For the last half a dozen years or so, women outnumbered men in my family home. Me, my sister, my mother, and my poor lonesome father. While there was the ex-husband for a while, and my brother when he was around or living there, it wasn’t at all uncommon for the three gals to override Dad on some movie choice, and he’d end up groaning through some Disneyesque chick flick. Granted, he had me, and when Lifetime or Oxygen got to be too much for even me, we’d disappear and watch football or science fiction and leave the kleenex and girly stuff to Mom and Trace.
Before Mom died, she took the two of us girls to see Menopause, the Musical. I think she knew, even then, even when she was on the first round of chemo, that she wasn’t going to make it. She said she wasn’t going to be there for us when we went through this. She had needed a hysterectomy a few years earlier, so she knew… and this was the best way she could really share with us. So we went to the musical, and we laughed and laughed, Mom sitting between us, holding our hands. Sharing knowing looks with my sister.
It was wonderful. It was shaded with sadness. In some ways it was the epitome of all those Hallmark, Lifetime, Oxygen movies, rented taped or watched live.
Laurie and I went to see The Women tonight. It was a funny and touching movie, about friends and family, the bonds women form. Best friends, mothers, daughters, grandmothers. And through the entire film, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a movie I would have seen with my sister and my mother.
Mom would have loved it.