Friends have asked me if being a mom has changed me and I kept saying that I didn't think so. Maybe in subtle ways, but I didn't feel a big transformation when Landon was put in my arms.
But this morning "Cold Mountain" is on TV and I just watched the scene where Natalie Portman's baby is put on the ground, uncovered in the freezing cold, to get her to tell some roaming Union soldiers where she's hidden food. She's crying and saying her baby is sick and shaking and oh my god, I thought I was going to throw up. I had such a deep, physical reaction to that scene that it shocked me. I don't even remember it from the first time I saw the movie. I know it's fake, but I had tears in my eyes and was holding out my hands to pick up that baby and make him warm.
Now you know why I cannot and will not watch movies or read books about children being hurt. :(
ReplyDeleteOur son was about 10 when AI came out, and I went with a friend's husband to see it. That scene with her abandoning the android-boy in the woods got me so upset I basically cried all through the rest of the movie. When the lights came up I could hardly pull myself together to go back to the car. Poor guy, it was more than he'd bargained for :)
ReplyDeleteAhh... I can totally relate. It's funny how some people look at me when I say that I don't feel any different... but the change is just subtle, and seems to grow daily. I watched "Paris, Je T'aime" tonight, and one shorts is about a woman grieving the loss of her 7 year old son. I was almost convulsing I was crying so hard, shaking my head and saying "No"--but it's a story. And Sam's asleep in the next room. I felt that connection--like you wrote about--and it kinda surprised me. It's sometimes overwhelming to so dearly love someone that you can loose in a second. Just the idea is overwhelming. Then I checked your blog and read this post, and I thought I'd tell you that I'd had a "Cold Mountain" experience the very same day! :)
ReplyDeleteAnd that's why my husband and I find it so difficult to watch the news when it's full of wicked acts against children.
ReplyDeleteOh yes. I never understood this phenomenon before I was a mother. Probably laughed at others for it, too. But I had a similar physical reaction to the news about the model in Australia who stopped on a jogging path to take a call on her cell which required writing (and letting go of her stroller). When she looked up, the stroller was gone and she raced around screaming because she thought someone had stolen her child. Horrifically, the stroller had rolled into the water and the baby drowned. Reading that story literally brought me to tears and made me sick to my stomach. :(
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I were watching One Hour Photo a few weeks ago, and we were remarked at how much creepier the whole movie was now that we have a child.
ReplyDeleteI've never seen Cold Mountain, and now I won't. I can't handle stuff like that.
My mom had a similar reaction, plus cathartic cry, when she watched "Steel Magnolias." It was the part in the cemetery part where Sally Fields just acts the crap out of the scene. I guess mothers feel that way about their adult children, too.
ReplyDeleteI watched a thing on Animal Planet when our oldest was a few months old. The mother polar bear had a pair of cubs, and they were having a really hard time finding food. One cub had a hard time and collapsed, and the mother kept trying to rouse it because a big male bear was coming. She ended up leaving the dying cub to save her healthier one and herself from the hungry male. I cried my eyes out for that mother bear. Even now, three years later, I'm getting tears in my eyes thinking about it.
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