the language of crying

This morning I was in my kitchen tidying the breakfast dishes when I overheard the psychotherapist Suzy Orbach on the radio in discussion with Keith Brimer-Jones, a TV presenter and “celebrity potter” (only in Britain could there be such a job).

The show was One to One. It’s the simplest of concepts: Just two people in a studio talking about…. something or other.

(After Melvin Bragg’s stupendously nerdy In Our Time — mid-morning panel discussions on Hildegard of Bingen, Virgil’s Georgics and Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems — and that absolutely mental gardening show where people phone in to ask with quavering voices if there’s anything at all to be done about the black mould spots on the hydrangea, One to One is probably my favourite show on BBC Radio Four.)

Anyway, today Orbach and Brimer-Jones were talking about one of my casual subjects of interest: Crying. Why do we do it? What does it mean? Is it a form of communication?

I cry quite a lot. Have I mentioned that?

And the funny thing is, I actually cried more before I had a lot to cry about.

Because not crying is not a realistic option for me at this particularly fraught and uncertain moment in time (lone single mother mid-divorce in a precarious creative profession), over time I’ve learned to develop private rituals around it.