I knelt in the gravel. I didn’t reach for a warm cloth. I didn’t press my thumb to her nose. I just opened my arms, and she walked into them, and I felt the dampness of her working eye soak into the shoulder of my shirt.
And I think about the answer to the question I asked myself a thousand times in that rocking chair. How do you unblock a tear duct? how do you unblock a tear duct
But I wasn’t fighting the duct anymore. I was fighting the silence of her first cry. The helplessness of watching a nurse wipe away a crust that should have been a tear. I was fighting the idea that my body had built her wrong, had handed her a flaw in her very first plumbing. I knelt in the gravel
Her father suggested we stop. “Maybe she’s just a dry-eyed kid,” he said. “Maybe you’re fighting a losing battle.” I just opened my arms, and she walked
The tears lasted a week. Then the crust returned. Thicker than before. The duct had scarred closed, more stubborn than ever.
She held up her scratched palm. “Mama. Hurt.”
Just fell. On its own. No thumb. No wire. No balloon.