Rachel, who lives in her own world
I took Mom’s day out today – had a babysitter come from 11 to 3 and of course, wouldn’t you know that Tin has been just adorable and cuddly and cute ever since …
But I went to see Jeff, Who Lives At Home and frankly I was surprised by the movie. I laughed out loud, I cried, and I genuinely left feeling as if I had taken a walk into the quiet desperation that most of us call our real life. I highly recommend the movie – Susan Sarandon is priceless – her lines alone slayed me.
I came home, and Tin decided not to nap and so we went bike riding, then we went and played hide and seek with Ruby and other kids, and then when we got back around the bayou, my neighbors were eating crawfish on the bayou and I made him and the little girl pasta pesto, sliced up some Louisiana strawberries, and some manchego cheese and went out to sit on the patch of ground that I call home.
Home.
We’ve opted to just stay in the back instead of moving back and forth in and out of the house as guests come and go. And now there is an emptiness to the house that lacks the spirit that we imbue it with. It’s sterile feeling, Tatjana had said last time we moved back in. This too shall pass. We’ll figure out what to do in the long term – there is something that works now about the whole thing but it does make everything so tenuous as if none of it mattered – the way you can remove the home from a house just like that.
We sat on the bayou until the gloaming set in and Tin and the kids ran up and down playing wheelbarrow, chase, freeze tag, and throwing bread to the adolescent ducks that have populated the water with our early spring.
I love movies – I used to be a movie whore, seeing anything I could on the big screen. It’s been so long, too long since I’ve been in a movie theater and when I arrived and sat down, I felt the magic start from the get go. The story had me in its grip, the willing suspension of disbelief, even though I had just seen the main character in a preview that had rolled minutes before, he was Jeff for now, and for always, and in my heart. I’m a sucker.
I fall in love with characters, I read to expand my horizon not with new ideas or new facts, but with new friends and foes. I’m a character for goodness sakes – appearing in everyone else’s book but my own. I have ideas I thought as I was coming out of the theater today – ideas I want to explore and why can’t I just sit in a booth and spit them out like a gum ball machine – 25 cents for an idea.
Yeah, thoughts by Rachel, who lives in her own world.