Movie reviews

Every once in a while, I take a notion to have a movie weekend. Sometimes there's a reason - research for a project, or I'm feeling a little hesitant in my Spanish comprehension - but for the most part, it's just time for a movie weekend.

This week, I was looking for a melody - one that hovers in the back of my memory and tries to ooch forward occasionally, but will never quite surface. This week, I needed that melody. It's sweet and elegant, childlike and stately, one of a kind.

So Bri and I hit Wild and Woolly Video on Bardstown Road last Saturday afternoon and came out with an armload. And what an armload!

One of her picks was a French rendition of Bluebeard, the scary morality tale of the young woman whose blue-bearded husband warns her never to unlock the room with the little gold key. If you ever heard a fairy tale, you know how this one comes out. But this production is brilliant and eerie - directed by Catherine Breillat, it links make-believe with the recent past of my childhood and quite successfully builds suspense in spite of the obvious. This one goes in one of my "fantasy classes" on Cinema as Literature.

My picks included Coco Before Chanel, which I guess qualifies as fictionalized history, if not historical fiction. Having read the Wikipedia bio, I expect they got the basic facts about as straight as one can, without sworn testimony. But without a fly on the wall, it's anybody's guess how accurate the details are. Nevertheless, it's an admirable effort, a fun movie, and Audrey Tatou is (duh...) perfect. (Like she could be anything else.)

The Unknown Quantity - totally - was Avenue Montaigne. The synopsis sounded amusing: Jeune femme from le stiques comes to Paree, finds a job as a wait-person at a cafe' (where they don't hire women, merci' very beaucoups) next door to the theatre, and proceeds, via her engenuite', to solve the problems of all the overwrought soap stars and nouveau riche art collectors within range, not to mention a tormented concert pianist and a jackass cafe' manager. AND she makes her Grandmama happy.

Bottom line: If you love Cinderella, heroines with grit, happy coincidences, and happier endings, rent this movie. You will love it! Definitely goes on MY Favorites List.

The icing on the cake I saved for this evening, two days past due. (Yep. This is me. The Queen of Overdue Fines. Wild and Woolly lets me pay on the installment plan. Seriously.)

The icing on the cake was Babe.

This is the movie I went looking for. The Saint-Saëns melody that repeats throughout this sweet, lovely film simply haunts me. For several years, I struggled to write a hymn lyric to the tune. Watching the movie tonight, and hearing - maybe for the first time, for all I've watched Babe half a dozen times or more - Farmer Hoggett singing softly to the little pig, "If I had the words to make a day for you..." I realized my efforts were superfluous. The song is one of complete, unconditional, uncomplicated, WYSIWYG love, and there is none greater. I don't think I'll forget the melody again; it's imprinted now in my head.

And the take-away is this: the half-grown pig, nudging gently at his bereft adoptive mother, Fly, who's seen her litter of pups farmed out and lost her mate, Rex, to his own ill temper and jealousy, and saying, "Mom? Mom? Are you alright, Mom?" And the farmer, the man of few words, willing a sad little pig to live, and softly singing to him from some unidentified place deep in his own heart's memory.

No species-defined lines. No assumptions. No prejudgment. Just love. Wide-open, accepting - willing to be hurt, if that's what it takes (although not out actively looking for pain) - but mostly just knowing that it's in giving that we receive.

I finished the evening with a phone call from my sister. She's beautiful, and I love her. Life isn't easy right now - but that's just life. The good part is us. We have each other to lean on.

Making great days

My outgoing voice mail message, wherever you hear it - cell or office - ends in, "Make it a great day!" They don't just happen. I learned years ago that when you have a great day, it's because you chose to make it great.

Against all odds - and possibly common sense - my family is coming together this weekend to make a great day. Those who can be there will be, and those who can't get to Sylva, NC, will be thinking of us (and waiting for pictures). Because two weeks ago, my baby sister decided July 18, 2010, was a great day to get married.

Without going into too much detail (and telling a story that's not mine to tell), I'll say yes, this is the same baby sister who is fighting cancer. She starts her chemo Monday or Tuesday - what a way to spend a honeymoon! But one of the things she's found out in the past two months is that her Mark is not easily scared off. He's held her hands and cried with her through painful biopsies; he's checked on her daily and tried to make her laugh when she just wanted to hide; he's listened to her fear and anger knowing he was helpless to change anything, but willing to slay dragons for her at the drop of a hat. Mark thinks in the language of "We." Cheri is not alone, and she's agreed that they belong together.

So we're having a wedding, three months ahead of schedule. Informal for the most part - no invitations, just phone calls and word of mouth - even though she's wearing her gorgeous fairy-tale white satin dress and Mark is wearing a tux. When Ed wanted to know how he should dress, she allowed as how "ties are evil," and said she didn't care if he came in his gym shorts. The ceremony and reception are in the church where we grew up, but she won the music "discussion," and our old friend Jay will be singing America's "Daisy Jane." (There are even less appropriate songs in the mix, but they're going to be instrumentals...)

Wednesday, she called me on the phone with a "quick question" - could my daughter and I take care of the cake? "Well, of course," I said. "How many people are you expecting?"

"Huh?" she responded. "Why?"

"Well, how big do you need it to be?"

She almost fell off her chair laughing - I could tell. She wanted us to CUT the cake for guests - she didn't need us to make it! I expect that will go down as legendary as my wedding story of Daddy and the nuts.

It will be a flying run at Sylva for those of us who can. It's totally worth it. I wouldn't miss this for love nor money!

Regardless.

I guess I can.



I can if she can.


I will if she will...


Damn.

My little sister - one of my best friends in this world - has just received a diagnosis of breast cancer. We've spend three days zooming from medical jargon to COBRA battle, from open vs. closed MRI to holistic treatment center vs. surgeon you know, from "fight" to "hide under the covers" and back again. Sometimes in the span of about 15 seconds, give or take five or six.


Oh, yeah - and from "there's the couch, there's the linen closet, you know how to use 'em" to "OMG, who cleaned the bathroom for me - I am SO embarrassed!" As if she had nothing else to worry about than what her siblings thought of her housekeeping.


To Little Sister - for the record:

• The couch worked fine, and the linens were all of a highly acceptable thread count, which is more than I can say for some hotels I've stayed in. 
• The bathroom wasn't that gross, and whoever cleaned it for you probably just did it as a favor, not as an oblique criticism. One less thing for you to worry about.
• And BTW, the fact that he (face it - it wasn't me, so it must've been your brother) cleaned the bathroom probably had at least as much to do with my toiletries and sundry items covering the vanity as anything else. (Not to mention my black pumps on the floor and the two options for Wednesday Wardrobe on the inside door knob.)
• And if you weren't freaking out, I'd really worry. I'm freaking out, and I haven't been subjected to the Invasion of the Body-Snatching Mutant Cells.

Much of my sister's stress comes from struggling to reconcile her innate need for independence with her health-imposed need for assistance. Even more of it comes from the fact that she's known for more than two years that something was wrong, but she couldn't get any of the healthcare professionals in her local system to do more than shrug. Bottom line: They didn't do the follow-up. They didn't check the details. They assumed. And they were wrong.


And some of her stress comes from the rest of us.


She knew something was wrong – and now, she has to get her head around the idea that she was right. And that she's lost two of the years she could have used to beat this thing. That she may lose both breasts instead of a little chunk out of one. That the tumors might have invaded other spaces by now. That the delay could cost her life.

And she's getting flak about "how the rest of us feel." Please.


Screw that. The average – or even above-average – human being doesn't have enough brain cells to handle all that. The rest of us are on our own; this woman needs to focus on what she needs to survive. And if that's hard to do – if it means she's all over the map emotionally and intellectually – well, blame the idiots who should have looked harder two years ago.


Okay, deep breath... Pedal on regardless.

What's the point? For me, it's how to keep pedaling.


I start a new job on Monday. This morning, I had to leave my beautiful sister alone to tie up the loose ends of the work we did earlier in the week. I haven't been on my bike in about eight days. I'm emotionally drained, intellectually fried, and physically in bad need of a good stretch. And I have my own annual touch-base with my GYN (who, incidentally, reminds me of my sister) in about 9 hours, which is why I had to leave Thursday instead of next Sunday.


So where does my "Pedal-On Manifesto" fit into this kind of psyche-crunching, body-slamming week? Okay... another deep breath.


What goes down must go back up. Sometimes it’s tough. Deal with it. Life's a bitch. On wheels. And it doesn't stop. (See above.) You do what you have to do. You keep moving. One foot in front of the other. One pedal rotation at a time.


If you let the fear of getting hurt stop you, you’ll never get out of the driveway. It might be easier to pull back, to disengage. This is going to hurt. No matter what happens in the end, it’s not going to be a fun year. But if I disengage, I lose time with one of my best friends. That's worse than having to endure some pain. Honest to God.


Life happens. Circumstances happen. You choose the perspective. No matter how you look at it, this sucks pond water. But in the last three days, I have learned:

• The immeasurable value of that classic Southern approach of "catching more flies with honey than vinegar"
• The importance of going to the source to be sure your information is accurate
• The essential nature of second opinions
• And the healing properties of dinner with your buddies – complete with fall-in-the-floor-laughing, disgustingly funny, "it really happened to my friend Barney" stories about body functions gone awry...

Keep going. I don't know that I can handle this. I don't know that any of us can. I do know other people have made it through, though, and I know if my sister will keep going, keep fighting, keep pedaling, I will. And when she can't pedal, we'll ride tandem.


She’s my baby sister. And I need her to know I’m right behind her, all the way.