When I was little, I used to cry a lot. I was always a little small, as a little kid, and so none of the other boys would play with me, and the girls all thought I looked funny.
I used to hide, so no one would find me crying. I would cry my eyes all dry, and come out when they weren't red anymore.

But then one day, one day, your Uncle Johnny found me, crying in my corner under the back stairs. I didn't want him to see me, but he took my arms and pulled me into his lap, wiping away my tears.
Johnny told me, it's okay to cry; everyone does it, once in a while, he said. He said my mom, your Grandma, used to cry because she and Johnny's dad didn't like eachother, and he said She cried at his high school graduation ceremony, like I did then.

Was she sad? I asked, that he was growing up?
And Johnny laughed. He told me, there are lots of different types of crying.

He told me, when you're sad, your heart turns black and muddy, and the muddy dirt drips down to the bottom of your gut, giving you the sick feeling when you see a sad movie, or get into a fight with your friends. And then, your lungs have to breathe harder to get water, and buckets would ride down and pull your heartstrings to the bottom of your guts, and your little cleaners would use the water to scrub away the mud. When you're all clean inside, the water swooshes around, giving you the churning feeling, then overflows and comes out your eyes. That's why, after you cry a sad cry, you feel better inside.

And then, he told me, there's an angry cry; the kind of cry when you're really mad and you cry just a little bit, coming out of the corner of your eyes that you wipe away really quick so no one can see. Johnny told me, when you're angry, you get all hot inside and the steam rises up to your head and makes it all hot, and some of the steam comes out of your eyes as water. So unless you cry really hard when you're angry, or dunk your head in the cold water pool, it's hard to make all the steam go away.

And then he told me about being too happy that you cry.
Happiness is the most powerful emotion, he told me. He said, when you're so happy inside, you don't need your lungs to make water, because water comes out of nowhere, and fills you up until you burst like a water balloon hit with a thousand little pins. Water swirls up inside of you, gathering up little bits and chunks of angry and sad muck inside of you, and throws them all out because they don't matter anymore. You fill up really quick inside, because you don't want to hold any of it in, and then it comes out like Niagra through your little eyes. He says, people are happy when they see people they miss, like Mom, when she was happy with my dad, and not Johnny's, and like when Mikey was really sick and wouldn't open his eyes, Ricky cried when he finally woke up.
And Johnny said, even he cried.
When? I asked, and he told me, when I was born, his little brother, because I was sick and lived in a glass box for three weeks before I could breathe. He said he was so filled with happy, some of it came out through his eyes.

So, sweetheart, it's okay to cry. Even Uncle Johnny cries, and even Daddy cries, too.
Sometimes, it's a good thing to cry. Next time when you're angry, or sad, remember this
When you cry, your tears will wash away all your hurt, then fall away from you. Then, all you have to do is watch the dirty tears dissolve into the air, then watch all your sadness and anger fly away into the endless sky, far away, higher and higher, smaller and smaller, until you don't remember having those tears, until it was like they were never there, and then you can laugh again.