One balmy Sunday September afternoon
while revising this book, I decide to take a trip to the movies. I want to see
the new Brad Pitt flick, Moneyball. I
don’t know much about the film, but I’ve always wanted to read the 2003 Michael
Lewis book on which it is based, and consider myself a longtime Pitt fan. (Born
in 1963, he could plausibly be a subject of one of my chapters, though his
still-unfolding career did not get underway until considerably later than that
of Jodie Foster, his nearest peer on these pages.) So I’m willing to take a
flyer on the movie for what I consider a leisure excursion.
My
oldest son left for college last week, and my wife is coaching my daughter’s
soccer game. That leaves my two 12 year-old twin boys, who have reached the
point where they can be left home alone. But amid doubts they’d much like Moneyball, I ask them whether they’d
like to accompany me.
“What’s it about?” my son Grayson asks.
“It’s about a baseball coach who uses
math to win games,” I reply.
“Sounds good,” he says. “I’ll go.”
“Ryland,
do you want to go to the movies?” I shout downstairs to his brother.
“Yes,”
he says.
This
warms my heart. For years, I’ve been taking my kids to the movies—Disney
movies, Pixar movies, gimmicky 3-D movies,
you name it. Sometimes this is a matter of giving my wife some time off or
simply to break the boredom of a summer day or school vacation (I often doze
away the middle half-hour of the movie). Other times, it’s a matter of
succumbing to the advertising-stoked demand for movies they hear about while
watching TV or surfing the Internet. But I take my kids to local multiplexes
because movie-going was one of the great pleasures of my childhood, and a
ritual I want to pass on to them. I do so mindful that in the post-home video,
digital downloading era, the days of theatrical release in theaters may well be
numbered, and I want them to have a childhood memory of a routine with their
father. So when Ryland tells me he wants to go to the movies—not asking or
caring what movie, only that we will
be going—I am happy that a love I’ve conveyed has taken root.
On
this particular afternoon, I drive the boys to a newly opened Cinema Du Lux
multiplex a couple miles from our home. It’s part of a large new large luxury
residential/retail complex known as Ridge Hill, still under construction. After parking on the
bottom level of a five-floor lot, we ascend to the theater on top and take our
stadium seats, the boys slurping away on a Slushie while the previews roll.
I
like Moneyball. It’s part of an
interesting chain of emotionally complex choices Pitt has been making lately—I
was arrested by his turn as a conflicted father in his last movie, Terrence
Malick’s gorgeous, Spartan, The Tree of
Life—and I’m struck while watching how much he looks like Robert Redford as
he ages. But the boys, alas, fall fast asleep. “Well there goes $17 bucks,” I
lament aloud, nudging them awake as the credits roll. But I am a happy man.
I’ve enjoyed the movie, and the boys awaken from their nap with good cheer,
basking in the gleaming lobby. Upon leaving the theater we pause before the
railing outside and survey the unfinished complex, with its roads, pavilions
and buildings almost complete. A departure from the indoor malls that have been
a fixture of my youth, this retail mecca has a village feel, albeit one of
notably affluent character. A product of growing inequality, its very bustle
will be symptomatic of social decay.
But
for the moment, I do not see this space, nestled along a ridge tracked by the
interstate, as a hulking ruin. I do not think of coming wars, foolishly
launched by politicians hoping they will detract from the ills they’ve promised
to address but are powerless to reverse. I do not fear for my childrens’ future
or the futility of my attempts to prepare them for challenges I can scarcely
imagine. Because, as I say, I am happy. Happy enough that had these thoughts occurred
to me, I would respond with others: of unexpected resilience, unforeseen
resources, or wisely conserved ones. Of valuable legacies sustained and passed
on, refracted through prisms that would delight me were I alive to see them
(and delight me even though I am not). Of worlds that are no less real or
capacious for merely flickering to life.
Because
here, dear reader, here we are now.
