Movie #1 of 2015

Labor Day

I'd been looking forward to the release of this movie after reading Joyce Maynard's book of the same name, which, BTW, she'd outlined (written?) in eight weeks while at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Loved the book. Moderately liked the movie. (Release date: Jan. 31, 2014 ... I watched it on Netflix ...yay Google Fiber! ... two days ago, after my husband went to bed at 8:05 p.m. Once a farm boy, always a farm boy, but I digress.)
Look. I'll see anything with Kate Winslet in it, 'cause I'm a fan, and cutie-pie Josh Brolin is always a draw. Anything promising romance, even if it's not believable, is an additional perk.
The basic premise is this: It's a hot Labor Day weekend in 1987 and Henry needs his mom, played by Winslet, to drive him into town to pick up stuff for school. After Winslet's character, Adele, has a mild panic attack in the driveway, and again in the parking lot of the discount store, the two eventually make their way into the store, where 13-year-old Henry is calmly accosted by Brolin's fresh-out-of-prison escapee, who's limping and wearing a blood-stained white tee.
Because this is a movie, Brolin ends up riding home with Adele and Henry, where the plan is he'll lie low for the evening. He ties Winslet up rather loosely and already the attraction starts to build. Okaaaaaaay. Having already read the book, I knew this was coming, but it was too weird to accept from my armchair in my living room. (I was glad to be watching the movie by myself.)
Soon, a non-descript neighbor brings over a bushel of peaches and a warning to Henry to watch out for the escaped convict. In no time at all, the con and his new family prepare pie crust, peel peaches, and as a threesome carry out an unsettling let's-make-a-pie-and-get-that-baby-in-the-oven scene that is kinda hard to watch.
Regardless, I kept on with the movie because I couldn't remember how the book ended. That's the thing about having Adult ADD and living a menopausal life: I can't remember shit.
Labor Day's ending-ending is nice, although you have to wonder if it's truly possible to carry a 15-year torch for someone who kidnapped you, tied you up, fed you chili, changed the oil in your wood-sided station wagon (the convict is a handyman), made sweet love to you one night (really?), and taught your kid not only how to make pie, but be so good at it, and changed  by the process, that years down the road the kid is a successful pie entrepreneur.
But Labor Day is only a movie. Not terribly bad for my first movie of the new year. I've seen worse.

All the Feelings

Just saw Saving Mr. Banks with the husband. Neither of us could leave the theater until we composed ourselves. Especially me. Not knowing the film was going to incite tears, I had no Kleenex with me. So ill-prepared was I. Instead, like a child with a runny nose, I resorted to drying my eyes on the voluminous cowl neck of my sweater.
Too many connections, I had/have with this movie. Like the author, P.L. Travers, of Mary Poppins, on which this movie is based, I had an alcoholic father whom I adored. I watched my father spit up blood; I saw his eyes, fixed and dilated, as he lay on his deathbed. I was forty-two when I watched my dad die. It was traumatic. Travers, whose real name was Helen Lyndon Goff, was only seven when her beloved father passed. And her mother, like mine, was emotionally troubled. I frequently daydreamed of having a different mother, one that was more loving and tender and stable, and I would probably have taken to a nanny who possessed those qualities. My mom didn't work outside of the home, really, save for a few temporary jobs, and we certainly weren't the wealthy sort who employed nannies or any kind of household help.
In life, I had a dad like Travers's, the Mr. Banks in the children's book. My dad, Duncan McDowell, was a delight, the sort who sang and danced and changed lyrics to popular songs with nonsensical lines ("They, asked me if I knew, raccoon poop was blue ... " ~ a dining room tribute to the Platters' song, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.") My father was my very dear friend. I felt like my arm had been cut off when he died. I wrote nothing for a full year, read very little, slept fitfully. Nothing, really, mattered to me, my grief was so broad. Clearly, I identify with the quite functional dysfunctional father-daughter relationship portrayed in Hollywood's dramatized movie, Saving Mr. Banks. I lived it, from the years 1965 until 1977, the summer I turned twelve, the summer Elvis died and my father quit drinking. Many times, I'd been a little girl praying that my daddy would lay off the sauce, as he called it; or, at the very least, he would only get a little buzzed, instead of pass-out drunk. Dad was still nice when he drank a six-pack. It was when the orange vodka came out that our carpet turned to eggshells.
Currently, I am a nanny, so there is that link. I sing and dance with the children in my care; I nurture them daily; I prepare their meals; I discipline tenderly; I love the children and they love me in return. The recognition that I am Mary Poppins to four children overwhelms me with happiness and gratitude. I know that I am making a difference in their lives. That is no small awareness. It is an enormous truth that carries immense responsibility.
Travers infused Mary Poppins with love because it was autobiography disguised as fiction. The pain of her love for her father, Travers Goff, is transparent on every page. She wanted the Mr. Banks of her book, an idealized version of her father, to impress and enthrall all. She wanted redemption and restoration of his character. She wanted an erasure of the alcoholism and his untimely death. (He was in his early 40s when he died from influenza, a truth that is not divulged in the cinematic version.)
It is why, the very same reason, that I am writing Bologna With the Red String: A Culinary Tribute to a Blue-Collar Upbringing in a Barbecue Town. The food memoir is a love story ~ a tribute ~ to my parents, much more than it is a cookbook. It does not exist to make fun of my blue-collar background, even though there is humor employed in the telling. We might have been poor at times, but we were never stupid; our income insufficiencies weren't from lack of responsibility. There was a recession and people quit buying cars. My auto-worker dad rolled newspapers to keep food on the family table when the General Motors plant shut down.
My story seeks only to honor my mom and dad, both of whom did the best they could, and then some.

Silver Linings Playbook hits close to home

Bradley Cooper is one fine-looking man, which explains my primary motivation behind going to see Silver Linings Playbook this afternoon. My husband went along, too, which was only marginally annoying. Once the movie started, I kinda forgot he was there (we had our own popcorn).
It wasn't long into the movie when Cooper's beautiful face and erratic behavior began to look eerily familiar. I grew up with a good-looking, mentally ill father (he was a dead ringer for Paul Newman). Dad's diagnosis was bi-polar disorder, although back in the 70s, the term was manic-depressive. He threw fits. He raged. He repeated himself, repeated himself, repeated himself. He used alcohol to moderate his mood swings. He was drunk a lot. When AA rolled around, a court-ordered deal, the orange vodka and cases of beer left the house, but Dad set up permanent residency. He became agoraphobic and had to physically prepare (shit, shave, and shower, as he put it) just to get the mail at the end of the driveway. He quit mowing the lawn. Was the first person to see his barber, 'cause there was no way in hell he was going to wait with other people around. He wore sun glasses most of the time. No one, under any circumstances, was to look at him as he ate his evening meal, including our dog. As a family, my parents and two sisters went nowhere together. No restaurants, no amusement parks, no vacations. Dad missed my high school graduation, my college graduation, and my wedding.
I am not bitter. I loved my father. I understood his mental illness.
Myself? I have GAD, an ugly-sounding acronym for Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which means, at its rawest definition, that I worry a lot. I perceive the world to be A Very Dangerous Place. I have ADD, but I am not medicated for that. As a writer, I need my creativity. I feel that meds for attention-deficit-disorder would be too numbing.
I have Major Depressive Disorder, along with a depressive nature, definitely a half-glass-empty gal am I, but this is in stark contrast to the way I make myself live my life, which is to focus on beauty and laughter. Whenever I start to feel the black veil of don't-give-a-shit taking over, I make myself get out of the bed. I head first to the kitchen. I brew strong caffeinated coffee, a mood lifter when I cannot seem to lift myself, and then I grab an orange, cold and perfect from the fridge. I savor it ... its shape and color and juiciness. I read somewhere ~ I think it was an Elizabeth Berg novel, where the main character cannot figure out why another character killed himself. Didn't he want one more orange? she asks.
When I don't need the immediacy of a coffee or orange mood-boost, I have back-up plans: I head to the theater and watch a funny movie, or I go and rent one. I watch funny videos on youtube. I drive to the mall, the one that's really too far away, but there's a pet store there, and I love to watch the puppies fall over themselves. I read my Bible. I surround myself with children; they bring me great joy. I listen to beautiful music, which on any given day might be Lady Gaga's mellow offering, "Brown Eyes," or Anything by Edith Piaf (I love the French language), or my favorite gospel song, "Take Me to the King," by Tamela Mann ("I don't have much to bring, my heart's torn in pieces, it's my offering ... lay me at the throne, leave me there alone, to gaze upon your glory and sing to you this song ... .").
***
There are three of us girls, but only I have sought professional help. I take a little white pill every day that keeps the panic attacks away. Until Lexapro, I died many, many times. That's how scary panic attacks are. You truly, truly think you are dying. I have awakened many mornings, surprised, that I survived the night. Because of medication and counseling, I exist in the world and I live responsibly and gloriously. I have been blessed with a long-term marriage (28 years) and three amazing children, all of whom are adults. I have many, many friends and wonderful neighbors. I taught English at the high school and middle school level. I went to work; I earned money; I vacationed with my family.
Of my three children, two have seen psychiatrists: there's ADD, ADHD, major depressive disorder, an initial diagnosis of bipolar (turned out to be wrong), OCD, and GAD. The alphabet soup in this house requires prescription medications.
***
Mental illness is a biochemical issue, as I see it. I have seen meds work wonders in my dad's life, my own life, in my own house. The Bradley Cooper character in Silver Linings didn't want to take his, and when that part of the movie played I cringed. So typical, that behavior. I have thought it myself at times. Yes, that Lexapro is responsible for some of my weight gain ("bloat," as Cooper calls it in the movie), and, yes, it is responsible for some of my fatigue, but I will swallow it down. Once a day, every day, I will take that pill. I will enjoy my life.