I saw my father cry once when I was 12. We had come home from the hospital after my mother had a heart attack. He stood in the kitchen, gripped a chair with his hands and slumped slightly forward. He didn’t cry a flood of tears. He closed his eyes, shook his head, and let out a few grunts and sobs. I don’t think he saw me standing nearby in the dark hallway.

I was scared, scared that the doctor lied and my mother was going to die, and scared to see my father cry. To me, he had been Mr. Tough Guy, but there he stood doing what a man was not supposed to do no matter what might happen.

I grew up understanding that crying was for girls and for boys who were sissies. Put a group of girls in a room and if anyone should cry one tear, the others would come running to console her. We boys knew that to be called a crybaby would be the same as getting a verbal castration. We’d lose our manhood in the eyes of our buddies from that moment on.

Times have changed. Now if a woman sees a man occasionally spill a few tears, she thinks it’s an attractive sign of his sensitivity. Yet, I still hold onto the old-school thought and sneak into the bathroom for a tissue if something really saddens me. When I watched “The Lion King” in a movie theater, I made sure no one saw my hand wipe the corner of my eye when Simba was looking for his dead father.

You rarely see a man cry at a funeral of a loved one. He’s protecting his masculinity instead of showing his feelings. He might find a time and a place to break down, and most certainly, he will weep alone.

I’ve come to realize that when you cry in the company of others, especially if you are a man, what you’re unknowingly doing is making them uncomfortable. “Don’t cry,” they will say, and you think they are upset because you are. Perhaps they should say, “Go ahead and let it out. We’re here for you.”

Should a father ever cry with his young child? Here’s a little anecdote to consider the answer. A wife told her husband she was unhappy and wanted a divorce. She had asked him to leave. They called a family meeting to tell their son and daughter.

“Your father and I have decided we’re not happy together anymore and we will be living apart. You’ll still see him often. This is best for everyone, and in time you’ll find out how much better it will be.”

Dad was speechless. His son, acting like a “real man” much sooner than his age, swallowed back a single sob and left the room. His daughter ran into her Dad’s arms, and together, they cried openly, holding nothing back from the tragedy of the moment.

Some will say that Dad needed to be strong in this case and tell his daughter that everything will work out for the best. Others contend that Dad was right to show her that he’s human and it was important that she saw he was upset about the breakup of their family.

Renowned filmmaker Nora Ephron said, “Beware of men who cry. It’s true they are sensitive and in touch with their feelings, but the only feelings they are in touch with are their own.”

Someone once said, “Men hate crying. They rarely do it, but when a man cries over you, you can be sure he loves you more than anything else in the world.”

Famous author Ernest Hemingway never managed to have a healthy relationship with any of his four wives. Those close to him said he wanted a woman who was like his mother. The same can be said about Elvis Presley.

Perhaps they never heard these words, but there is a hard truth to their meaning. “Inside every man there is a little boy who’s crying, “I want my mama.”

In the article, “When is it OK for a man to cry?” the writer says, “Some people these days encourage men to let loose whenever the urge hits. Some adhere to the “you can’t squeeze tears from a stone” philosophy. … There are, of course, times when we feel sorrow or frustration so acutely that it must be let out. Yet there’s a balance between being so sensitive that a Hallmark commercial can make you weep and shedding some tears over something truly significant. Just as there is a balance between releasing some man tears and turning into the kind of blubbering mess that makes everyone feel uncomfortable.”

Who knows if John Wayne ever cried, or Alexander the Great, or Gen. George Patton? I bet they did when they were boys, most likely when they misbehaved and had to be punished.

When I was a child being bad and faking tears, my mother would say, “I’ll give you something to cry about. Wait until your father gets home.” When he got home, Dad told me to go to my room and get ready. After about the third whip of his belt against my bare backside, I manned up and stopped crying. I knew Dad was teaching me a lifelong lesson. Stop the crying. Deal with the pain.

Speaking of manning up, I watched the end of the baseball movie “Field of Dreams” again, where a father comes back from heaven to have a catch with his son. When I headed to the bathroom for a tissue, I swore I heard my dad’s voice in my head telling me to go to my room and get ready.

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.