What Almost Made Me Cry Today: Ponyo

ponyoAdd “Ponyo” to my growing list of questionable movie choices that are apt to bring a tear to my eye. Not that it’s bad—on the contrary, Hayao Miyazaki’s retelling of “The Little Mermaid” in a rural, magical Japanese setting is completely wonderful. Lovely art, sharp characterizations, and that enchanting but occasionally menacing spirit that hangs over everything.

What almost—almost!—drew the tears from my eyes was not the underage love story between 5-year-old Sosuke and Ponyo, the fish who wants to become a real girl. No, it was the backdrop of the story. Sosuke lives with his parents at the top of a cliff in a small coastal Japanese town. But really, his dad is away most of the time, captaining some kind of large fishing or shipping vessel, and his mom, when she’s not excited at the prospect of the dad’s return, is angry and depressed. Early on, the dad is supposed to come home but calls in to say he’s got another job that’ll take him to sea for a few more days. Wow is the mom angry: “BUG OFF BUG OFF BUG OFF” is the message she send him via morse-code flashing lights. She even drinks a can of beer—in a kid’s movie!

This is all done in a fairly straightforward and nonmelodramatic way, and I wouldn’t have almost—almost!—cried except that, um, you know, my family is often in a similar situation. And except that last night, and for the next few nights, the situation is reversed: Jean is on a business trip to Los Angeles, and I’m home alone with Sasha. It’s necessary, and it’s not too big an inconvenience, but still: It sucks.

So, boo-hoo, boo-hoo, poor me. It’s morning, though, and I’m all better now.

What Almost Made Me Cry Today: A Milestone

It’s funny how extremely subtle changes in your kid grab your attention. For instance: Little kids cry all the time. Sometimes for good reason, sometimes for no discernible reason at all. But what’s in a cry?

Anyway, when I got Sasha up this morning, she was weepy, crying as I changed her diaper, saying “I sorry.” This isn’t all that different from normal, except that it is. She was listless, and wanted more than anything to be held and rest her head on my shoulder. Overall, she just seemed … sad. Which is unusual.

Despite her having no temperature, we decided to keep her home from school today—a first in my experience, at least. Jean’s off to work for the morning, back at lunch. I’ve dosed the kid with ibuprofren, in case this is some teething-related issue, and I’m not really that concerned. But there’s something that’s stuck in my head, this image of Sasha just deeply and inconsolably sad, wanting more comfort than we can possibly give. And in it I see a vision of the distant future, when she’s finally an independent creature and somehow, even though we can recognize something is wrong, beyond our ability to make her feel better. Dammit, now I’m sad, too.

But for now at least, it’s a day of pajamas, Cheerios, maybe some chicken noodle soup, and cuddling whenever she needs it. It’s all I can do, I guess.

What Almost Made Me Cry Today: Bad Kids Edition

I have to say, this essay went through me like an arrow made of ice and tipped with curare. It might’ve been called “When Bad Children Happen to Good People,” and addresses that thing we all have in the backs of  our minds: What if I do everything right and still raise a horrible person?

We are besotted, culturally, with silver-bullet bad-childhood explanations for everything. (“Someone took his teddy bear away from him, and he’s been trying to get it back ever since.”) I think it comes from too much TV, frankly, because this is a pretty standard third-act-of-a-one-hour-crime-drama revelation. Plus we are all, as discussed here recently, rather taken with pop-Freudian explanations of behavior. But child development is inexact. Some incredibly sensitive and brilliant souls come from ordinary and stable upbringings, and some come from flawed ones, and some come from horrible ones. Some perfectly wonderful parents raise monsters; some awful parents end up with great kids. And some people who are awful in one aspect of their lives are splendid at other ones, sometimes in spite of their upbringing. Consider Bill Clinton: lousy upbringing with alcoholic dad, brilliant guy, epically awful husband, and, by many accounts, a pretty great dad. Or just think of this dad.

The prospect of doing everything right and still having the dice come up badly was, in fact, my only real hesitation about becoming a dad. The image of a nasty little brat being attached to me forever kept me up nights, and still would, if our little guy weren’t so clearly a sunny and sweet person. Yes, something could turn in his little brain someday–but at least, I’m no longer holding my breath. We’re safe till the next developmental stage kicks in… in about six months or so.