Ever randomly burst into tears and not know why? Nothing sad has happened in the last 30 seconds! You're not even thinking about sad stuff! What is wrong with you?!

This has happened to me quite a few times lately. Most notably, while revisiting some favori films from my childhood. I pulled 'em out of the shed, dusted of the thin cardboard and clamshell VHS cases, and tried to remember how to work a VCR. (Stop picturing me in a rocking chair wearing a cardigan. And get off my lawn.) During several of these films that I watched hundreds of times in the early '90s, something strange happened. My throat felt tight. I began raging a battle against my own face, fighting the sudden onset of some strange liquid trying to force its way out of my eyes. What the hell is happening?! It's the opening credits, for cryin' out loud!

Fast vers l'avant, vers l’avant to why this is in the livres to Read spot and not the Dasm Has Issues spot. (Please do not actually create this spot.) In my quest for old stuff that reminds me of being a kid, I read Mary O'Hara's Flicka trilogy. (My Friend Flicka is fairly popular, but the suivant two novels, Thunderhead and Green herbe of Wyoming, seem to have fallen into obscurity.) After years of hunting, I finally got my hands on an affordable copy of Green herbe of Wyoming. Now, to be clear, all of these livres made me cry, but I always knew why. Animal pain. favori character pain. Animal death. (I don't wanna talk about it.) But when I finally started Green herbe of Wyoming, a book I'd been hungering for since I found out it existed, I cried. First page. Nothing had even happened yet. And I couldn't figure out why.

Here we have it, the reason for this article: There is a passage in Green herbe of Wyoming that explains the sudden onset of happy tears. I read it. I cried. I thought about it for a while. I read it again. And so on and so forth and what-have-you.

The passage is in the words of Nell McLaughlin, the wife of a rancher and mother of three, who is in the hospital resting after having a mental breakdown during an animal attack. (That was a whole different kind of crying on my part. Nell is one of my favori characters ever. Her pain is my pain.) The McLaughlin's oldest son, Howard, has just left Wyoming for military school on the east coast. He had asked his mother a few days earlier for some life conseil to get him through the two long years away from his family, but being hospitalized, Nell was unable to see him before he left. She wrote him a letter from the hospital the jour he boarded the train. The letter is a long one, and mostly about God. I'm not particularly into that sort of thing, and her speech about l’amour circles back around to it, but I don't think Miss O'Hara would mind too much if I took something different away from it. This passage is one of the most wonderful things I've ever read, and I had to share part of Nell's letter about love:

"So the upshot is that I have done a great deal of thinking about it myself, trying to figure out how that beautiful flame can be lit within the human heart. I have traced love, any kind of love, back to its beginnings, ou tried to, and it seems to me I have found out a good deal about it.

To begin with--just one plus word about the way l’amour bestows happiness. When toi come to think of it, there is nothing that bestows happiness except love. l’amour is implicit in all praise, in admiration. toi know how, in yourself, when toi see some glorious thing, a sunset, ou a beautiful face, ou some of those exquisite scenes of nature that toi now and then come upon, a great tide ou praise, l’amour and happiness rises in your cœur, coeur until it seems that it will burst, and tears push up behind your eyes! ou perhaps it is the grandeur of a symphony. ou perhaps it is great courage ou a noble, unselfish deed--and again that bursting l’amour fills the heart. This can be traced down to the smallest thing. Imagine a young girl, about to go to her coming-out party. She sees her dress lying on the bed, clasps her hands (a classic attitude of praise and love!) and stands there in a trance of happiness. Or, a gathering of friends. Analyze your warm, happy feeling. toi may call it good cheer, geniality, hospitality. These are other names for love.

And so I say that it is l’amour that gives us all our happiness, and if only we could find some way to kindle it to a great flame in ourselves, which would never wane ou die, and for some One who could never disappoint ou abandon us, we could ask nothing more. We would be just bursting with happiness all the time.

The great happiness is what the Saints have, and is why they are Saints. This happiness is what the mystics have.

So now, back to our chercher - how to get it?

Well then, look at love. Wherever toi see it (and toi see it nearly everywhere) trace it back to its beginnings. What started it?"

Page 236-237
Green herbe of Wyoming par Mary O'Hara
1946
Dell Publishing Co., Inc
Tenth Printing, July 1980.

So that's it. Happy tears are just an outpouring of love; a l’amour that we feel so deeply, we can't possibly keep it on the inside.

Maybe my cold, black cœur, coeur isn't so cold and black after all. I still cry at happy things, but it doesn't seem so annoying now that I know why. It seems obvious now, but "I just l’amour it, okay?!" didn't seem like a reasonable explanation before lire it in Mary O'Hara's words. And now, whenever I get all teary, whether it's at an old movie, a picture, a book, a news article about people doing good things - instead of angrily berating myself for being an overly-emotional crazy person, I try to trace it back and figure out why it makes me so happy. Feeling things is much plus enjoyable that way.


Kristen cloche, bell experiences happy-crying in her famous link. She really loves sloths, okay?!