I'm Going Soft

I'm probably going to make a mess of trying to explain this, but here goes.

Before I was a parent, nothing in movies or television really disturbed me all that much. Pretty much the most brutal or squeamish scene you can recall, I didn't blink. Jacob's Ladder, Saving Private Ryan, Reservoir Dogs, whatever. I still am a pretty detached observer, but these days I've noticed that anything involving a child suffering affects me strongly. If there's a baby crying in the background of a scene, I'm going to care more about whether anyone is going to comfort the poor kid than whatever is going on that I'm supposed to be paying attention to. Even a scene where a small child is simply sad about something evokes more of a sympathetic reaction from me than the worst misfortune that could happen to an adult. If you've seen the incredible film City of God, you probably remember the scene that put a lump in my throat the size of a baseball.

I don't know exactly what it is, but I don't think it's that I actually imagine my children in that place. I'm not one of those people that has to identify with the characters in films; for instance, I remember a friend and I having differing opinions over The Talented Mr. Ripley. I thought it was a technically brilliant film, flawlessly acted, shot and edited. He didn't like it because everybody in it was an asshole and there was no one for him to like. Hey, we're both right.

But maybe it's just that as a parent it's my job to protect my kids from harm, and comfort them when it touches them despite my best efforts. Michelle has tried to get it through my head that when Alicia is crying, my job is to meet her needs, not make her stop crying. That helps, but it still drives me insane when there's nothing I can do and she's just going to cry. When Toby was a baby I punched a hole in a wall. The worst I've done with Alicia is kicked in the front of a dehumidifier (it still works).

Anyway, despite all that I think Toby's world-class shiner is just adorable.


He tripped and smacked into the arm of our futon downstairs. From what I'm told, he hardly cried at all. So I might as well save my sympathy for the cinema; my kids do just fine without it.