I find that when I am upset or depressed or whatever, a visit one way or another to a place of bitter sadness can bring me to the point of tears – the tightening throat so strong you can barely stand it . . . and then the slipping out of a few tears. And, then, you seem to buck up, feel like trying some more. I can’t go here by choice – Like, hey, I’m going to my sad place now – but then I’ve never been one who could at will go to her happy place.

But it happens. And it doesn’t have to be an event or time in my life.

The Roses of Picardy – the song I mentioned in The Whales of August – can take me there. Some thirty years ago when I watched The American Experience PBS show about Theodore Roosevelt, the score had that song as background for the time in his life when he found out Quentin had been shot down and killed in France. I think the script referred to the long walk up to the house to tell Edith and the scencry was that of Sagamore Hill. And a tinny WWI recorded voice sung of roses.

Sometimes such encounters will open the door to things in my own closet that I try not to think of . . . and I do think of them, and somehow feel better for awhile, at least physically. And in that closet there is a jar with a magical firefly that glows forever and I look at it and know that it is love that will never cease – that it shines for those I have held most dear.

I suppose it is all just a biochemical thing – stress hormones exiting in tears. I’ll take it.