You know how some movies...
...operate like favorite poems or sayings...when you watch them, they have a mantra-like effect? They don't have to have much to recommend them: The acting can be wooden, the dialogue lackluster, the story more than familiar but, when you stumble across the movie, you cannot stop yourself from watching it until it releases you. I have an all-time favorite movie like that, Little Buddha. I've been hoping it would show up on cable without cuts or commercials so I can tape it. Last night, FLIX screened it, and another movie I thought my mother would enjoy (and I was right), A River Runs Through It.
    FOR THE RECORD: My mother's mantra movie is Dances With Wolves. Not only can she enter the experience of the movie from any point and be mesmerized, every time she catches all or parts of it (thank the gods it's a regular on movie channels) she can be heard to say, "Sometimes I think I lived like that, in a former life."
    Although my mother doesn't move much, she doesn't remain still, either. During any particular "awake" session she is shuffling from her rocking chair to the table, the table to the kitchen, the kitchen to the bathroom, the bathroom to the patio (to check on a plant I am miraculously keeping alive for the first time in my life), the patio to the mail box (regardless of what day it is, she still looks forward to mail delivery every day and insists on checking it at least once a day, regardless of whether or not its a holiday, and I let her, even though I now have methods whereby I make sure I see every piece of mail that enters our house). Last night, we'd planned on watching both of the immediately above mentioned movies beginning at 2000. We were out most of the day (a minor miracle in itself), and just made it home in time to "warm up the set", as my mother says.
    The truth is, although my mother still gets excited about having a "movie night/afternoon", it is almost impossible, now, for her to sit still and follow a movie from beginning to end. It's rather as though the less one's body wants to move, the more one's body wants to fidget, which figures. Thus, one way or another, she manages to distract herself and even movies I think will rivet her attention often fail to attract even a first intense stare through the beginning credits.
    Well, last night, my mother sat so still for four hours through two meditative movies that I was glad I was taping Little Buddha, as I missed a good quarter of A River Runs Through It because she didn't want to miss anything in either of the movies. She ordered me around to replenish her coffee, make her some "of that lemon tea that's a little sweet on its own"; "...do we have any popcorn..." (yes, we buy it by the case, now), "I think I need a napkin, here...", "just water, this time, please...". At one point she said, "I don't suppose you'd consider going to the bathroom for me?" then waited for another 45 minutes until the break between the two movies. My mother putting off going to the bathroom for anything is unheard of, anymore. Both movies will play again, one at my command, now, but my mother is on her last run. If I could have figured out how to relieve her bladder for her, I would have.
    I don't think she's ever seen River but she's seen Little Buddha as many times as I've seen it since I've lived with her. Last night, though, as expected, both were new to her. At the end of the last movie, as I was switching the recorder off, she said, "My goodness! Look at the time! [It was after midnight.] They just don't make movies like that anymore, do they?" Now, the really funny thing about this is that you'd expect her to be saying this about a rerun of a Tracy-Hepburn movie or The Bad Seed, a perennial favorite on which my mother and I have both doted for years for the unintended comedy effect lent by it's age. But, no, she said it about two relatively recent (considering her life span) movies.
    There is Something About Mary, this weekend. I'm not sure whether its the increased holiday activity (none of which involved relatives this weekend); the fact that (hopefully) my mother is reving up, again, for another round of life (she slept so much this week that she was ready to be alert and captivated by something, anything); it could even be the accidental position of the stars. But, she's had a good, active weekend, so have I, and although she's sleeping in this morning and something tells me she won't be up until around noon (I can see she was up in the middle of the night...she put the cheese away that I intentionally left out for her, just in case, because her appetite was hard to seduce, yesterday; cheese is the one food that my mother will eat even when she's incapable of being aware of whether or not she's hungry; popcorn is the other one of these foods), it feels like its going to be a "good" day.
    I have some errands to run, an overdue library book to return, and my mother will probably take it easy, today, remembering the blasts of intense heat she complained about yesterday every time we were between car and building. She won't, however, remember that she devoured the outside scenery every time we traveled from place to place, yesterday. She won't remember that she commented, late in the day before we got home, how nice it is to "make the rounds" on a regular basis. She won't remember that two movies absorbed her attention. She won't remember the impromptu July 4th dinner we had with MTNDN. But, today, I'll remember all those events and it won't matter whether or not she moves much. I'll be exhilarated because it seems as though we still have a ways to go together.
    It's, true. It's the journey that counts, not the destination.
- posted by gail rae @ 09:27   email...this post