This is so fresh. Today.
I thought I was over Mr. Rogers. Obviously not.
My middle daughter and I were in the car today, just the two of us. She said
something completely unexpected.
“Reiley says you cried when Mr. Rogers died.”
I stared ahead with my right hand draped over
the wheel and didn’t say anything. Then the tears started coming. It feels like
they start in my chest and move up. Most of the time I can force them back down, but
sometimes not.
“So you liked Mr. Rogers, huh?”
I let her question hang unanswered in the air
for a moment, then nodded and started telling her the things I liked about him.
I told her how he never
changed his show. He did the same things, year after year. He put on his sweater
and shoes, fed the fish, talked to the camera. The world changed around us so
fast that it looked like someone flipping through television channels. But Mr.
Rogers
stayed the same. He never changed. My eyes filled with tears so that when I squeezed them shut,
one ran
out from under my sunglasses and went down my cheek.
“Dad, you’re like really crying.”
Damn. She caught me, so I went ahead and put my
hand under my glasses and wiped away the tears. I don’t like people seeing me
cry. When I thought I was under control, I talked about Mr.
Rogers some more.
I told her how speaking into the camera was his
idea. He wanted to talk to children. I said that there were probably a lot of
people out there who grew up pretending that Mr. Rogers was their dad. Some kids
don’t have any grownups in their lives who will talk to them like that. I told her about the Emmy he won
and how the audience grew quiet when he stepped to the microphone. When I told
her how he grew older right in front of us, my eyes flooded over again. I squeezed them tightly and grimaced, trying to force the tears down
down down, back to wherever it is that tears come from.
I haven’t made a spectacle of myself like that
in a long time, and it irritated me. I was practically blubbering. My daughter watched me silently,
respectfully, almost like she was in the presence of something holy. I don’t cry
that much in front of the girls, and it fascinates them when I do.
Mr. Rogers! What's up with that? He died in
2003. I wrote about it back then and haven’t thought about him since. Why did
this get to me today? I have no idea.
I wasn’t always like this, you know. There was
a time when I never cried. I couldn’t cry. Presumably I cried as a child, so I
must have forgotten how along the way. I probably stopped crying because that is something we
teach boys. We teach them not to cry. The lesson is hard for them to learn, but
repeated
humiliation usually does the trick.
I remember a very sad moment early in my
marriage. Jeanene’s eyes searched my face, looking for something. I could see
them darting back and forth. Then she tilted her head slowly, squinted, and
leaned closer. It was as if she was trying to look through my eyes to see if
there was a little man hiding in there somewhere. Then she sat back.
“Sometimes I wonder if you would cry if I
died.”
That’s the way it was with me. For a long
time. Until 1990, to be exact.
I don’t remember if my brother cried in the
years before his head injury. When he finally got through rehab there were a few
surprises. Pizza didn’t taste good anymore; he couldn’t throw a baseball for
shit; and he could not hold back his tears. Now he cries at everything. It’s
just something you have to understand if you know him. He
might burst into tears watching a Lego commercial. It doesn’t mean he’s gone all
sappy or anything. He can’t help it. Whatever it is that men use to avoid crying
was lost forever in the car crash.
Funny thing, I came through his head injury
having suffered the same loss.
In the beginning we were given two scenarios. Hugh would either live in a constant, vegetative state for the
rest of his life, or we might get some of him back. No one knew how much. For
weeks we stood by his bed in shifts, talking to him and sticking
little lemon-flavored spongy sticks into his mouth when it looked too dry.
Then one day my mother called, wildly excited.
Hugh had come awake and even spoken. There was a mad drive to Dallas and an
insane run through the halls of the hospital. It looked like something out of a
movie. I was pushing carts out of the way and tearing around corners. I burst
into his room, and he lifted his head off the pillow. He could barely pronounce
his words and spoke in a monotone that was strangely off key.
“Hiieey Gyoordin. I miiiisd yoooo.”
In that moment something broke inside of me.
Something that I have never been able to fix, thank God. Some fundamental part
of my psyche snapped, and I almost felt the click of it. I began sobbing and couldn’t stop. At first it was what everyone
expected. And then it seemed like a very long cry. Then it got a little strange
and embarrassing. I was blubbering like a madman; do you understand? Wailing. My
nose was running and my chest was heaving. My wife backed me out into the hall,
and I cried there in her arms for awhile. When people started sticking their
heads out of their rooms, she took me to a private place where I cried without
stopping for about half an hour. That is a very long time to cry. At the end I
was exhausted. Spent. Nothing left inside. I was limp and used up.
And I was changed.
No, I don't cry at everything now, but some
things get to me, and sometimes I don't even know why. For some reason crying
still embarrasses me, so I try hard not to. But if someone I love
is moving away, or if I hear about someone who gave his life unselfishly to
others, or if a small blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl in diapers toddles by, I
am liable to start crying. My eyes fill up with tears, and I have to turn away and wipe
them with my sleeve.
There are things in life so powerful that you
can be changed forever in a single moment. I don’t know how it works, but it
happens sometimes.
Today in the car I could almost see Mr. Rogers
in one of the PBS promos. There he was, his sweaters changing colors as the
clips moved through the years, his hair turning grey, and his face growing softer. And
then he was looking right into the screen, tilting his head a little, as if he
was trying to see if there was a little man hiding in there.
Maybe some lost person who
needs to come out and play.
rlp
The
two things I
wrote about Mr. Rogers back in 2003, just
before he died.
