When I fell from a tree and broke my back, I spent three months in hospital. Looking back, the first three weeks were mainly spent crying.

I would cry, my family would cry, even some of my friends shed a few tears.

Gradually, this subsided as I got on with rehabilitation and began to rebuild my life. The next time I cried was at the birth of our daughter Rosalie, when the sense of elation and relief felt like the culmination of four turbulent months (Penny, my wife, was five months’ pregnant when I had my accident).

The trouble is that, since I became a parent, my tear ducts seem to be more active again — only now it is any drama with a plot involving children that can evoke a tearful response that was unthinkable before I became a dad.

Perhaps having experienced such drama has made it easier for me to empathise with tragedy. “It couldn’t happen to me” has been replaced by “it can and probably will”.

I have also found it difficult to think about the impact that my accident must have had on my parents, watching me go through such trauma and being unable to do anything to ease my suffering. It is difficult for me even to contemplate that without filling up, as even the smallest graze on Rosalie’s knee can make me feel a surge of anxiety.

But it’s not this kind of emotional lurch that concerns me — everyone wants to protect their offspring from harm. And I’m not so “in touch with my emotions” as to feel that, if only there were more men who cried, the world would be a better place. I think there are times for tears and times for a bit of steely resolve.

Yet I find myself welling up during some godawful film or trashy television melodrama. As soon as a child is introduced, I’m off. And it’s not that I’m moved by the plot, more as if there is a short-circuit in my tear ducts.

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to take Rosalie to the cinema. What if the house lights go up to reveal me, red-eyed and soggy, as the end credits roll on the latest Finding Nemo?

Tim Rushby-Smith www.timrushby-smith.com

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