Watery Response

I was not a big crier in my past life (as in, before the last couple of years). I'm not saying I was stoic or that I never cried or even that I rarely cried, but that I can count on one hand the number of movies that made me tear up. Maybe even one hand minus a few of the unimportant fingers. Let's use that as a guide for the rest of this post.

People (people being the Man, mostly) told me that would all change when I became a mother. The problem is that my entrance into motherhood coincided unfortunately with the Man's first deployment so I'm unsure if I can blame the waterworks that is now me (on occasion) on the baby or on the military. For example: this morning I was reading a friend's blog. She writes gorgeous pieces that vary spectacularly from the tear jerker to the laughter inducing and never overplays her words so as to land awkwardly in the cheesy-mush that so often swallows up less adequate writers. Best of all, she takes incredible photographs. Beside the point. Three weeks ago her husband got back from his fifteen month deployment with the Army, and she's been writing about how she and her two pre-school sons are readjusting to the joy of having daddy home. So I'm reading through her blog this morning as Littles and I are eating breakfast, and all of a sudden, I notice that tears are just streaming down my face, tiny salty rivulets splashing off my cheeks and into Little's yogurt. No lie. Well, I don't think I contaminated his yogurt, but seriously about the whole crying thing. There was no sniffling. No sobbing. No conscious decision that I needed to cry about what she was writing. It was just an automatic reaction: my eyes deciding to pour forth and let it rain.

So here's my question: am I crying because I am a military wife who has had an emotional reaction or am I crying because I'm now a mom and, evidently, that's what moms do? It is so hard to know! I understood the whole crying while pregnant thing (even if it was crying over an Animal Abuse Awareness ad playing on the Jiffylube TV), but this whole weepy thing needs to stop eventually... Right?