May the 4th Be With You: 5 wise things from Star Wars

This May the 4th finds me at home with a sick Oliver. Incidentally, he is also one of the biggest Star Wars fans in the world, so we are celebrating with Star Wars vehicle cookies, Darth Mault shakes (vanilla ice cream blended with malted milk balls) and a marathon movie fest that commenced with A New Hope.

It's been a long since I've actually sat down to watch these films. The boys watch them so often that they're like an omnipresent background noise; always on and yet unnoticeable. But in sitting here, I'm really quite transfixed. Kitschy though it is at times, there is much wisdom in this epic.

Five Bits of Wisdom From Star Wars

Firstly, the gender equality is terrific. Princess Leia is so strong and confident; her voice is her own, assertively and still femininely so. In the later films (earlier episodes), Padmé Amidala serves as both Queen and, later, Senator of Naboo. Zam Wesell is a bounty hunter. 
There aren't a ton of female characters, but those there are aren't damsels in distress or wall-flowers. They are strong and fiery.

Secondly, the diversity and tolerance in Star Wars is fantastic. Just look around the cantina on Tatooine. Or at the Jedi council. Seriously, just do that. Droids, aliens, snout-nosed people, beings that look like they have asses on their chins, men and women of color, wookies...What matters is loyalty and courage and whether or not you want to fight for what's right. Just look at the way Chewy lovingly repairs C3P0 after he gets blasted in The Empire Strikes Back. C3P0, whose voice and affect remind me SO much of the Dowager Countess (Downton Abbey), can be god-awfully annoying, but Chewy just sits there and works him back to wired health.

Millenium Falcon-shaped cat

Thirdly, and Oliver brought this point up, the basic messages such as "Trust your feelings" and "size matters not" are right and meaningful. Our feelings, our inner voices, the light within...any way you want to spin what it is to listen to our selves, it's a wise thing to do. And something that, for many of us, gets harder with age.
Work against that temptation we should; listen to ourselves we must.

Fourth, the emphasis on the value in taking the tougher path and spending time to learn something well is a critical reminder in this day and age of immediacy in both input and response. Mastery takes time as does getting to know people well. Both are worth it, but you must invest in the process.

Lastly, while I think it's so important to feel and honor our feelings of frustration and anger, just look what happened to Anakin Skywalker when he let his hatred and rage overtake him. He got all burned up on Mustafar and had to become Darth Vader to survive. He was powerful, yes, but he couldn't take his helmet off and he died a regretful man.

Star Wars is part of the classic film canon, and the more I re-watch them, the happier I am that my boys are obsessive devotees. If you haven't already, consider letting your kids watch the series, at least the original three. And if you've not watched these recently, give them another whirl.

May the Force be with you! Today and always!

My boy

My little boy calls to me. "Mama," he says, "I  need to talk to you."

I ask him to scoot over so I can fit on the edge of his bed. His eyes look weepy though the tears haven't yet begun. I brush his blond hair away from his eyes, off to the side of his forehead, following the direction in which his part has long taken it.

It's bedtime, half past seven, the time when sad thoughts and bad thoughts come out to play. The time when busyness is no longer a helpful distraction, the time when the mind starts to rest. Or does it?

"Third grade has been a hard year for me, Mom."

"Really my darling? You seem so much happier than last year. Tell me!"

"Oh yes, it's been a very good year, but sometimes, at recess, it's so hard."

My gut starts to clench for him, as I recall the way kids start to act when they're eight and nine and ten. When there are ins and outs and cools and not-cools. When playground cliques change daily but are painful each time around.

My boy is truly kind. He always has been. It doesn't occur to him to be mean to anyone. It's been hard to watch others be mean to him. There have been a few, as there always are, and even though my boy is hurt, he refuses to hurt back. "That's just not right, Mom." I want to punch those kids in their smug faces, but my boy is right. And so I help him figure out ways of standing up to them in a kind, logical way. A way that he can walk away from feeling good that he's stuck to his moral guns.

"Well, X started a club, you see. And he invited some others to join. I said I wanted to join and he said, 'Well you can't unless you pass a test perfectly, and then maybe I'll let you onto the low class side."

Come to find, my boy would be the only one on the low class side, if he passed this ridiculous test.

My boy and X are friends. My boy is stung by this betrayal. He doesn't understand.

"Mom, there's no way I'll get 100% on the test." my boy says, and he crumbles in slo-mo. His beautiful face pinches, as if trying to stop the inevitable deluge soon to wet the pillow on which his head rests. The tears come, and his thin shoulders seize, up and back, up and back.

My heart is aching as I kiss the tears away and try to think of something, anything I can say to ease his pain. I tell my boy that I'm so proud of his kind soul and that unfortunately, not everyone is so. I tell him that sometimes, life is mean and hard and confusing. I tell him that friends don't issue tests, don't put friends in low classes.

I hug him until I worry I'm upsetting him more and then I gather myself and tell him something funny to make him laugh. A momentary reprieve.

"I love you, Mom."

Oh my sweet boy, I love you too.

A comedy of horrors

Round about 6:12pm this fine evening, I posted on Facebook, "How is it only 6:12pm?"

The reasons for this included the fact that since I picked the boys up at 3:15 it felt as if 95 hours had passed, and two, just out of the bath, they were wearing underpants and hoodies -and Jack an epic butt-cut- and posing in extremely suggestive ways.

If anyone wearing Star Wars underpants and an Ash Ketchum-inspired hoodie can be suggestive. Or should be.

Jack: "I'm the hottest guy in town!"
Oliver: "What's that mean?"
Jack: "I'm the sexiest guy in town!"
Oliver: "What's that mean?"
Jack: "PRETTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And then Oliver pulled his pants down. Duh.

I said, "Boys, I am going to sit on the couch and do my crossword puzzle. You can A) go upstairs and be loud, or B) stay down here and play more quietly."

Obviously they chose B and then acted upon A. I poured more wine and hid my crossword from prying Jack eyes because, and actually I am proud of this, I do NOT share my crossword with ANYONE until I've had at least 13 go-rounds with it. Even then I only gift "you should know this even though I don't" softballs. Invariably, Tom doesn't know and Jack does, and I'm irritated and impressed, respectively.

Tom does, however, ALWAYS and immediately understand the freaking pun theme. I rarely do and don't care. Because I'm that kind of SAT-vocab girl.

Anyway, we finally(!) made it upstairs and found that Guppy (my favorite fish) was seizing on the bottom of the tank. Shit. So inopportune, Gup. I love you, but you choose bedtime to die?

I was SO thankful I had two glasses of wine in me because I haven't been this sad about a pet death since my childhood cats (except for Scarlet, who always wanted to suck my fingers.) I made a very brief speech about not letting animals suffer (brief because I wanted to get that poor fish to the toilet), and we came to an agreement that euthanasia was the right course of action.

Jack: "It is Earth Day and now he'll back in the cycle." or something deep like that. I concurred effusively.

Oliver: "Mom, you put him in ve net, and I'll carry him to ve potty."

So we did this, and as he lay mercifully still at the base of the bowl, we each said something nice and the boys shed tears.

Jack was itching to depress the flush lever. I could feel and not stop his impulse. Oliver, who is completely stunned by even the smallest of decisions, could not fathom depressing said lever. As I watched Jack's arm reach out to crank that baby away, it was as if in slo-mo that can't be stopped. Away went Guppy and down rained Ol's always-ready, abundant tears.

Shit again. 

Before I could do anything, Oliver slapped the crap out of Jack. Jack's tears began to flow, rivaling Ol's. Both boys flew to their rooms, each pleading with me to COME SNUGGLE WITH ME NOW.

Mother effer, where is my wine?

I went to Ol because really, to have your friend flushed away before you're ready would be the pits. After multiple consolation attempts, I decided to just get real.

"Ol, it is so sad about Gup. I totally understand how you feel. I remember the first beloved pet I lost. It was one of our cats, and El and I made a cross out of wood and painted it and planted it over the cat's grave. And then one day, a fat man named Junior mowed the cross down."

He laughed so hard I thought he might fart again, a result infinitely more likely than any other. From the other room I heard Jack ask, "WHAT? What was his name? And he mowed down the cross?"

Those boys snort-laughed to beat sixty. Junior! A handmade cross turned into wood chips! Where's that cat body now?

Guppy was gone, but not forgotten. Until Oliver remembered and cried again, and so on Friday we're getting Gup #2. He was my favorite.