We went to see Wall-E with our granddaughter the weekend it opened. As is my custom, I’d glanced through the reviews on http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ beforehand and saw that they were extremely positive, but it wouldn’t have mattered. We were there because our granddaughter had asked us to take her, and, like most grandparents, we are held in thrall.
“Nana, I like the way you always look at me with smile on your face,” Alyssa told me back when she was three. Her life has had its complications, but this she knows: Seeing her delighted has always delighted me.
And Wall-E delighted her. It seemed to delight the other children in the audience, too. The thing is, though, the story is very, very dark. The only inhabitant left on an abandoned earth (besides his pet cockroach, Spot), Wall-E compacts the insurmountable miles of garbage, garbage that is taller than the tallest buildings in post-apocalyptic New York. He returns at night to an abandoned industrial storage container, where he puts away treasured artifacts carefully saved from his day’s work: CDs, Rubik’s cubes, a Playmate ice chest, and the Hello Dolly stored on his ancient Ipod that he watches compulsively.
It’s a grim view of planet earth, but it's also a classic. Alyssa loved it the same way my son loved E.T. when he was a child. They had their similarities, E.T. and Wall-E, big eyed other-worldly types, laconic, single minded, loyal and lonely. Wall-E loved the sleek robot Eve the way E.T. loved Elliott and home.
But as a comment on the current state of mankind: How far we’ve come though from the gentle suburbs of Spielberg—the big, new sprawling houses out beyond the cities, the refrigerators stuffed with name brands. Elliott and his siblings had parents that were newly separated, and they were lonely, yes, but they were cushioned by the benign bounty of material goods that surrounded them.
We took a break to go to the bathroom about 30 minutes into the movie and I ask her if she understands the story. “Not, really,” she says. So I tell her a child’s version, how it is make believe, far, far in the future and no one is left on earth and how Wall-E works hard, cleaning up and finding things that he finds beautiful.
“Does he love Eve?” I ask. She gets a silly grin. “Eve doesn’t know how to hold hands,” she answers. “I hope she learns,” I say. This is Pixar after all. “Wall-E really wants to hold her hand.”
I find it sad that she doesn’t turn a hair at the storyline. It doesn’t escape me that Sacramento, like much of California is blanketed in thick, toxic smoke from wildfires that two weeks later are still burning out of control. The bad air that receded a week ago is back. It’s not just the larger world problems that I’m afraid of. Her life worries me. She has very little. What kind of future will this world offer her?
Sitting in the dark theatre, panicking, I try the trick that I have only learned just recently. And ask myself, “What is in front of you right this moment?” And the answer is at that very moment there is no bad air, we are in the cool air conditioned darkness, sitting in soft cushioned seats, my husband and I, with Alyssa nestled next to us, I take a handful of popcorn from the bag on her lap. We are watching a movie that is very artfully done. If I concentrate on that--my panic passes.
I probably don’t need to tell you whether or not Eve learns how to hold hands, and a garden is planted back on earth. After, we go out into the hot, toxic air, the three of us. We are going to her cousin’s birthday party.
Parenting was fun, but it was hard, too. It felt like a huge responsibility; there were no clear instructions. Grand parenting is much easier. Someone told me that a good grandparent looks at what the parents are providing and fills in any holes. I think that I shouldn’t spend my time looking for holes; that it’s the time spent, just being fully there that matters. Matters to both of us. Because in being there, being fully in the moment, can show me how to be in the rest of the world, where, for me, it seems much, much harder.
Life with grandchildren is quite predictable: Next week, Alyssa will come to our house with her baby sister, and as she does almost every weekend, she will help my husband fill the bird feeders, and she and I put new water in my fish Otis’ bowl. She will beat the stuffing out of Steve bowling with the Wii. I decide that we will plant some herbs in a small planter along with a tomato plant because I want her to be able to watch it grow. Her sister Caitlyn will climb the stairs a million times, and Steve and I will exhaust ourselves taking turns standing behind her, making sure she doesn’t fall.
We give each other so many things.
“Nana, I like the way you always look at me with smile on your face,” Alyssa told me back when she was three. Her life has had its complications, but this she knows: Seeing her delighted has always delighted me.
And Wall-E delighted her. It seemed to delight the other children in the audience, too. The thing is, though, the story is very, very dark. The only inhabitant left on an abandoned earth (besides his pet cockroach, Spot), Wall-E compacts the insurmountable miles of garbage, garbage that is taller than the tallest buildings in post-apocalyptic New York. He returns at night to an abandoned industrial storage container, where he puts away treasured artifacts carefully saved from his day’s work: CDs, Rubik’s cubes, a Playmate ice chest, and the Hello Dolly stored on his ancient Ipod that he watches compulsively.
It’s a grim view of planet earth, but it's also a classic. Alyssa loved it the same way my son loved E.T. when he was a child. They had their similarities, E.T. and Wall-E, big eyed other-worldly types, laconic, single minded, loyal and lonely. Wall-E loved the sleek robot Eve the way E.T. loved Elliott and home.
But as a comment on the current state of mankind: How far we’ve come though from the gentle suburbs of Spielberg—the big, new sprawling houses out beyond the cities, the refrigerators stuffed with name brands. Elliott and his siblings had parents that were newly separated, and they were lonely, yes, but they were cushioned by the benign bounty of material goods that surrounded them.
We took a break to go to the bathroom about 30 minutes into the movie and I ask her if she understands the story. “Not, really,” she says. So I tell her a child’s version, how it is make believe, far, far in the future and no one is left on earth and how Wall-E works hard, cleaning up and finding things that he finds beautiful.
“Does he love Eve?” I ask. She gets a silly grin. “Eve doesn’t know how to hold hands,” she answers. “I hope she learns,” I say. This is Pixar after all. “Wall-E really wants to hold her hand.”
I find it sad that she doesn’t turn a hair at the storyline. It doesn’t escape me that Sacramento, like much of California is blanketed in thick, toxic smoke from wildfires that two weeks later are still burning out of control. The bad air that receded a week ago is back. It’s not just the larger world problems that I’m afraid of. Her life worries me. She has very little. What kind of future will this world offer her?
Sitting in the dark theatre, panicking, I try the trick that I have only learned just recently. And ask myself, “What is in front of you right this moment?” And the answer is at that very moment there is no bad air, we are in the cool air conditioned darkness, sitting in soft cushioned seats, my husband and I, with Alyssa nestled next to us, I take a handful of popcorn from the bag on her lap. We are watching a movie that is very artfully done. If I concentrate on that--my panic passes.
I probably don’t need to tell you whether or not Eve learns how to hold hands, and a garden is planted back on earth. After, we go out into the hot, toxic air, the three of us. We are going to her cousin’s birthday party.
Parenting was fun, but it was hard, too. It felt like a huge responsibility; there were no clear instructions. Grand parenting is much easier. Someone told me that a good grandparent looks at what the parents are providing and fills in any holes. I think that I shouldn’t spend my time looking for holes; that it’s the time spent, just being fully there that matters. Matters to both of us. Because in being there, being fully in the moment, can show me how to be in the rest of the world, where, for me, it seems much, much harder.
Life with grandchildren is quite predictable: Next week, Alyssa will come to our house with her baby sister, and as she does almost every weekend, she will help my husband fill the bird feeders, and she and I put new water in my fish Otis’ bowl. She will beat the stuffing out of Steve bowling with the Wii. I decide that we will plant some herbs in a small planter along with a tomato plant because I want her to be able to watch it grow. Her sister Caitlyn will climb the stairs a million times, and Steve and I will exhaust ourselves taking turns standing behind her, making sure she doesn’t fall.
We give each other so many things.
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