Music Makes Lucy Cry

My BB is the bashfulest. It’s the cutest. Her dimples are the deepest. Her eyes are the biggest.

Sometimes when I make eye contact, she blushes and turns her whole head to the ground, bending her back and folding almost in half. Without seeing the front of her face, I can tell when she’s smiling by looking at whether her dimples are sucking in.

An issue I’ve been wanting to blog about for some time now concerns Lucy’s reaction to certain pieces of music.

Where did it all start… it may have been the Star Trek: Voyager opening theme. I’ve been watching the show on Netflix for several months, and somewhere near the beginning of my voyage, BB, Lucy, Megan and I were all in the living room. Voyager's opening theme begins playing, and I see Lucy’s eyes get a little wet and red. Her mouth begins to contort. I can see her trying not to cry. As the song reached its climax, the floodgates opened with a full-on, open-mouth wail.

It was awesome. I felt proud of her somehow. Megan and I made sure to give her lots of hugs and tell her it's okay, that that song is indeed a sad one. I didn't want her to think she was having the wrong reaction.

That song used to make me tear up too, until I saw it for the umpteenth time and its effect on me was overstretched.

Fast-forward to two days ago—Lucy wanted to watch her Baby Einstein dvd. It’s the “Baby Shakespeare” episode, which contains versions of several pieces of classical music. The tunes are played with more kid-friendly instruments. It sounds like they were played through a toy music box and vibes and stuff, replacing the harsher horns and strings.

As the closing credits roll, a version of Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony plays. A beautiful piece of music, it is. Let me cast the scene—high noon, Lucy and I on the couch. I’m leaning forward, sitting on the edge, helping BB stand on the floor. The song begins playing, and Lucy comes over behind me, kneels down, leans on my back, and hugs me from behind. She must have had a face full of my hair, but she just stayed there for a few seconds, which is uncharacteristic of her. Usually when she does this, it means she wants me to lean back and squish her against the back of the couch. But after a few seconds, she starts wailing!

So there I was with two hands on the baby, unable to let go, with a sobbing 2.8-year-old crying on my back. It was funny, and heartbreaking. I gave Lucy lots of cuddles after that, and mom came home for lunch right then to double the cuddles.

Underneath my alpha male, supermodel, bodybuilder's veneer, I’m an emotional guy, just like all dudes. We're conditioned to hide it from a very young age. It’s not the fault of the parents any more than it’s the fault of society at large; parents are a part of society; society wants boys to be rough and tough, and girls to be weak and emotional. Often this social encouragement creates the opposite effect. Studies have shown males to be more emotional and romantic about relationships, for example, than females. Women have been found to often view a relationship as something practical rather than emotionally fulfilling. They also break up with men more than the opposite. This is not true across the board, but it happens frequently.

So no matter how we try and mask it, we're all emotional, and we all pass it down to our kids. The cycle continues.

It’s a touch surprising when someone, especially a non-musician, cries in reaction to a strong musical piece. But when you add a visual to the music, especially a moving picture, the human brain is tricked, somehow, into registering a greater emotional response, overriding the brain’s logical portion. I don’t exactly have a scientific handle on how it works, but my communications professor mentioned it in class last week, and it made sense. Advertisers will test audience reaction to ads in the making by attaching nodes to the viewers’ skin. How better to gauge emotional response? Goose bumps don’t lie. This gives television designers the power to make really, really moving content, out of thin air. They can make us cry at a commercial for football or some other such base product, because they know how to play on our emotions.

I feel bad for my poor Lucy, when she finds herself crying and doesn’t know why. There’s not much we can tell her, except that it’s okay. I also feel happy for her that she's experiencing this feeling at all. It's important to realize what's important enough to you to make you cry.

Since then, Lucy has also cried at a song contained in her toy house that sings, a simple goodnight song. It only happened once; now she loves it.

Let me tell you a story about myself, from my childhood. An embarrassing story; I was embarrassed then, and it’s weird telling it now, which is why you’ll have to read on, right? We have to stop and stare at train wrecks, or the car crashed on the side of the freeway, even when it holds up traffic.

I was probably somewhere between eight and 10 years old. Sitting in the big red chair in the basement of my parents’ house, watching professional wrestling on tv. It was mid-day, and I think I was home from school for some reason. Dad was at work, Ian was elsewhere, and I had the tv room to myself. Sweet, blessed privacy with the tv--I could watch whatever crap I wanted without having to compromise with anyone else. 

It was a segment about Hulk Hogan. Who did he work for, WWF or WCW? Anyway, it was an emotionally-charged montage of Hogan’s seemingly-final match in the ring, one that he lost, and ended him up (or his character) in the hospital. The tone of the montage was grave, conveying that he might die from his injuries. The music was epic, sad and cinematic. There were shots of audience members looking on, afraid. I remember one shot of a woman, who looked very much like a lot of the rednecks I lived among in northern Michigan, covering her mouth with her hands, standing up, wide-eyed.

As the montage progressed, I suddenly found myself crying. It was weird. I kept thinking how silly it was to cry at wrestling. I couldn’t discern why I was having this reaction. And RIGHT THEN my mother walks in, on her way to the laundry room.

All of a sudden, I’m like, “Fuck, she’s gonna come over to me and try to make me feel better, cause she’s my mom, cause it’s exactly what I don’t want her to do right now.” I didn’t want to explain that I’d been crying about something as stupid as wrestling. I didn't want to be vulnerable. I was also confused at my own reaction, and wanted time to sort it out. I really didn’t want any sympathy for this, but sympathy I received.

Mom wasted no time in approaching me. She knelt down in front of my chair. I can remember how 10-year-old me felt—that lack of certainty, the embarrassment of being caught showing that raw emotion, the annoyance at my mom's over-reaction, the not knowing how to explain myself.

“What’s wrong, honey?” she said with that tone of wanting to bond with her son who wants nothing to do with her at that moment.

I can remember staring at the tv just to to avoid her eyes, which were right in front of mine. All I wanted was for her to drop it; equally, she wanted to console me.

"Nothing,” I sheepishly muttered.

"Why are you crying, honey? Is it something on the tv?"

I answered only minimally, evasively. I think at that point she was beginning to get a handle on what I was feeling. She got up and said, “Okay, honey. If you want to tell me what you’re crying about, you can.”

I denied her the bonding she desired. I was afraid of facing my sadness. Like my father, brother, uncles, and every male in my family, I'm terrible at expressing my feelings.

Mom resumed her household business, and I was left with a lot to think about.

Kids feel things that easily confuse them. It’s a weird sensation, and an unavoidable part of life. In my crying-at-wresting instance, I blame the television producers for amping up the emotional content of their ridiculous programming, desperately trying to squeeze a few saddening drips from the idiocy of professional wrestling. As a child, I was too young to see thru their tricks.

I've been fooled before. Never again!

How do I impart these lessons onto my children? I don't. Kids have to feel things for themselves. I'll just try not to smother them.