Why Men Should See Frozen 2

“Do you think she’s okay?” she whispered.

We were at a movie theater for a screening of Frozen 2 for our son’s friend’s birthday. I had just settled back into the red recliner at the rear of the movie theater after bringing three party attendees – my son among them – to the bathroom. It had taken some small extra effort to sit back down without disturbing the two bags of theater popcorn and the Ziploc bag of candy we had brought with us but I had managed it. I returned my attention to the screen just in time to see Elsa grappling underwater with the Water Spirit who had taken the form of a horse – a sea horse, if you will.

We had known that Frozen 2 was supposed to be darker than the first movie but this was a difficult moment. Elsa was in mortal peril and, while I wasn’t the least bit worried about our seven-year-old son’s reaction, our three-year-old daughter had insisted on sitting in the second row with the birthday girl’s eleven-year-old sister instead of with us and she might be having more difficulty with the intensity of the scene.

I rose from my seat and ran, bent at the waist so as not to block too many people’s views, down the aisle to S’s seat.

“Are you okay? Is this scaring you?” I asked.

She smiled widely.

“This is my favorite!” she said.

I made my way back to my seat, sat back down gingerly and leaned over to T.

“She’s fine,” I said. Continue reading “Why Men Should See Frozen 2”

Eavesdropping on a Young Singer (or, What Makes “The Greatest Showman” Great)

I’d just come in from the kitchen to put my lunch in my bag when I heard it. It was soft, so much so that I almost couldn’t make out the words. I placed the tune immediately, though, and the words became clearer soon afterward.

“When the sharpest words wanna cut me down… I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out…”

E was sitting at his table, building a Lego set or drawing a picture or working in his summer math book. He was completely engrossed in the task at hand and didn’t even notice that I had come into the room, let alone that I was listening to him singing to himself. He worked quickly, his eyes darting back and forth from the instructions to his manipulating fingers, his voice lilting ever so slightly as he sang each line.

“I am brave, I am bruised, I am who I’m meant to be. This is me.”

I smiled broadly and returned to the kitchen so I wouldn’t interrupt him. Continue reading “Eavesdropping on a Young Singer (or, What Makes “The Greatest Showman” Great)”

The Force Will Be With You… When You’re Older

E loves Star Wars.

He has masks of Darth Vader and Captain Phasma that he uses when playing dress-up. When T bought him new pairs of pajamas to wear to school for pajama day he chose the Darth Vader set over the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set.1 He has a pre-reader book of Star Wars stories and loves pointing out Chewbacca, Han “Sola” and the “Stormtrippers.” He starts laughing anytime he sees C-3PO and R2-D2 and, once in a while, I’ll catch him glancing at the Yoda toy sitting on his dresser that he got from my father. When he was a baby, I would throw him up in the air while singing the Star Wars theme song and I would take his echoing toy microphone and say in my deepest voice, “E… I am your father.”2 We recently had to hide his “light-savers” so he wouldn’t use them in the house because things like this kept happening:  Continue reading “The Force Will Be With You… When You’re Older”

Turning Sadness Inside Out

A couple of weeks ago, on Father’s Day, in fact, T and I took E to the movies to see Inside Out. We had not made any significant plans for Father’s Day, aside from having dinner with my in-laws, partially due to the threat of inclement weather and partially due to the fact that the rest of June was so busy with other activities, like E’s moving up ceremony from preschool, his birthday party and my brother’s wedding. A movie seemed like a nice relaxing way to spend some time together as a family.  Continue reading “Turning Sadness Inside Out”

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