a real knee-slapper!
Anyone here seen Newsies?
1992 film starring baby-faced Christian Bale as Jack “Cowboy” Kelly in New York City - 1899 - amongst a raggedy cohort of newspaper-hawking kids. It’s a musical. I grew up with it. I’ll forever be biased. It’s cinema. I’m so open to Christian Bale singing about orphanhood & Santa Fe.
“I’m alone but I ain’t lonely; for a dreamer night’s the only time of day.”
My nieces and nephews (7 of the 10) recently watched Newsies. Then rewatched it 4 times.
Home for Thanksgiving last week, I witnessed them break out into unified song at least a dozen times.
They’d shout: “That’s my cigar! You’ll steal anotha!”
You guys… movies are alive. Still. Kind of. Actually.
My older brother Josh has this Instagram account that came as a total surprise. He’s a father of 3, works full-time as an engineer, wrote a trilogy of fantasy books for kids, taught himself to paint superbly with water color (another IG account for his paintings), does some woodworking, renovates his own house, and (AND!) just wrote a children’s “puzzle-packed mystery adventure book” in which the kids are the heroes who must solve puzzles as they read, in order to triumph and rescue their fam.
He calls it “Solve to Survive.”
I’m in awe?!?
Siblings are fixtures… like… take-them-almost-for-granted-fabric-of-our-lives. But… catching the right light, all in a moment, we can see each other anew - refracting all the dimensionality and surprise that familiarity conceals.
Josh is extraordinary.
I’m inspired by him, as if I’m following the journey of some curious and open-hearted renaissance man whose body of work I admire. The lovely part is that he’s my brother forever, and the inspiration remains close.
(Josh, thanks for reading this… my highest form of complimenting you is by writing about you.)
My father has Parkinson’s. Thirteen years of it, and it’s aggressive. He’s got gnarly arthritis in his hips and lower back too.
I’ve written about his steady heart, within a faltering body.
This time, while home, I was struck anew by the inverse relationship that a body and a spirit can have.
I mean that my dad’s spirit seems to grow younger, while his body creaks and groans.
We had the loveliest talks. He sincerely wanted my thoughts and ideas about how to open up. New ways to experience the world.
He cries readily - at all the vital things a person should cry about.
He sat on his green armchair one night - I sat on the couch opposite - and I told him about the film I’ve written. The film I want to shoot next year. There’s a character in it with Parkinson’s, and I said, “Dad, this man is like a father to the lead character. He tells her words in her dark hours that every person should hear from a good father.”
My dad cried.
I cried.
Amidst a debilitating ailment. Amidst his body betraying him.
I’m scared of such illness. I always have been. But the way my dad’s spirit is soft… it’s worth crying about. It’s worth good tears, like rain, that make things green.
His spirit is green and fresh.
The hope of that is stunning to me, juxtaposed with the pain.
Nicolette is my mom’s name, an elegant name.
She wakes up each day with exuberance. She’s a morning person, and it’s beautiful, but sometimes startling, but mostly empowering. She’s ready to talk, ponder, share an excerpt or idea, or process something potent.
One morning at home, I emerged from my room to a fat folder on the table where I usually sit. My mom had sorted through old things and found this collection of every single report card I’d ever received. She saved them all.
I opened the folder and spent an hour with my jarring history of perfectionism - working my way back from high school to 4 year-old Emily’s preschool evaluation.
I found this (such crisp cursive) from Tamara Walters, my preschool teacher:
“She has improved a great deal in self control.”
I’m tickled. I love a good euphemism.
Nicolette is the best for saving so much of my life and history… for also being a woman with “joy that bubbles over.” “Always eager to participate and help.”
I’m like my mother. I dig it.
Zootopia 2 premiered while I was home for Thanksgiving, so I caught a 10:20AM matinee with Josh and his kids (Giselle, Theo, and Mercy).
I am in love with the personalities of those kids.
I’ve written about Mercy before. She’s 8.
She’s the kind of child that, upon re-uniting with me, will clutch my face - earnest, intense - and say “BABY, I LOVE YOU!” with the force of 100 suns.
She has also clutched my face out of nowhere and said (with gravitas and pregnant pauses): “For we… are… heroes.”
Mercy sat to my left in Zootopia 2 and held my hand throughout the movie, unconsciously tracing lines on my palm while she stared at the screen.
The moment the credits rolled, she turned to me and said:
“That was a real knee-slapper!”
Kiddo, I love you. I agree.
GLIMPSES -
(The cigarettes are prop cigs. Entirely fake. I exhorted all of the children to never smoke, I illuminated the perils of smoking. But yes, we did play with them.)
Zooming in on Mercy…
And…
Knees slapped, joy felt!
Love this, especially the parts about your father, your learning self control, and the cigarettes (fake).