Days 9 & 10

Sunday: So, I spend most my time in church fake yawning. I do this so I can dab at my eyes without looking conspicuous. It’s just that so many hymns in church make me cry, especially when it’s a beautiful day out and the light shines through the glass and the song has a snappy beat. It’s just…uplifting. It makes me happy. And when I’m happy I cry. This Sunday’s service was FILLED with amazing hymns, many that I recognized. So I tapped my toes, belted out the words, and fake yawned.

Monday: The first book I ever read that made me cry was My Girl by Laurice Elehwany. The same scene from both the movie and the book get me going; it’s the scene when Vada goes to her poetry class after Thomas dies and reads her Weeping Willow poem. As a 12 or 13 year old girl, that scene KILLED me. I remember sitting in our sunroom, my favorite reading spot, and just crying and crying. It wasn’t long after reading My Girl that my father came home with two used books. I was sitting in that same spot in our sunroom when dad handed me A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett and Beach Music by Pat Conroy. He told me those were his favorite books and he thought I should read them. Then he went in his office. And with that he changed my life. As we all now know, lots of things make me cry. Lots of authors have also made me cry. However, there is no one more gifted at sending me for the tissues than Pat Conroy. His words, his stories, HIM! He just gets to me. He has written stories of the South, stories about basketball, stories about cooking, and even stories about stories. All of them made me cry. Monday morning I read a simple note from Pat Conroy to his fans. It made me throat constrict and my eyes water up and over. I mean, it was a NOTE. In the simple words he penned for his fans, Mr. Conroy is gracious and funny and talented, as always. In his self-deprecating manner, he states that John Irving “can't write a grocery list without it selling like literature.” Well that may be true, but I’m willing to bet that if Pat Conroy handed me his shopping list, we’d need to add Kleenex ASAP.