I was excited to pick up a copy of the recent Life magazine that was celebrating the 60th anniversary of The Sound of Music. Seeing that movie for the first time sixty years ago had broadened my tiny world ever so slightly. It was 1965, I was four years old, and my family was making a rare foray into a movie theatre to see the new Hollywood hit, The Sound of Music!
It was my very first exposure to all the delights of a theatre. The excited throngs of people, the bright bulbs flooding light onto numerous movie posters in the lobby, the intoxicating smell of popcorn – I was nearly bursting with it all. As if this wasn’t enough, I was handed my own little cardboard glass of pop at the concession stand.
It was that glass I was watching as I was guided out of the lobby and down into the darkened pathway of the theatre. I could feel that Mom had placed her hand lightly on the back of my curly head, subtly steering me as I dawdled along with the rest of them down the aisle.
All of a sudden, she stopped as everyone turned into a row. Dad had chosen a row for the six of us, he being in the lead as usual. I bumped into Mom in the unexpected stop, a familiar bumper-car movement that softly propelled me in the direction I was supposed to be going. This time, though, she didn’t wait for me to pass her to envelop myself into the safe and familiar family fold. No, she went on ahead and left me alone in the aisle, watching the rest of them abandoning me to my own devices in the big, dark world. I hadn’t experienced that before – that feeling of distinct separateness from my pack.
Mom had sat down and placed her own paper cup into a little built-in holder. It was then that I saw the folded seat of the single last chair beside her at the end of the row, which she slowly drew down for me and beckoned me with a smile to sit. Me? Sit there right on the very edge of the precipice? Why hadn’t she stood back to let me pass her to be in the centre of all the others, huddled by my familiar family wall of safety? I looked around the massive theatre in disbelief, scanning the situation that I was going to be so perilously close to. What would become of me, dangling on the end all by myself?
She motioned again, this time with slightly less patience. She had the others to tend to as well, after all. I stepped into the row and hoisted myself up to the top of the giant cushioned seat. I was rigid in place, feeling that if I wasn’t careful, I could roll right overboard there on my own. Mom had turned to settle the others and, after my initial astonishment, the solid edges of my comfort zone began to stretch.
Another family was organizing their own pack just across the way, and I watched in amazement as they steadied themselves through their own turmoil of seating arrangements. I looked at the backs of heads that were bent together as people chatted in hushed tones and saw that what these strangers were doing wasn’t so very different from what we were doing.
Soon the movie started and I was transfixed by the splendor, the singing and the onscreen children who had their own worlds to figure out. Those movie characters were learning their own lessons: humility and fortitude; the importance of supporting each other and challenging everyone to meet their goals; that we should live minimally and mindfully and stand up for our personal convictions no matter the personal sacrifice.
What a measure of life’s joy I was filled with, feeling the familiar family fold but also seeing past it to the pull of intrigue and wonder that waited just beyond. I still feel that way all these sixty years later. That no matter how far my life’s experiences fling me, my family is always there – strong and steady and holding my spot at their very centre.
Visit Sandy’s website at LifeInRetirement.ca
