-eyed and sniffy when there’s a positive resolution in Grand Designs (‘the windows fit – LOOK… THEY FIT!’)?
This tap readily leaks. It needs attention.
Being Irish and increasingly sentimental about Ireland, (the expat’s privilege), watching Joe Biden become American president and hearing his frequent quotations of Irish poetry, I’m barely dry-eyed just now. As he took office last week I was like a drunk uncle at a wedding, strutting round the house shouting about JFK and the Irish returning and insisting the family quickly learn vast sections of Door Into The Dark.
By the time Lin-Manuel Miranda got to the hope and history line in his reading of Heaney’s The Cure at Troy I was a blubbering mess. Fear of cliché and easy cynicism have no hold on me now!
