The last time Amy and I saw a movie together in the theatre, people were still writing dates from the 1900s on their checks. Gas was only $1.32 a gallon. Indiana University had lost just one contest. Bill Clinton was still President. And there was no such person as Carter Orlan Makice.
A lot has changed in my life since those carefree, bygone days of yore. For starters, I’ve broken all sorts of personal sleep depravation records since the start of February without so much as one all-nighter. My creative juices need a recharge, but there haven’t been any 12-hour sleep binges available to me as a parent. I get up earlier and fade long before Prime Time has ended. My life is a waking nap.
That realization is sinking in. Amy and I have long since resigned ourselves to being homebodies for the forseeable future. Day trips to Cassady’s or the doctor’s office here in Bloomington are as adventurous as we get. Even those can be as draining as Carter is young. We do look forward to the Dog Days of May when the lad gets his first trip to Chicagoland for a Mother’s Day hike in the big city. But that seems eons away, and there are miles of carpet to walk before we sleep.
Last Thursday night, however, we got a short reprieve from the routine. Nanna offered — dare I say, “begged?” — to stay with Carter while we crept out for dinner and a movie. Arranging for a sitter was the easy part. Dealing with the actual leaving was tough.
I’ve been working hard lately on several design projects trying to catch up from my paternal sabbatical in February. Because I fade too quickly at night and have trouble waking up into the wee, small hours of the morning, I have adjusted by working more intensely between 6 and 6 each day. Leaving the office for home has been difficult over the past two weeks, even if my truancy is about to be rewarded with a date and a movie.
I share some of Amy’s anxieties about what might happen to Carter once he’s out of our sight. He clearly notices when we’re not around. When we came home from the overtime win over Michigan State back in February, he let us know how much he noticed for the next 24 hours.
He’s a complicated person. It takes 100 laps up and down the hall to get him unconscious enough to lay him back down on the co-sleeper. Milk from a bottle can’t be luke warm or colder if he’s going to keep it down. In the process of debugging our son, we’ve discovered 1001 little quirks like that, none of which seem to be repeated in quite the same sequence from on night to the next. By virtue of our having spent the most time with him, we are easily convinced no one knows can care for the boy quite like we do.
By 6:30 that evening, though, we were sitting in the Chili’s waiting room hoping a table would come available in time to catch the 7:30 showing of “Erin Brockovich.” We used gift certificates from the previous millennium and ate less than we put in our to-go box in order to make that happen. Normally, I hate missing the preview trailers for other flicks before the featured presentation begins. But in our situation — some 13-plus weeks in between showings — a preview of coming attractions was moot.
“Brockovich” is about a twice-divorced mother of three struggling to balance the quest for personal job satisfaction with the demands of raising a family by herself. As a result of this plot, we are treated to more than just shots of Julia Roberts in tight shirts and jokes about lawyers. We get to see babies on the big screen. Babies, it should be noted, tend to remind one of children. Children, it follows, remind us of the one small boy we left behind while selfishly indulging our petty need to pay $6 each to see Julia’s tight tops. Thus, “Erin Brockovich” turned out to be about child neglect in the Makice household.
OK, so the self-inflicted guilt never actually reached that critical mass. Amy did admit on the ride home, though, that all she could think about when she saw the film babies was how much she wanted to go home to hold the real deal. And I left the theatre wondering if Carter will think me cool without a Harley-Davidson parked in the driveway.
I also left with the realization of how much I missed the escape of the movies. We have a healthy DVD collection with our pick of flicks any night of the week, but technology at your fingertips is a double-edged sword. The pause button has a tendency to ruin the moment, even if the interruption results in Julia Roberts’ wardrobe frozen on screen for ten minutes at a time. Movies are meant to be run continuously. Newborns are intent on being managed continuously. Since the latter lacks either a mute or fast-forward, home theatre loses every time.
In the cineplex, we are willing prisoners of Hollywood on vacation from the pressures of real life.
We came back home from our little holiday in less time than it takes to beat the Spartans to find Nanna pacing the hallway singing little songs about ponies. Carter grabbed a bite from his mom, and it was like we had never left. Something was different, though. It turned out to be my attitude.
That trip to the local Kerasotes seemed to change my whole perspective on the world. Refreshed, I realized IU gets to play basketball next year, too. OPEC was meeting at that very moment trying to figure out how to get American pump prices reduced. Best of all, I was the lucky guy offered the chance to raise a little man named Carter Orlan Makice.
Sometimes you have to pause just to notice what you’re watching.
BY THE WAY … Wondering what movie to go see? Check in online with our local Bloomington movie reviewer, Eric Pfeffinger. Whether it’s admitting Hilary Swank as a boy makes a surprisingly convincing Matt Damon, or describing Brian DePalma’s “Mission to Mars” with the question, “What if Stanley Kubrick had made 2001: A Space Odyssey as a two-hour Super Bowl commercial?” Pfeffinger is a pleasure to read. It’s possible that everyone has heard about him already — I do live in a bubble now — but he is officially listed as the “Herald-Times Reviewer” Treat yourself to a quick laugh once or twice a week by bookmarking the Hoosier Times Scenes section.