The only problem was, I couldn't.
***
When I was much younger crying usually eased the pain of the many stressors the world flung in my direction. Tired of being called "Butt" in lieu of my nickname "Buzz," or more to the point considering my long hair and decision to sell lunch ladies scrunchies my mother had made, "Faggot," by classmates in elementary school, I cried. On my thirteenth birthday, when I should have had a Bar Mitzvah according to tradition but instead received a crisp $100 bill from my father in his little apartment, I told him I hated him and cried. After a shouting match with my mother and seemingly no support from my friends watching television downstairs, I headed to the basement for a salty pity party.
But, somewhere along the way toward young adulthood, crying stopped working. The frequency with which I resorted to tears dropped dramatically, to the point where even as the exit from college and the necessary smattering of "real world" reality that comes with it had taken me back to the level of stress that prematurely turned patches of my hair white during a sophomore year of high school in which I learned a pair of wrist surgeries would essentially put my life on hold for enough Xs to fill an entire calendar, crying wasn't even an option.
***
Monday night, when Michelle Obama presented herself to the nation for the first time, her words resonated. In fact, she resonated. America in its purest idealism comes down to family values, freedom of expression, and the unity of disparate groups. Mrs. Obama's speech spoke of these same concepts: the stoic heroicism of her father as he refused to allow a crippling disease to cripple him, her mother's instillment of a sense of duty to one's community, Hillary Clinton's work in shattering glass ceilings, each carefully crafted to portray just what America needs--not change, but a return to the concepts that the world's greatest document, the one a Tea Party in Boston allowed to shape the future of the world, dictates we must follow.
Yes, each element of the night's events was perfectly planned to attack weaknesses and emphasize strengths in the Obama campaign, be it the newly reformed motherly image of Mrs. Obama or allaying fears that Barack is un-American with the substitution of his wife's biography for his own. However, unlike the night's guest of honor, the magnanimous Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, Obama was not born to be a politician and he has never involved himself in scandal, such as The Chappaquiddick Incident or cheating at Harvard. He made himself into perhaps the world's next most powerful man by playing the game well, and he and his squadron of spinmeisters continued to pitch a shutout on Monday night. But, this just felt different.
When the prospective first lady took the stage, following an introduction from her older brother, she started off a bit slowly. An opening joke missed, drawing only courtesy laughs, and her words came out a bit off rhythm. But as she progressed deeper and deeper into her speech, she began to sense the mood of the crowd and learned to use both her emotions and those of a sea of supporters to express herself in a truer, more heartfelt, much brighter light.
In that light her daughters entered the stage, radiating beauty, happiness, pride in their parents, and a hopeful future. In that light throngs of convention attendees surged to their feet in support of an enthralling woman and her perhaps equally inspiring husband. In that light countless enthused listeners couldn't help but allow the flow of tears to leave their eyes, eyes that had seen failure, disappointment, and disillusionment, and in that moment glimpsed relief and the return of belief.
And it was in that light that a gentle trickle finally fell southward from the corner of my right eye.
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