throwback thursday: are your hands getting filled?

this one is from october 2012.

I am pretty sure I cry more than most people.  this used to really bother me.  at a recent family gathering my mom and I were talking about having teenagers in the house and all the tears that were involved.  my sister mused that she didn't remember tears being a notable part of her adolescence.  my mom and I just looked at each other and laughed, not that carey was a crier, but that I more than made up for both of us.  "my grandmother is a very emotional woman," I am quoted as saying regularly in our family lore.  I suppose I am just following in her footsteps.

I do most of my crying in the car these days.  in my twenties this was a huge marker of dysfunction to me.  I can remember having to pull over on 240 in west asheville because I was crying so hard and chastizing myself because THIS IS NOT WHAT NORMAL PEOPLE DO, which of course just made me cry harder.  I did a lot of screaming at the top of my lungs in those days, and the car was the safest place to do it.  I could scream almost the enitre distance from burnsville to the unca exit, that long stretch of 19/23 that brings up much more pleasant memories when I think about it now.  back then my tears were a mark of all that was weak and unhealthy and crazy about me.  now crying in the car is just part of my commute.  and I don't really scream anymore.  much more gentle emotional outpouring now.

we don't have a way to play cd's in our house, mostly because we are cheap.  so when a friend burned me some new discs I knew the car would be my place to listen to them.  and it fit right into my therapeutic crying time.  I still can't make it all the way through a mumford and sons song without tearing up, especially if jamin is with me and singing along.  "isn't this a great song, mama?" he shouts from the backseat, his whole body wiggling in time to the banjo solos.  so this week when eric and I had been having particularly heavy discussions about what's next (a constant conversation in our gemini marriage), I needed him to hear the song that has brought me to tears the most in my time in the car this week.  so, kids cozily in bed, we headed out to the truck to take a listen.  and there we sat, and I cried in the car.  par for course.  it is what I do.

here's what moved me.  feel free to ask me how my brick-layin's coming when I need a proverbial kick in the pants.  I'll know what you mean.