“Daddy, I’m sick of your tears.”

“Daddy, I’m sick of your tears.” –my 11yo, after I misted up reading from Church’s 1897 “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” editorial.

Update, Sep 10:

In the past few years, as my kids have become active in the arts, I have developed a habit of tearing up during their performances. I will silently grab my wife’s hand and touch her finger to my eye, which is a way I can silently tell her “this performance is moving.”

I surprised myself by tearing up during both rebooted Star Trek movies, too.

I don’t particularly want to cry, and one tear is hardly what Wordsworth would call the “spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions” that he says later inspired poetry when we recall those emotions in moments of tranquility. Still, I enjoy recognizing that I don’t feel any pressure not to cry.

My daughter is particularly open with her feelings, so I think on this occasion she just wasn’t all that impressed with the big deal I was making over the fact that I teared up a little.

She was a little impatient with me, but she was laughing when she said it.

“Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
“Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’
“Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

“VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
“115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.”

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. –Frank Church, New York Sun (Newseum)

Update, Dec 2020: