Another long one 

Background: A close (male) friend asked us if his daughter could come to our home and interview my wife for a school project (middle school). Her project was to interview someone from a “different culture” who she admires and write a mini biography or something. We had met this man and his daughter at a party a few years prior, right after he had immigrated to the US from Italy. We like them both, and their kid is really smart and polite, so of course we were flattered to have them over and help with her assignment. He and his daughter got to our home during early afternoon. We laid out some snacks, chatted casually for a bit, and then his daughter put out her iphone to record, and started the interview. I was sitting on a couch to my wife’s left, our friends daughter was sitting across from us, with her father to her right.
 
The obs: For the first 20-25 minutes, she was asking about career, education, love/marriage, all of which made for enjoyable and sometimes hilarious conversation. Then the topic shifted to my wife’s childhood and early life, which is a bit harder for her to talk about. She was doing fine initially, but then our little interviewer started asking about my wife’s dad (who was not a good person), and my wife started to tear up. While listening to the question, my wife looked down, then toward me with her chin against her shoulder, looking up at me with brimming eyes and a tight-lipped smile. As the rather long-winded question ended, she looked back toward her interviewer and a big tear ran down her left cheek and stopped at her chin. Our friend noticed this and put a hand on his daughter’s shoulder and pointed to the iphone as if to tell her to stop the recording. My wife interrupted in a choked voice and told them that it was okay to continue the recording, that she was willing to talk about this very important part of her life but it always makes her cry. Another beautiful tear ran down her left cheek, making a thick glistening trail about one centimeter in front of the first tear streak. The second tear connected with the first teardrop sitting at her chin, and dropped onto her thigh. I took a tissue box from behind me and set in on the table in front of us, and she pulled a tissue and brushed it under her nose. The next ten minutes were deeply emotional and personal, and my wife cried continuously through it. Her voice remained mostly steady, but at the end of every second or third sentence her voice would wobble, then catch. She’d swallow the lump in her throat, sniffle, wipe her nose, take a deep breath and continue talking. Tears continued to fall down one of the two streaks on her cheek and started rolling down her neck. At one point, a tear made a third track down the front of her cheek near her nose, and this was the only one that she wiped.
 
But that wasn’t the best part. The best part was when I noticed him start to cry about 10 minutes in. The first signs were weird and subtle. His lips and chin didn’t move at all, but his cheeks started to quiver. The shaking was most prominent around his nasolabial folds, and the quivering crescendoed until he shut his eyes and clamped his fist over his mouth, and took a deep breath. He then opened his eyes and saw me staring at him. I probably had the most idiotic, dumbfounded look on my face. He said in a totally broken, whispery cracked voice “excuse me, excuse me please”, then reached for a tissue and sniffled. His brown eyes were brimming with tears, and he blinked, and two of the biggest teardrops I’ve ever seen shot out of his eyes (one down each cheek), past his chin, and down his neck past his adam’s apple. His daughter noticed and immediately giggled and hugged him. My wife forced herself to stop crying, stood up and apologized and said that we needed to take a break, and that she didn’t mean to do that to him. He stood up and pulled a tissue and dabbed under his eyes, but still couldn’t speak. I snapped out of my dumbfounded trance and got up and hugged him as well and said some words of comfort. As I pulled away, he turned his head to the left listening to something his daughter was saying, and another teardrop started to fall through the lashes of his right eye.
Now, I hadn’t wiped a man’s tears in over five years, and this opportunity was too perfect to pass up. So, when that huge thick teardrop slid down his right cheek, I WENT FOR IT. Once the tear was about 80% down his face, I reached up and wiped the drop with my index and middle fingers, feeling his wet face and his stubble. There was still some wetness up above that area, so I got greedy and wiped it again, this time with my thumb. I did it pretty quickly, while continue the comforting conversation, and I think I prevented it from becoming too awkward. I then pulled away and poured us some water and we all took a breather. At this point the interview was pretty much over. They gathered their things, we thanked each other. He hugged us both and gave each of us a kiss on the cheek, and they left.
 
I’m still processing how amazing this was. Like I said, I wipe women’s tears more frequently, but this is the most perfect male obs I’ve ever had, and wiping a guy’s tears feels different but so wonderful. Whew!