Brenna and me

[vaneramos]

We've had a quiet week at home. This is one of the longest periods I've spent alone with Brenna. It's different. Marian and I talk about all kinds of things, sometimes very deep and personal, and share the same dry sense of humour. Brenna is less serious, with a cynical wit. She would rather watch movies than read, and prefers humour, but loved The Hours. She has many hats.

Her memory is incredible. This week she was humming the theme music to Pom Poko, which she saw only once on Easter weekend. I think she can recite a few of her favourite screenplays entirely. Last night we watched Pirates of the Caribbean, me for the first time, in preparation for the sequel. It was good fun, although I found the end disappointing. I can't see a legalistic mind forgiving so suddenly, certainly not in the face of betrayal. It would have made more sense if the protagonists had simply escaped.

Speaking of movies, I picked up several at a terrific used CD store in Hamilton last Friday. While Marian was still here we watched The Sweet Hereafter, by a favourite director of mine, Atom Egoyan. It's excellent, but by god, one of the bleakest movies ever. Sentiment gives way to numbness. The characters seem beautiful at first, but their bitterness gradually pushes the viewer away. Exotica is still Egoyan's best; its protagonists are screwed up, too, but sympathetic by the end. It has an ambiguously redemptive quality similar to Magnolia. Those are the best kind of stories.

The two of us watched The Wizard of Oz on Tuesday. I hadn't seen it in more than 10 years. Funny how paradigms change. I had no idea Dorothy's companions were so, um, swishy and affected.

Brenna has exhausted my entire DVD library and settled down to read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, which I've had lying around since her age.

I seem to have gotten over the worst of the whiplash, but she is still store. Apparently she was leaning forward when we got hit, so her lower back hurts more than neck and shoulders.

Yesterday we went for a hike through Little Tract, a conservation forest around the corner from the country place where we lived when the girls were small. Our property had a passive solar house on two acres of rolling meadow, and I established a large vegetable garden. I used to miss it terribly. But the adjacent cornfield has turned into a gravel pit. That would have been another kind of heartbreak if life had unfolded differently.