Experiencing pandemic tears of joy

I’d never been a person who cries “happy tears.”

Sure, I’ve wept plenty, more than I’m comfortable admitting in a national newspaper. Always because of unhappy triggers though: pain, heartbreak, grief. I’d never before understood the reflex to weep from joy.

But these past two pandemic years seem to have rewired my brain.

It’s been hard to explain and has felt a little embarrassing to talk about. It might be related to how I’ve handled the less pleasant emotions since COVID hit. In times of explicit grief, including in the wake of a friend’s death this month, I gave myself permission to mourn. But I’ve coped with the lower-grade melancholy so many of us are feeling

— fear, anxiety, cabin fever, loneliness — mostly through emotional suppression. In the grand scheme of things, I keep reminding myself, I am very fortunate, and other people have it much worse.

I attempted to seal off any possible sadness. But then, in unexpected circumstances, my caulked tear ducts began springing leaks.

Flowers have always been a joyful sight in spring; but this past spring, when I first saw tulip blossoms? Tears. Footage of fans cheering on a hometown hero at the Olympics? Open the floodgates. A call with a beloved former teacher? I nearly short-circuited my keyboard with saltwater.

Wearing mascara these past two years has been risky. Not because the weight of global tragedy might crush me unexpectedly but because I might encounter an unusually lovely sunset. Or a friend might send me another sweet video of her newborn hiccupping.

Amid all the pain and stress and loss of the pandemic, there are also joys — these small, banal, everyday pleasures that are making me weep. And at first I didn’t know what to do with the tears.

I noticed this change in mid-2020, when, out on a walk, I ran out of newsy podcasts and switched over to music. A Cole Porter song.

I hadn’t listened to music in months — I mean really listened, rather than merely overheard somewhere in passing. That day, on my walk, just a few bars of “Anything Goes” overwhelmed me. The awe I felt listening to music again reminded me of stories about people who have difficulty differentiating colors putting on corrective lenses and seeing the visible spectrum for the first time. I had of course experienced these musical “colors” before — heard these melodies and rhymes, knew many by heart — but I’d forgotten what it felt like to experience the Technicolor blues and pinks and chartreuses of song. My senses had been dormant. And the elation I felt upon rediscovering all this beauty escaped out my eyes.

I started consciously listening to music more often again. Still mostly show tunes, a few other genres too. At first, I listened only in private, to retrain my ears and mind, and to avoid public embarrassment. Eventually, I re-acclimated to the beauty, and the tears stopped. Today, I can go for a walk without worrying whether a soft-shoe number might leave me blubbering.

As theaters and concert halls slowly reopened, I went through a similar sort of exposure therapy for live performances.

Pre-COVID, the live arts had been a regular occurrence in my life. Plays and concerts were enjoyable and fulfilling outings, as they are for many other patrons of the arts. During the COVID era, these experiences became almost euphoric. First there was the outdoor concert that concluded with “Rhapsody in Blue” — which, I’ve since decided, should close out every concert, whatever the rest of the program. For hours afterward, that skulking clarinet glissando and those thunderbolts of piano rolls rumbled through me. The evidence spilled down my face.

My first pandemic trip to Broadway was similar. I’d chosen “Come From Away,” a charming musical about social solidarity and the triumph of the human spirit in the wake of 9/11. It was exactly what I needed to see after the year and a half of death and division that had resulted from a different world-changing tragedy. I attended the show alone, knowing that I’d probably ugly-cry a little.

Even though I’d brought a fresh pack of tissues, by curtain call I was still a soggy, snotty mess. I began to berate myself: Who is this mawkish person I’ve become? Then I noticed that the woman next to me was crying too. She had also come alone on her return to Broadway.

I stopped wondering if I was somehow bad at keeping it together and began recognizing how the emotional burdens of this period have weighed on, and sometimes confused, us all. As we head into the third year of this pandemic, hospital wards are once again filling with COVID patients. Many of us will raise a glass New Year’s Eve night all the same, eyes misty with both celebration and grief for the year finally passed.

Guest Column Copyright 2022, Washington Post Writers group