Crying at the movies: a memoir.

Last night, after my birthday movie, I came home to find myself tagged in this post on my son's wall:

"It turns out the lady was your mom." I will pause so that you may reflect.

Well, I do have a long and storied career as a movie cryer. Here are a few movies I have sobbed like a motherless child at:

• The Way We Were
• Terms of Endearment
• Stepmom
• The Notebook
• Marley & Me
• Titanic, obv.
• uh, every single Harry Potter movie, probably. More on this later.

I have also cried like crazy at indie movies, such as:

• Summer Hours
• Friends with Money
• Whalerider
• Into the West
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Things You Can Tell By Looking At Her
• Blue Valentine
• Bright Star
• The Fall

and probably a whole bunch more that I may or may not care to mention. The Sex and the City movie, for instance, after Mr. Big stands Carrie up, sort of, at their wedding and she looks so miserable. Or, like, parts of Superbad, which the relevant youngest son pointed out to me wasn't remotely poignant to him. Or Into the Wild, with director Sean Penn pulling the cry-now strings like mad.

My kids like to say that I cried at a Rugrats movie, and maybe at a Pokemon movie. I don't know. I'd like to see their evidence--we all know from about a billion Law & Orders that eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. But I will not deny that if a movie tugs at my heartstrings, I am generally happy to oblige, although sometimes if movies are trying to work me, I resist. I'm not that easy. Okay, I am. But sometimes the weep machinery is just too much, and in those circumstances, I stay dry-eyed.

Usually, though, I cry. And I don't particularly care. So what? Why bother to think of sports? I used to cry a lot about life-y things, and sometimes I still do. But these days, I just don't like it--it makes me feel bad, and my eyes get puffy, and it's all just too tragic. At a movie, though: crying at a movie lets you release feelings that need to be released (see: catharsis), but mostly in a limited, self-contained way. I don't usually cry too much (except for at Marley & Me, and Stepmom, and Terms of Endearment--I wept so much in those movies I had to take to my bed afterward to recover. And if one of them comes on on cable--forgetaboutit.), but frankly, it feels a little bit cleansing.

Anyway. In July, a bunch of people, including my daughters and me, went to see the most recent Harry Potter, I pretty much full-on sobbed when (seriously? you haven't seen/read it yet? what is wrong with you? spoiler alert) Snape died. After the movie ended, my daughter with the wicked wit said, "Are you okay?"

Yep. Just fine. Now leave me alone, I'm fishing for my Kleenex.

The party's over.

The last writer is on a plane back to where he or she came from. The last reading, the last reception, the last horrified parent walking out at an instance of the f-word. The last manuscript consultation, the last workshop, the last coffee run. Writers at Work is over, and I am a little sad, a lot exhausted, pretty over-stimulated, and I am probably feeling some other emotions in the mix, as well.

I had to have a brief cry about five or six times yesterday. I am a crier, but that's a lot even for me. Why, I really can't say. I slept in the afternoon. The historian made sure the swamp cooler was working (even though we really need to get a new one, which entails research about getting the right kind, etc., which takes time, time I didn't have because it was hot and I really needed a nap), a gesture of loving kindness that brought about one of the brief cries. When we went to the farmer's market in the morning, which usually is a big high for me, it just seemed like so. many. people. that we kind of had to move right on out of there.

Anyway, last night, after we came home from our movie (Once, which I highly, highly recommend--a straightforward music-based movie, and it is wonderful music, that is just the kind of thing we all need sometimes), I went straight to this laptop and started composing a poem. That's a good feeling at any time. I was listening to the new Feist (again, highly recommended) and then to Martina Topley-Bird and then to Massive Attack. Dear reader, I composed straight through three cds. That's how good it was to write a poem. I intend for this to be the beginning of a stretch of creativity the likes of which the megastore hasn't seen in quite some time. If it involves some random crying, so be it.