So naturally, I wish I had the flu again.
Really, it is now 8:30 p.m. and I have been contemplating "getting started" for the past 12 hours. But at 6:00 p.m., as I was watching the last minutes of natural light - enough to be able to still call it "day", I stumbled upon a great idea: Netflix. What movie had I not seen in a long time that Grace would really like? Browse, browse, browse and finally: Terms of Endearment.
Oh my gosh, what a perfect movie. So wonderfully written, directed and acted with such an amazing cast, you absolutely cannot watch that movie and clean at the same time. So we put it on and I was not able to do anything for two and a half hours. Sorry, but what can you do?
Grace had never seen it and she was immediately caught up with Deborah Wingers wonderful character. Personally, I loved Shirley McLaine - I appreciated her performance in a way I couldn't have possibly appreciated it the last time I saw it - about 20 years ago. And of course, there is Jack.
When Jack Nicholson came on screen my jaw dropped to the floor and I thought "how old is this movie?" Well guess what? It is 30 years old! This was a fact unfathomable to me. But I had to concede it when I realized that when I first saw this move - in 1983 - I thought Jack was old and out of shape. I did not swoon. He was a "bad boy" who never grew up. Unattractive. This time however, I thought how young and gorgeous and sexy Jack was - a real "bad boy". Extremely attractive.
But I digress.
I sat watching the movie but with one eye on Grace. I loved seeing her buy in and come to love the characters - knowing full well what was coming. She was silenced when Shirley McClaine was banging on the nurse's station demanding her daughter get her shot, her eyes welled with tears when Deborah Winger said good-bye to her boys (I can't breathe watching that scene!), and when she finally reachers toward her mother, smiles wistfully, and dies, from next to me I hear audible, wracking, sobs. But not from Grace. These from Bob.
I had forgotten. At a chick flick Bob is certain to be the biggest girl in the room. He has cried like this at uncountable movies - "Heart and Souls", "Forrest Gump", "The Notebook". And both Grace and I looked at him with empathy. He needed a kleenex. He needed a hug. It took him very little time to recover and he always laughs at himself afterward but his heart is extremely tender toward such sentimental, heart-tugging movies. And while many people might think it strange or awkward to be in the presence of a man who cannot control the flood of emotions within, I see his tenderness in very different terms. In fact, you might call it terms of endearment .
(You knew that was coming...)
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