Sudden Onset of Emotion

As I drove to work this morning I listened to a story on CD.  This story is set in London in the year 1941.  The Germans are dropping bombs on the city.  Londoners go about their business during the day and in the evening, as the sun sets, gather together in underground bomb shelters.  They sleep sitting upright on metal benches, fully dressed, and leaning against strangers.  They breathe in the fetid air.  In the morning they wait for the "all clear" signal before stretching and getting up to leave the shelters.  One 7 year old boy at the bomb shelter was waiting for his mother.  She told him to wait there for a minute while she went to get his Grandmother.  But she didn't come back all night.  A woman walked him to his house so he could look for his mother but his house was gone.  So that was the frame of mind I was in when I came up to the Main Street bridge over Highway 10.  I saw a fire department ladder truck. The ladder was fully extended and suspended below the ladder was a United States flag.  Firefighters stood on the bridge.  I gave them a thumbs up from the passing lane.  The semi beside me honked the air horn.  The firefighters saw my thumbs up and waved back to me.  And suddenly tears are streaming down my face.  The sudden onset of emotion took me by surprise.  It's true that I cry easy.  I cry at commercials.  I cry when I laugh.  I cry watching some movies and at every Hallmark special show on Sunday evenings.  Today I cried at a bridge.  It was more than the bridge.  It was the flag and the fire fighters and the wave and the memory of things that happened on 9/11 that set me tears off.