What I think about when I think about going to the movies in Thunder Bay (when I can hear myself think)

I took myself to the local (read: only one in town) movie theatre to see The Great Gatsby the other night.

Quick crowdsource poll: How many of you go to movies by yourselves? Some people are horrified, or at least somewhat skeptical, when I mention going to movies by myself. Which I really don’t get — I mean, first of all there’s the whole child-care issue: if Rachel and I had to hire a sitter every time we wanted to see a movie, would see far fewer movies than the scant few we already do. Further, if we do splurge on a sitter, then I generally want to spend the time actually talking to her, not sitting side by side in the dark. I’m as happy as the next person for movie company, but, really, it’s not like we’re going to have a conversation, or anything.

Except. Except that I live here, in Thunder Bay, where people do. They do have conversations. People in this city chat all the way through the commercials (including that asinine anti-obesity commercial sponsored by, of all companies Coca-Cola, that protector of all things healthy) and the previews and the film itself. Sometimes they talk to their seatmates — usually inane comments like “Didja see that?” or “She looks pretty angry!” or “Now, Doris, what is the name of that actress again? Oh! Oh! She’s the one from that show!”— and sometimes they talk directly to the characters in the movie themselves. It’s like watching Dora the Explorer with a bunch of adult-sized toddlers yelling “Backpack!” Except that they’re yelling things like “Yeah! Get him!”

All this talking irritates me. And not just because I came here from Toronto, where nobody talks during the movies — where nobody you don’t know might talk to you at all, for days. Similarly, Toronto supermarket cashiers do not comment on or question your purchases the way they do here.

No, all this talking irritates me because it means — drumroll please — I’m a bitch I CAN’T HEAR THE MOVIE. Look. I already live with two young children who make it nearly impossible to have any kind of continuous conversation, and on the rare evening that I get to fully immerse myself in some kind of cultural production, I don’t need fully grown adults treating a public movie theatre like their own private living room.

I snagged a seat on the aisle for Gatsby, all the better to stretch out my right leg with its wonky knee. I dutifully put my phone away when the commercial told me to, and then I listened to the two older women behind me chat. I don’t remember the content of their conversation, just that there was one, one that continued through the previews (that new Tom Hanks movie looks pretty good, I think, but how would I know for sure, ladies?), through the opening credits, and then into the opening scenes.

Usually, I try to give people at least the previews to get the verbiage out of their systems. I pretend that once the movie starts they will actually smarten up, and sometimes I am correct in that assumption, but more often than not I am not. And as much as I am trying to focus on the previews, I am also mentally rehearsing my next steps. Which means gritting my teeth and thinking of a suitably friendly yet firm way to turn around at an appropriate moment and say something brief yet coherent that will put an end to the problem, but what I actually said at Gatsby was something like, “Hi sorry, but when you talk I can’t focus on the movie so could you please … not?” So smooth, but it worked: they stopped, their momentarily stunned silence and looks of horror fading into the comfortable silence of people actually watching the movie with their mouths shut. Except for popcorn. I heard one person ask, “What did she say?” but other than that I got no blowback. Which I was thankful for, because, on occasion, I have received blowback. Not pretty.

Is it so hard, people of Thunder Bay? Is it so hard to just keep quiet for the couple of hours that the film is showing? I don’t think so, but maybe I’m just that crazy lady who came to see a movie all by herself.

* * *

PS — If you haven't already, please do leave a comment here to win a copy of Stealing Time magazine, which includes my essay, "A Version of Upright."I have to say, your chances are looking pretty good right now, so go. Click. Comment.just not out loud at the movie theatre.

Nine years

My mother died nine years ago today.

I’m not trying to be maudlin; that’s just how it is and what can you do about that? Some sentences are like that, especially when they push against the swelling wave of all the Mother’s Day messaging that starts rolling towards shore this time of year, crashing into me the second Sunday of each May and leaving me soaked in some unpalatable mixture of longing and resentment.

Each Mother’s Day, the fact that I myself am a mother, that Rowan and Isaac are going to bring home some kind of sweetly crafted double–Mother’s Day gifts, feels like an afterthought: that’s nice, dear, but where do I send my card?

Okay, that last sentence was maudlin.

But that first sentence: “My mother died nine years ago today.” It has two parts, and I am pondering the difficulties of both: the simple modifier-subject-verb of the first half and the descriptive clause (is that what we call that? I’m supposed to know those things, but today I’m not looking anything up. And is “modifier” correct?) of the second half. “Nine years ago” is just as unbelievable as the fact that she actually died — how is it that she’s been gone for nearly a quarter of my life? And yet, she shapes it, informs it, almost daily, and the memories and emotions are as clear now as they were then, unless I’m fooling myself into thinking otherwise. Am I?

That’s the most difficult thing about death — what I know today about the past nine years and what my mother doesn’t, can’t. Those two boys, of course, but all the tiny, daily things that make up a life, like what we’re having for dinner and that the roof is still leaking. I imagine daily phone calls in which we discuss these things; I imagine seeing her name pop up on the call display and sighing because I have things to do besides talk; I imagine picking up the phone anyway, every day. I console myself with the ways in which she does shape my life. I talked about it with a friend in Los Angeles last week, as she and I made up the guest bed in her home for me. “Really,” I kept protesting, “you don’t have to help. I can do this by myself.”

“Nah,” she said, stuffing a pillow into its case, “I can’t let go of the way my mother raised me.”

And we talked about that, the ways in which neither of us believe in ghosts but feel our mothers’ presence all around, live our lives according to (occasionally, or often, in defiance of) the way they would have, but always with them around us.

So she’s gone, has been for nine years now. But she’s here, too, so today, Sunday, every day, we’ll focus on that.

December 6

Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Maria Klucznik, Maryse Leclair, Annie St.-Arneault, Michèle Richard, Maryse Laganière, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Annie Turcotte. I still can't read through that list of names without tearing up. We remember.