Tag: #Mother

  • Nothing Particular

    The domesticity of my life has taken precedence today. Meaning that I had to make a meal plan for the family, and then go grocery shopping. The chores that need to be accomplished for the stay at home parent. I’m not complaining about these tasks, but I was bad at planning them this week. Normally I make the plan and shopping list the night before, so that I can go take care of it as soon as I get done dropping the kid off at school. Thus, freeing up the rest of the day for things I want to do.

    So, I got a late start today, and as such, I am writing later than I was planning. Some days are like that. Some days are just go go go, and I don’t get what I want. It has to be delayed, because I’m a grown up, and that’s what life is sometimes like for a grown up.

    And as I ran my errands, walking through the Upper West Side to get to the Trader Joe’s, the pang of missing my mother hit me. Not crushing, but just that a pang because out of nowhere, I thought about her stuffed peppers that she used to make, and home the smell of those peppers cooking would permeate the entire house, and how I hated that smell as it informed me of a meal that I wouldn’t enjoy, but there was no sense in complaining. The rest of the family loved it, and I was the odd man out that would have to put up with it. And even if my mother magically came back and made stuffed peppers for me, I still would not eat it. That meal sucked.  

  • It’s Still Christmas Time

  • It’s Christmas Time Again

  • Merry Christmas!

  • Personal Review: WandaVision (Spoilers!)

    (You are warned! SPOILERS AHEAD! And this is a long one.)

    So, I finished WandaVision last night, and nothing was ruined for me; No internet troll, no idiot fanboy friend, and no spoiler reveiling headline. I was able to watch, and enjoy what unfolded. Just like our ancestors of old.

    The first thing is that I am really surprised at how much I enjoyed WandaVision, as it made me look forward to Friday night. The group of people who put this together did a great job of keeping the story well paced, revealing this mystery piece by piece. I wasn’t sure at first, to be honest. The first two episodes moved slowly, but as the show progressed, it did feel like a runaway train, building speed, and you knew it was headed for a crash of a climax. I keep thinking that at some point I will get tired of superhero shows/movies, because Martin Scorsese is right; you know the good guy always wins, so there is nothing really at stake or in peril. Yeah…

    …But what I enjoyed most was that this was a superhero story about grief and mourning. I think when it comes to “big ‘splosion movies” like Hollywood makes, not a whole lot of time is given to the emotional toll that these trials and losses have on the characters. (I remember when Carrie Fisher said that Princess Leia was the strongest character in Star Wars because Leia was captured, tortured, watched her home planet get destroyed which killed her parents and family and friends, got in a shoot-out, still had time to empathize with Luke’s loss of Ben, and then went on to help lead the attack on the Death Star which caused her to, yet again, face imminent death. And through all of that, she never broke down. That’s an emotionally strong character.) When you think about Wanda, that character has been through too much grief; parents, brother, and her partner in Vision. How would a character with unlimited power deal with all of that death? As she went through the stages of grief, why wouldn’t she use her powers?

    Grief doesn’t make sense. As I watched this show, it made me think about how I have grieved for my mother. Clearly, if I could bring her back I would do it, but I know that will never happen. But I do sometimes find myself having the fleeting thought that I might still get a phone call or text from her. It’s a thought that enters my mind, only to be quickly dismissed by logic, but it lasts long enough for there to be a catch in my throat, and that sad sinking feeling in my stomach. My grief doesn’t stop me from functioning, because my kid makes me keep going, but my grief is always below the surface. It’s a sadness that always seems to be in the back of the room, just out of the corner of my eye. It holds me back from being very excited about anything, or opening myself up to any deeper emotions, or even the joy of looking forward to something.

    And that is the thing that WandaVision did for me. When I figured out this was a show about Wanda’s grief and how it had manifested itself, I didn’t run from it. Watching this show was admitting that it was going to bring up things in me that are still raw. Two and a half years after my mother’s death, I can talk about it, but I’m still not ready to feel that pain again. Watching Wanda and Vision say goodbye to their boys, that hurt. Watching Wanda and Vision say goodbye to each other, oh that hurt as well. But what hurt most was watching that red energy field contracting; the inevitable visual end, the looming death, that was moving toward them. That image for me was how my mother’s death felt. As she lay almost comatose in hospice, we all knew death was coming. We couldn’t stop it, and as every minute ticked by, we knew it was getting closer. I would have done anything to stop it. But I couldn’t. That hurts still.

    WandaVision ended up being something more than I thought it could be. What I thought would be a one note joke of being trapped in old TV shows, or a vehicle to set up “Phase 4” or “Phase 5,” actually was one of the better shows that I have seen a in long time. There was something at stake, and there was peril. Sure, that bad guy was defeated, but the grief survived. Grief can be a gift, as it does show us who and how deeply we truly loved, but if grief is not confronted, it can destroy us.