young widowhood

Red-Shirted: Musings on Star Trek


There’s a scene in the new Star Trek movie that has Kirk and Sulu space-jumping from a shuttle onto a drilling platform in an attempt to disable it and save the planet Vulcan. Jumping along with them is a crew member named Olson. Because there are several characters who crop up with names from the old series, Rob wondered who Olson was.

“He’s wearing red, honey,” I whispered, “so it doesn’t matter.”

Aficionados of the original television show can attest to the fact that unidentified crew members wearing red shirts were regularly sacrificed to the harsh realities of space travel in the place of established characters like Kirk and Sulu. Red shirting equaled dead.

It’s interesting how we come to associate certain conditions with predictable outcomes.

We were sitting in a packed theatre in The Park after having braved an overcrowded lobby for tickets and popcorn. Rob and I divided and conquered to achieve our ends as quickly as possible. He hopped into the ticket line and I got in the shortest of the concession lines, which meant nothing. Length of queue is no indication that the person running the till is fast or slow. Canadians just don’t get the whole “service” idea and incompetent workers are aided by the overall Canadian “too polite to complain” thing.

I won. It took twenty minutes for me to achieve Nirvana/service while Rob had only made the middle of his line. As I waited, I noticed that many others used our strategy and the number of people in front of me changed frequently. The young man behind the counter had a deer in the headlight expression but it didn’t keep him from functioning at a level one doesn’t often see – efficient – and this aura of knowing what the fuck he was doing had attracted him some assistance in the form of a more frightened looking young man who scurried around behind him helping to fill orders.

There were a number of families, who I will assume were there to see UP but since Drag Me To Hell seemed to be the movie most people were nattering about, I can’t be sure. One couple nitpicked at the Competent Worker while their two little boys hung on the counter and licked the ice in the container next to the soda dispenser. It should go without saying that we had bottled water for our beverage.

We found seats easily. Annoyed the woman seating on the end as we took turns visiting the washroom before the show began. And I will note here that there were far too many tinkled on toilet seat lids for my liking in the washroom and if toilet seats are great germ transmitters (they are not sinks and door handles are) in public restrooms, it is the fault of idiotic women dangling their bums about toilet seats.

Despite the lack of seating by preview time, Rob and I selfishly maintained a barrier of a vacant seat on either side of us. I really prefer not to literally rub elbows. There was one woman to our left who texted until the film began and some geezers behind us who had to comment on every little homage to the original series the movie paid (I know that Rob and I are old too but we were not teens or even preteens when the show originally aired. In fact, I was in pre-school and didn’t see it until it began its run in syndication when I was about 11.) These minor things aside, it was an enjoyable  outing .

One thing horrified me as we were leaving – the last ones because we watched nearly all the credits – was the fact that no one took their garbage out with them. I looked up and saw that nearly every seat had an abandoned soda cup. Popcorn bags carpeted the floor or were left perched on seats. And there we were, toting our empty bags and water bottles out.

Not that there was a trash can to put things in. The one at the exit was overflowing, but c’mon –  raised in a barn much?

Oh, the movie? The stereo-type thing cropped up in the form of death and widowhood – again. When Kirk’s father dies just seconds after his birth and he and his wife are saying their goodbyes – I was on the verge of tears. But I found the melodrama a bit hackneyed and unrealistic. Death is not normally so poetic and purposeful. George Kirk dies by choice to save his crew, wife and newborn son. If only we all could have such a meaningful end.

Kirk’s “poor me my dad is dead” rebellion rated an eye-roll even though I completely agreed with another character’s dismissal of his behavior as a waste of time that should be put to better use. And Spock’s dramatic break over his mother’s death played into the idea that grief renders people incapable grated a bit. Probably it was the link to temporary insanity. I still don’t believe that the grieving are hothouse vegetation who can’t think clearly enough to take care of business and think about the future. Grief can be allowed a debilitating mis-step here and there, and some people let it swamp them, but most people carry on more or less without any need to abdicate. Grief is not a mental illness. It’s not a breakdown. It’s normal. One deals.

The alternate timeline thing was brilliant though scientifically flawed. I liked Spock and Uhura together. I loved Scotty and Kirk was better than expected although I am not entirely convinced he will grow up to be William Shatner someday.

The best thing about the movie was talking Trek with Rob afterwards. There is nothing like snuggling up and musing on the geekier gulity pleasures in life with one’s life-mate.

What’s in a Surname?


My not quite seven year old daughter refers to my husband by his first name for the most part. To her friends and teachers he is “daddy”, however, and though I went through a phase of referring to him as “daddy” for her benefit – as well as my own – I don’t anymore at the request of my husband. He felt that the relationship he has with Kat should progress as it progresses without undue influence from me.

The other day as I lay on my flu/death bed, Kat came into the bedroom to inform me I had spelled her last name incorrectly. She had just collected her “mail” and was holding up the little note I had written to welcome her home from school. Kat loves mail. She has attached a small box to her bedroom door and instructed Rob and I to leave all mail for her there. All mail that we are expected to write her on a regular basis that is. I have to admit, Rob is far more diligent a correspondent than I am.
“I spelled it the way I always have,” I said as she held the paper out for me to see.
“But that’s not right,” she told me.
It took me a moment, but then the light went off. She expected to see Rob’s last name.

Early on in our relationship Rob and I discussed him adopting Kat though we have yet to begin the paperwork. Kat was consulted then too and assented without any fuss except for one thing – she wanted her last name to stay the same. That was fine with Rob. He believes she shouldn’t have to change her name and that she is too young to make the choice even if she expressed an interest in taking his name. 

Until the other day, Kat hasn’t had any interest in Rob’s last name.

The experts say that it takes three to five years to successfully “blend” families in second marriages. My husband thinks that families don’t blend as much as they simply get used to and grow accustomed to each other. Or not. I think that the idea of blending applies to all families regardless of their formation.

As far as family goes, our three girls – his two adult daughters and my wee one – have folded into our new unit with far less trauma than I have observed in other situations. Rob attributes it to our presenting ourselves as a united front that comes first but more so to the fact that our girls have been raised properly. I think we deserve a little credit too. We have tried to listen and accommodate and give the kids the space they needed to adjust and acknowledge that there is still adjusting to do. In any event, they have grown used to our situation much more gracefully than than some of their elders in the extended family have.

It has not always been as easy as it might appear to anyone simply peering in. All five of us came to this new family as a result of the death of a loved one and that grieving is ongoing and, with the kids especially, it will manifest over and over as they encounter the normal milestones in their lives. But we are no different from any other family in that we are five individuals with needs and wants that will not always match up perfectly.

Kat’s declaration caught me a bit off guard. I never really expected her to want to try out Rob’s last name at such a young age. As a middle school teacher, I encountered many children who used their step-father’s last name even though all their official paperwork had the name they were born with on it. Teens, and pre-teens even, are prone to identifying closely – or completely shunning – a step-parent in my experience. I didn’t think the name issue would come up before Kat was in junior high.

I know there is a sizable majority who would counsel against allowing Kat to change her last name. They would cite her age, but most would insist that her late father’s last name is something she owes him. Fortunately, this is not a decision for today. It’s not one we have to have for a long time to come. And ultimately it isn’t a “we” decision. It’s Kat’s decision. And I will honor that decision, no matter what it is.

She and I talked about it a bit and then I let the matter drop. She hasn’t brought it up again. Rob raised an eyebrow when I told him but hasn’t said anything one way or another. I don’t have to wonder what Kat’s late father would have thought. He would have hated the idea. And I wonder just how much I have to take this into account because, frankly, he’s dead. This isn’t his life; it’s his daughter’s. At this point, Rob has been her father in the active sense longer than my late husband was. Rob is the one she consciously imitates and seeks to impress. It’s his world view she will absorb before utterly rejecting it as a teenager and then re-embracing the parts of it that mesh with her own as a young adult. Being a parent is more than DNA and being someone’s daughter is more than sharing a last name, or not.

 

 

This is an original 50 Something Moms post.

Movies and Memories


I am an infrequent viewer of Hanna Montana. Mostly I scan to make sure that it isn’t too age inappropriate for the wee daughter while keeping in mind that children are instinctively attracted to stories and shows about kids who are older than themselves. It’s a phenomena that makes sense when one remembers that we learn primarily by example, but it puzzles and irritates parents who would rather their children stayed children with no aspirations of growing up.

On the show, Hanna lives with her dad and her older brother. I have never heard mention of her mother or why she is no longer with the family. Being a Disney product, I should have at least suspected that Robby Ray (Hanna’s dad – don’t you just love sitcom versions of the two name Southern tradition?) was widowed. The movie doesn’t dwell on it, treats the death as just a life event that everyone still quietly acknowledges at pivotal moments but not in the melodramatic way of drama shows, which really sets my teeth to grinding with the whiny spiritually mauled but enduring in the face of personal tragedy way that defines survivors in popular culture anymore.        

BabyD didn’t miss the references though she only commented once and hasn’t mentioned it again. I would imagine that having a dead parent in common with Miley/Hanna will only further cement her adoration.

So having had my media death reference for the day, I tried to convince Rob that we should watch the war movie we’d gotten from the bookmobile this week as opposed to  the Sean Penn film, Into the Wild, in which the main character starves to death after arrogantly trotting out into the Alaskan wilderness, thinking that his experience as a modern day hobo in the lower 48 had equipped him with the “right stuff” for the wild. Even if I didn’t know going in that the young man had died, I could have guessed the outcome anyway. I wouldn’t last long either in that situation and I have been following the Way of the Rob for over two years now. This guy had Jack London and Thoreau as his guides (and really, nearly every one of London’s more famous main characters are crushed by the superiority of the wild and Thoreau was a huge poser who lived off the generosity of his friend Emerson – Walden Pond was in his back yard after all).

But Rob wanted Into the Wild.

I did not like the main character, Chris McCandless, from the start. It took me a while to figure out why, but I eventually pinpointed the two main reasons.

One, he reminded me of my brother, CB. His wild ideas and proselytizing and the way he used people by exploiting the holes in their lives that his presence managed to fill for long enough to make them more aware of this gaps than they had been was so like my brother. Charm. Self-delusion. The ability to pan-handle by allowing people to feel as though they have been touched by an angel in the process. Classic.  

The second reason was that he was nearly the definition of Gen X angst. At some point I realized that McCandless was just five years younger than I am, the same age as my baby sister and the same peer group of Kurt Cobain, who still retains this impossible aura of generational representation that the disenfranchised find so appealing. For the record, I have no patience with the “my parents were such cock-suckers that I must be a complete dickwad myself in order to set my universe right” theory of life. Gen X is nearly as whiny about that as the Boomers can be, and I have never find being sandwiched between such narcissistic horse-shit easy to tolerate.

Long story summed up, McCandless was an upper-middleclass college grad who’d never faced much personal adversity aside from the fact that his parents had a very bad marriage and weren’t grown up enough to keep their kids out of it. Because of this, Chris actively dropped out of the mainstream upon his graduation, partly as a statement about what he thought was an empty, consumer-driven, greedy society but more as a way to punish his parents for not having been perfect.

The film tries to address the fundamental flaws in Chris but I thought it erred too often on glorifying his idiotic behavior and making him appear more enlightened than the rest of society.

Chris McCandless was selfish, cruel and ultimately he learned a very hard lesson – that happiness is about others more than it is about yourself.

I was ready to quit the movie with about twenty minutes left to go, but Rob wanted to push on. We both knew what was coming, but I decided to hang in – hoping that the director would not dramatize Chris’s death. No such luck. The last moments are played out to the eerie  sound of a heartbeat like sound that began to beat faster and faster until finally the young man exhales sharply and is gone. My first husband’s last moments were nearly identical. I felt his heartbeat racing like footfall under my hand and the last breath was so forceful, it seemed as though he was pushing his soul through a crack in a sidewalk.

Fortunately, the film did not get the facial expression right. Movies never do or maybe it is not possible to fake the vacancy on the face of the living even with make up and special effects.

Afterwards it was hard to fall asleep. I worried a bit about my own brother who is making self-extinction noises again. And I pondered my own changed self.