Recently in Mush Category

We watched the movie Up the other night. Predictably, I cried. I knew that I would. I'd been told that I would. Even if you're not a crier, I was told, you'll cry at Up.

I'm a crier, so, yeah.

The thing of it was, though, that I didn't cry in that tissue-clutching, nose-dripping, Terms Of Endearment, oh my god this is so SAD kind of way. I cried because it was beautiful. I cried because the depiction, early in the movie, of a lifelong happy marriage was so beautiful. I cried because such depictions of marriage are so rarely seen. I cried because the movie demonstrated how companionship - whether with lovers or friends or small children or dogs - is just so deeply enriching and rewarding and necessary. I cried because the movie demonstrated that family takes many different forms, all of them wonderful. I cried because it was about life and love and dreams. I cried because it because it made me laugh and made me remember that even when life makes you sad you can still laugh.

I cried because - and forgive me for how banal this sounds - I was down and it lifted me up and it made me feel like I, too, have balloons. In my husband, in my children, in my friends and peers, I have balloons.

Balloons are good.

(Up was released on BluRay and DVD last week. If you haven't seen it yet, you should. And if you have seen it, you want to see it again. This is one for watching over and over and over again. And there's simply nothing better to watch after Thanksgiving dinner. This movie is all about love and gratitude and family. And balloons.)

(Also, with the DVD, you get all the extra features, and trust me, on this one, you want to hear the backstory and learn more about the characters and see more of the artwork. This is awesome, heartwarming, makes-you-want-to-be-a-better-storyteller kind of stuff.)

(Did I like it? Um, yeah.)

 

Four years ago, my daughter was born. Four years ago, I became a mom.


My own mother used to tell me that she considered my birthday as much her day as mine, because it was the day she gave birth, the day that she became a mother. For many years I rolled my eyes at this. Not anymore. I know, now, exactly what she meant. For fours I've known.

Emilia's four years have been four years of her growing and learning and transforming from an impossibly tiny - and impossibly loud - little baby to an impossibly mature little girl. They have, for her, been fours of wonder and joy and frustration and love and screams and hugs and tears and giggles and giggles and more giggles. They have also been, for me, four years of sleep deprivation and confusion and anxiety and learning and learning and learning and - of course, always - wonder and joy and love and laughter. These have been her four years, but they have also been my four years. They've been her four years of becoming a little girl, of becoming - of continuing to become - her. But they have also been my four years of becoming mommy, becoming a mother, becoming me. Because becoming a mother has been one of the - if not the - defining transitions of my adulthood. It, more than almost anything I've done in the last two decades (almost) (gah), has made me who I am. Becoming a mother was a birth, of sorts, for me, too.

And such a birth it was.


Happy birthday, baby girl. And happy BIRTH day, me.

My babies are so far away while I'm attending to the affairs surrounding my father's death, but still, they serenade me from afar:





The reminder that there is such immense joy in my life, that that joy sings, is such a gift today, this week, always.

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