An F-Bomb for Christmas
On Christmas Eve my odd and beloved little family and I were watching one of our favorite Christmas movies, Love Actually, written and directed by one of our favorite filmmakers Richard Curtis. Don’t get all judgy please. We do, as a group have secret yearnings to be English, well-off, and living in a world with simpler problems, but we are still good people. We acknowledge that Richard Curtis films are escapist. We also like Frank Capra movies. Nature? Nurture? Bit of both? Let’s move on.
I am particularly fond of Emma Thompson’s work in Love Actually. She plays a stay at home mother who learns that her husband, played by the late great Alan Rickman, is having an affair or is about to start one with his sexy admin. Thompson gets the news in the form of an expensive necklace that is not for her, and stands in her bedroom weeping, framed on all sides by horizontal and vertical lines, stuck. As she works to pull herself together, there is a moment, one of my favorite in the film. She dries her tears, and leans over and straightens the coverlet on the bed. Just gives it a quick little fix-it tug, pulling it into place.
There are several ways to read that moment, and I don’t think it’s necessary to narrow it down to one. It is many things in the context of the film and the development of the character. But the main point of it for me is to portray beautifully the silly, sometimes heroic human impulse to fix something, anything, in the face of big ugly problems that can surround and overwhelm us. The character ultimately does the right thing and confronts her husband, discreetly out of earshot of the children. But in that moment when she has just realized what is going on, between giving in to her grief and forcing herself to pull it together, before she has a plan or a notion of what to do, that tragic little fix-it tug resonates with me completely. And since the movie was released in 2003, Christmas is not quite Christmas for me until I see Thompson tug that coverlet.
Contrast this with another moment that occured the following day, Christmas day, between my 18 year old daughter and my 24 year old step-son. My sister and her family--husband and three teens--were over at our house for the annual Christmas dinner and gift exchange. Also present were my aforementioned odd and beloved little family, aka a Steemit post for another day. We are: my husband and my 24 year old step-son, and my ex-husband and our two kids, son 22 and daughter 18. Before going any further, because this is not the experience of many families, it needs to be stated: we all like each other. We hang out, eat dinner together regularly without squabbling, and most of us go on a vacation together annually. So it is within this context of everyone getting along, even the husband and the ex-husband (I know), that the following moment occurred.
My daughter, who abhors a leadership vacuum, was handing out the presents, making little piles of boxes for each person as the 11 of us sat crammed in the living room, visiting in little groups. My step-son threw a wadded piece of wrapping paper at her head, hitting her squarely and both pointing out and interrupting her take-charginess. It was brotherly and affectionately meant, and in what was apparently an equally sisterly and affectionate manner, she told him to go F himself. Only she used the whole word.
I may be reaching here, but these two moments speak so clearly to me of the differences between my daughter’s generation and mine. I’m an old mom. I was in my 30’s when I had my kids, so biologically I’m probably old enough to be their granny. I was raised in the 70’s and Mary Tyler Moore was my idol when I was a kid. Neither Mary, nor I imagine Emma--certainly not her character in the film--would ever think of telling off a brother for such an infraction with such a word (especially on Christmas!) and no more would I. Equally distant from my daughter’s reality is that little coverlet tug made by Thompson’s character in the moment between world shattering anguish and getting on with it. Foolish and human, a bow in a bad moment to the tail lights of a dream, c’mon girls, let’s tidy up a bit before facing disaster. I find that tug the high point of the scene. For my daughter, it is a non-event, totally below the radar.
When my step-son’s missile hit its mark the other night and my daughter leveled her steely gaze and spicy retort at him, that was a non-event too, at least for the young people in the room. It was funny to them, they laughed, and my step-son certainly took no offense. He did something impertinent, and she paid him back. That’s how the social math worked out. I like that this new generation is making new rules. I like that these rules include my daughter standing up for herself. I found the F-Bomb a bit harsh under the circumstances, but then I would, and so would Emma and Mary.
Picture from pixabay