Before you start feeling sorry for me, I should tell you that I've cried in more restaurants than I could ever begin to remember, much less count.
It's not a hysterical sobbing thing I do. It's just a small crying jag. First a welling up in the eyes, then a steady drip of tears from both eyes. That's when I start carefully wiping the underneath of each eye, trying not to smudge the make up while hoping to stop the faucets.
Usually only a few others notice. Generally just those at the tables near me. Maybe the waiter. It's not like a scene from the movies where the whole patronage of the restaurant cries with me. And it's rare that I go to the bathroom for any sort of reprieve. It's much easier to stop crying when you're witnessing your coffee getting cold. Besides, sometimes when you go to the bathroom, the waiter mistakenly takes your plate away.
Crying in restaurants is definitely a girl thing. I've eaten in a ton of restaurants and I have yet to see a boy cry. But whenever I cry in a restaurant, it's a given that the girl I'm with will cry right along with me.
And I've cried with the best of them.
My mom and I have probably shared the most crying episodes in restaurants. And, I must say, my mom is an excellent partner for restaurant crying. First she displays the most sympathetic look you'll ever see on a person's face. Her lips tremble, the outsides of her smile curling down into a dramatic frown. Her eyes get very watery - to the level where it looks like the tear is just about to drop over the rim. And then she unconsciously makes a face that says how much she would do anything to take away whatever the source of the pain is. It's clear at that point that she would go to whatever lengths necessary.
But the best part comes next.
My mom is a silly person. Or maybe she's just completely incapable of making it through extended periods of misery. Whichever it is, she always quick to transition into laughter.
And it's not that she's laughing at me. She would never ever do that. It's just that she knows that I know that crying in restaurants is actually pretty funny. There always comes a point with my mom - very soon after the crying begins - when she looks at me as if to say "I could sit here and open the floodgates right along with you, but then we'd both be crying hysterically in a restaurant and what in the world would we do after that?"
It's always a priceless moment.
I have a rich history of crying with both Missy and Erika. Erika's pretty funny because she hates the laughing afterwards. If you start the laughing too soon, she'll get upset with you and make violent gestures indicating that she can't help the crying and once it's started she can't stop it. Usually she'll utter words such as "I love you" in the middle of crying. It's very hard not to laugh. Not in a mean way. It's just really very touching.
Crying with Missy is different. Having known her since first grade, we know more about each other than one should ever know about anybody. We usually cry a bit and then just sit shaking our heads in sympathetic rhythm for a while. It's the ultimate combination of resignation and liberation.
But yesterday I cried with Christina. And I must say, I had no idea we'd be crying - particularly so early in the day. It was not on the schedule.
We had just run a race and both of us were exhausted. Not so much from the race, but from a mutual lack of sleep. We sat in a diner, me with my runny eggs and Christina with her fish sandwich.
We talked about the usual topics. The summer race schedule, options for long runs, the benefits of running hills....and hair care, family, spas, which five books each of us was reading at that time and funny cat stories.
And of course we shared both gossip and boy talk. We're girls. It's in our job description.
And then, drunk on too much bad diner coffee, we turned our attention to the tear-jerking topic of the day: fragility.
We were talking about men. And women. And men and women. And family. And life.
Remember, this was bad diner coffee...very potent and highly intoxicating.
Somehow, we managed to relate everything we knew, everything we loved, everything we savored and everything we missed to fragility. And we were united in our shared passion for recognizing and appreciating the fragility of life's gifts.
And then, in the middle of a sentence, I swallowed air....always the first sign of oncoming tears.
I know Christina could feel it coming by the way she grasped her mug tighter.
First my eyes filled up. Then a tear began the slow descent down my salt-stained cheek (did I mention we'd been running?). Then Christina's eyes filled up. And so on.
And then I noticed the guy behind Christina. Or, shall I say, the "poor guy" behind Christina.
The poor guy was trying hard to concentrate on his kid. Maybe he was a weekend dad. Maybe this was his critical quality time.
Well, we definitely interrupted it, whatever it was. I watched the poor guy's eyes alternate between his child's rapt attention and our quiet, private little scene. The poor guy's eyebrows were raised in a display of "oh my!" for the benefit of his little one. Every several seconds, those raised eyebrows would shift our way, trying to maintain their surprised childish arch instead of furrowing into a concerned curious look.
Luckily for the Sunday dad, we didn't cry for long.
But Christina doesn't laugh quickly either.
We sat quietly and sipped more coffee. In our brief silence, we knew that we had hit on our most common ground.
Everything that brought us together and everything that keeps us together is, indeed, fragile. And there's not a day that either of us forgets that.
Perhaps we didn't say it aloud. But maybe we did. Either way, I think Christina and I decided that we were doing okay.