A friend in the neighborhood

I am convinced it is no coincidence that Mister Rogers--the sweater-wearing, singing, owner of a secret puppet wonderland--thrived on television during the late 60s and 70s. At a time when divorce rates were skyrocketing and children were reeling, who better to spend a little time with each day than someone who told you that you were special, that you were listened to, that your feelings mattered.

I was reminded of this recently as I watched the documentary "Mister Rogers and Me" on PBS.  In one of the opening bits, Wagner tells the story he recounts in his blog here, about Mister Rogers asking about his parents' divorce.  The story is just as any kid who grew up watching the show would imagine: Mister Rogers talking about something no one else wants to talk about with kids, giving the kid permission to express what he's feeling, and then letting it all end with a comforting and mood-changing song that says 'even in the midst of sad things, at least we still have each other.'

No wonder we all loved him.

The face of love

I'm such a sucker for stories like this one, where life takes an unexpected, horrifying turn and love shines through. 

They stand in such stark contrast to an interview I remember watching years ago, one of those Barbara Walters specials, with John and Bo Derek. For those too young to remember, Bo was the star of the movie "10" that famously included a scene of her in blond cornrow braids jogging in a swimsuit. During the interview, perhaps sensing that John was infatuated rather than in love, Walters asked him whether he would stay with Bo if she were disfigured in a car accident and got the response she must have sensed was coming: "No."  I was a teenager at the time of the interview and still remember the look of embarrassment and pain on Bo's face. John Derek has since died and, happily, Bo seems to have found a steadier love in John Corbett. Here's John C. telling the story of their first date.

Zing or sting?

Coming soon to a theater near you, a hilarious satire about grown children of divorce still caught in the crossfire. Hahahaha, I'm laughing already. At least it's billed as a dark comedy. The writers of the screenplay had this to say about their script being picked up by Miramax: "We're very glad to get the validation from Miramax, especially since we've been working on the script longer than any of our parents were married." Mom and Dad must be so proud.

February is Child of Divorce Month at the Movies

Thanks to Catherine for the tip about another new movie with a February release date featuring a child of divorce, Definitely, Maybe:

Ryan Reynolds stars as Will Hayes, a 30-something Manhattan dad in the midst of a divorce when his 10 year-old daughter, Maya (Abigail Breslin), starts to question him about his life before marriage. Maya wants to know absolutely everything about how her parents met and fell in love.

Apparently, what ensues is a movie version of How I Met Your Mother. Speaking of sitcoms, Ryan Reynolds, who plays the dad in this movie, also starred in one of my favorite now-defunct TV comedies, Two Guys, A Girl, and A Pizza Place.

Healing on film

Sorry for the long silence on the blog. The baby dog is indeed a baby with a teeny-tiny baby bladder that needs to be relieved several times each night still, although I swear I am watching him grow right before my eyes--I think he's doubled in size in the week and a half that I've had him! He's a cutie pie, but, boy, could I use a full night of uninterrupted sleep!

Catching up on my inbox, I saw a message about a limited-release Christian movie about divorce scheduled to hit select theaters the day after Valentine's Day. According to Christian Post, Me & You, Us, Forever "will look at the damaging reality of divorce on spouses, children, families and friends as it aims to put forth a message for the hurting that healing is possible." The film is billed as a love story, interrupted by thirty years. Looks interesting.

To see a list of theaters that are showing this movie, click here for the official movie web site. No one in Virginia is showing it yet, so if you happen to see it in your area, check in here and let us know what you thought.

Movie review: Kramer vs. Kramer

Although my TV is gone, I can still watch plenty of movies on my laptop (and kudos to my brother for ordering me a widescreen, giving me the full viewing experience). My public library offers oodles of movies, with no late fees and two week check-out intervals, so I've been strategically building my Netflix and library lists. Whenever I run across a movie I want to see, I check the library first. Only if the library doesn't have it do I add it to my Netflix list.

So, the library did have a copy of Kramer vs. Kramer, which I had never seen, until last night. The story line is vastly different from most of the movies that deal with children of divorce today, because it reflects a different era. Some early reviewers of my book questioned a comment I made about most of us living with our mothers. Back in the 70s, that was the reality. The court system was skewed toward mothers getting custody of children. Kramer vs. Kramer shows that reality.

If you haven't seen the movie, Meryl Streep plays the role of Joanna Kramer who leaves her husband (played by Dustin Hoffman) and young son to "find herself." After stumbling upon herself in California, she returns to seek custody of Billy. Although he's been the sole caretaker of their son for a year and a half, Ted Kramer finds himself in a desperate fight to retain custody.

I won't spoil the outcome for you. This was a good movie though. The parents were portrayed as flawed individuals who were both, at one time or another, good parents and lousy parents. Little Billy, caught in the middle of all this, is written believably, as a normal boy who wonders what has happened to his family, who misses his mom, and who bonds with his dad in a new way after mom leaves. If you haven't seen it, it's a good addition to the children of divorce movie library.

Marriage and a movie

New York magazine, in an article on the marriage and movie partnership of Jennifer Jason Leigh and Noah Baumbach:

[Leigh speaking] "...this was always my childhood idea of what a marriage would be."

...she relaxes as she describes her notion of connubial bliss. It's a familiar fantasy, one that animated Joan Didion's memoir of her life with John Gregory Dunne, an ideal I remember picking up like a virus in high school, when I read about Woody Allen's relationship with Mia Farrow, back in those sweet and innocent days, before the fall. There's another model, of course, in which love is poisoned by competition: Baumbach himself portrayed it with acid specificity in his memoir of his parents' Park Slope divorce, The Squid and the Whale. But Leigh and Baumbach are clearly aiming for something different from their parents' lives (she's the child of artists who split up as well): marriage as an idyllic, never-ending brainstorm among supportive equals.

[Later in the article]

Much of Leigh's own personality, she acknowledges, was shaped in response to her older sister, a wild child who was the muse not only for Georgia but for her mother's earlier TV film Freedom, and who is currently a drug-addiction counselor in California.

"She was a very--" Leigh begins, then pauses, struggling to describe their childhood dynamic. "I mean, who knows why, exactly, because I could point to my parents' divorce, I don't know, I was 2 at the time, she was 5! But she had a very, very difficult time, and she was a very emotional kid. A lot of acting out. And so I was a very good kid."

Leigh remembers "literally going off to clean my room" when her sister freaked out. She can recall her own inner dialogue: "I don't want to be that. I don't want that attention. That's scary."

Other than the celebritology factor of a movie actress married to a filmmaker, who just happened to make a critically acclaimed and very personal (although rather disturbing) film about children of divorce, this article struck two separate chords with me.

First, I was a little taken aback by the cynicism of the author. I know, I know, this is New York magazine, the magazine for a town that defines cynicism. Maybe I've been out of the NYC aura for too long and have started to adopt the sunny optimism of the South. It's true that my wardrobe this summer contained a lot of pink and almost no black; but then isn't pink the new black?? Still Nussbaum's denigration of a happy marriage as "fantasy" and something picked up "like a virus" seems a tad mean. Why can't two people be happy, especially two people who have already seen the mean side of marriage? Can we just let these lovebirds enjoy wedded bliss, and perhaps even wish them a lifetime of happiness together? Is that too much to ask?

The other thing that struck me in this article was Leigh's comments about how she and her sister reacted differently to their parents' divorce, one child acting out and the other trying very hard to keep it together and be the good child. Same family, same divorce, different kids, different reactions.

Children of Danish Divorce

If you're in the NYC area in early November, you can catch a 1939 Danish film on children of divorce at Scandinavia House. Yes, those crazy Scandinavians and their penchant for being on the leading edge of social developments were 40 years ahead of Kramer vs. Kramer. I haven't seen this film, but if you have, or if you stop in to see it, let me know what you think. Here's a summary, courtesy of Life Is Carbon blog:

Children of Divorce (Skilsmissens Børn)Wednesday, November 7, 6:30 pm & Saturday, November 10, 3 pmDirected by Benjamin Christensen (1939). Marking director Benjamin Christensen’s career comeback (after an unsuccessful stint in Hollywood) and his first venture into sound film, Skilsmissens børn depicts the changing relationships between parents and their children in modern society. Wildly popular at the time of its release in 1939, this melodrama makes use of the bold lighting and unorthodox camera angles that distinguished Christensen’s earlier hits like Hemmelighedsfulde X (The Mysterious X) and Häxan (The Witches) as the work of an adventurous visual stylist.

[Divorce] Nightmare Before Christmas

In entertainment news:

"Seth Gordon the director of the hit documentary King of Kong is set to make Four Christmases with Vince Vaughan and Reese Witherspoon. The plot concerns a married couple who are both children of divorce and have to make the rounds and visit everyone in the space of a day."

No substitute for good judgment

While this may be a cool toy, I have my doubts about how effective software can be at parceling out property during a divorce. Oops, due to a glitch, she got his mother's china. How did that happen?

Funny though, I was just thinking the other day how some folks would like to reduce our court systems to a computer program. Input data, hit enter, out pops the judgment. The whole reason we have judges is so that someone who is impartial and who has been deemed to be wise and knowledgeable can listen to all the facts of a case and make a fair decision. Cases brought before a judge are nuanced and require wisdom, not a rubber stamp. (Rent the movie "12 Angry Men" for a good example of this.) If we are unhappy with the job our judges are doing, we should get rid of the bad judges, not toss out the system.

Knocking on the door to adulthood

Don't ask why I was reading a review of the upcoming movie Knocked Up. I can't explain it myself. The movie, if you're not up on pop culture, is about a girl who gets pregnant after a one night stand with an irresponsible guy. She keeps the baby and, according to the review, the guy is launched down a pathway toward grown-up land. But perhaps this was why I was meant to read this review:

At a moment of crisis Ben calls his father, a nice, tolerant guy played by Harold Ramis, for advice. “Just tell me what to do,” he begs, but no help is forthcoming. (“I’ve been divorced three times. Why are you asking me?”) The absence of a credible model of male adulthood is clearly one of the forces trapping Ben and his friends in their state of blithe immaturity.

I've read about this notion of men trapped in adolescence, most notably in Don Miller's book To Own a Dragon. Now that it's hit the big screen, I guess it's officially a social phenomenon.

Between two homes alone

It was cute when Macauley Culkin's movie parents managed to forget him--twice. After all, what parent could imagine actually forgetting a kid, even with a passel to keep track of? But this season, we get a bite of realism, apparently. Unacommpanied Minors, this year's kid comedy, strands a bunch of unrelated kids in a snow bound airport, kids whose only connection is that they're all from divorced families or similar situations that force them to travel alone during the holidays. I haven't seen this yet, but a review in the New York Sun recounts a precocious line one of the children uses when a grown-up remarks on the kids' antics: "Divorce kids are more resourceful," he says. How adorable.

Maybe I'm losing my sense of humor, but this scenario seems a little too real to actually be funny. Do you know anyone whose parents traveled somewhere for Christmas and actually forgot a kid at home? I'm guessing not. The unlikelihood of that situation was part of what made Home Alone something we could laugh at. But chances are, if you're a child of divorce, you've made a trip or two (or thirty) by yourself; if not, you know someone who did. I jokingly call O'Hare Airport my second home because I've flown through there (and occasionally, other hubs) alone since I was 7. The first time my mom put me on a plane by myself, she cried the whole way home, afraid I would get lost and end up in South America or someplace crazy. My first time going to LAX, I got stuck for an hour or more at some sub-terminal while my dad (in the days before cell phones) fought traffic and I worried that perhaps he really had forgotten me. Mostly the trips were uneventful and promised a plastic airline pin, a baggie of crayons, and a nice stewardess or pilot to walk me between gates. Yes, the experience (multiplied by the number of times I did it) gave me confidence and a reliable sense of navigation in airports. But, sorry Hollywood, it didn't make me a good target audience for a fun-filled family film about kids traveling alone getting stranded and having to rely on themselves to get out of a jam. Try again.