In defense of sentimentality

it's ok to cry in the bathtub

when I say my heart breaks
I mean it breaks like a wave—
as if exhausted
by its own separateness
it gives itself back to the whole

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

We live north of the California wildfires. North of unimaginable devastation. North of winter blue, where the sky is nothing but a constant, wet oblation. I look up and try to move clouds south.

I read the news, scroll through images, reach out to friends, donate money. I gasp in horror and tell myself not to look away. I zoom in on faces, imagine their pain, walk my mind through the motions: pack a bag, grab a treasured photo, angst-squeeze Dave’s hand on the way out the door, hold the kitties as they mreowl in fear, drive away, away, away from all that founds and grounds each day of our lives.

But it’s not enough. I can’t wrap my head around it. Comprehension feels two-dimensional, distant, and armored. I recall my own chapters of grief, but here I am today: warm, fed, housed, happy. A Do Not Trespass sign hangs on the borders of empathy, warning me to stay in the safety of good fortune. Bolstered by its fabricated independence, the mind protects my little “i” from an infinite river of Big “I’s”: Insignificance, Indifference, Impermanence.

And still, I persist. I want—no, need—to feel. Today, I will break like Trommer’s wave and crash down upon the shore of separateness. My heart waits patiently; her love is no antidote to suffering but a companion, enduring and steady. She doesn’t fear the wreckage. She doesn’t need coaxing to feel; she simply needs the dam to give way, her waters to be set free. So I stop reading the updates. Close the news app. Shift my attention from furrowed brow to flexing heart and let my senses, and their kissing cousin sentimentality, lead the way.

When Dave was a little guy, he’d cry in the bathtub. While his big brothers blasted The Beatles and The Ventures in the basement, his mom would play her favorite adult contemporary tunes while tidying up. Their soaring strings sneaked under the bathroom door, through the pink-deco tub, and shook his young body into a fit of tears. Crying out, he’d yell, “Mom! Turn it off! That song makes me sad!” But fast forward fifty years, and he returns to Dusty Springfield’s breathy pleas, Andy Williams’ crooning over a fictitious river, and Anita Kerr Singers’ melancholy harmonies whenever he wants to crack the dam of his day and feel. Because it feels good to feel. He even created a Spotify playlist, Songs That Made Me Cry in the Bathtub¹, so others can let their own levees break.

I did something similar. Whether I was numb from the regular rigors of teenage angst or a learned freeze response from earlier traumas, I made myself a waterworks mix-tape called The Melancholy Panda, complete with a sad-looking Nat Geo photograph of a panda on the J-card. More child of the ’80s than Dave’s late ’60s, my weeping tunes included Windham Hill’s delicate tranquility and George Winston’s piano. I’d have died if my high school friends—”cruising the ave” with Jane’s Addiction—had known I was home, heartstrings properly tuned to Jean-Michel Jarre’s syrupy synth. But like Dave, it felt good. Tears and chills, the perfect combination of body feedback to remind me, I’m alive.

Sentimentality often gets a bad rap. It’s accused of being cheap, cloying, manipulative, even embarrassing. Perhaps because it refuses to hide intention. It wants you to feel, openly and completely. In a culture that prizes irony, control, and nuance, sentimentality’s unabashed, face-flushing earnestness can seem naive, unsophisticated. But its power lies precisely in this vulnerability. Sentimentality doesn’t care if it’s cool. It opens the floodgates and lets all that needs to gush rush in.

Sometimes we need feelings spelled out, dramatic, overt and unquestioning. Breaking through the mind’s embankment, sentimentality makes way for the heart’s glorious, irresistible mush. If you let her, she really can’t resist. Her beating ballad a remembrance of what we’ve forgotten, and will forget again, we belong to each other.

So today, I offer you a montage. A sentimental one. A celebration of heart. Of the thousands of Angel(es) both hurting and helping, finding ways to navigate loss, uncertainty, and the spirit that rises from the ash to demonstrate enduring goodness amidst ruin. Bring on the soaring music, the slow dissolves, the camera zooms: human conveyor belts handing out essentials, firefighters cradling fawns, piles of donated toys so kids can keep being kids. Let each softened pixel smudge the hard lines we’ve drawn until, for a minute, or two, or eternity, the dam breaks and we feel.

I still can’t move clouds. But looking up, they remind me that water flows to its source, and also up.

The montage begins at 12:25.

1. Do you want to cry in the bathtub too?