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What Does Looking Back Get You?
Twice this week, my husband mentioned my former moviegoing habits and rituals to the people we were eating dinner with. One woman at the first meal looked at me as if she had never seen something so absurd. If her salmon had begun chatting with her, she would have somehow found that less silly.
I no longer vacation at the Toronto Film Festival, coming home pale and somewhat unwell from eating Smarties and watching 5 movies a day. It really broke my heart when pregnancy-induced sciatica made me incapable of using my press pass to hit all of the New York Film Festival press screenings. And of course the next year has seen very little multiple movies in a day action, except on DVD.
But now that I am well out of the first year of my son's life, what should I be? I'm not in a position to return to the pale days of film binges. Even without him I wouldn't have the time, but I do wonder right now were I am going and what I am doing. I wish I hadn't been reminded so keenly of my old ways- especially now when the Tribeca Film Festival has descended on the city (screening films all over town, planting information booths in the East Village which is far away from Tribeca). I feel guilty for not trying to scam fistfuls of tickets, a little ashamed at my lack of dedication to the Church of Movies, even as I know I have less time and more things with which to wrestle- especially a kid who likes climbing, and work that needs doing.
Of course this is one of those eternal struggles, but as I sat at these dinners I missed my old self and wanted to defend her from the salmon eater's corn, even though those were different times and really, in some ways I'm talking about a different girl.
posted by Elise at 2:04 PM
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said...
I know it wouldn't be the same, but could you go to the Angelika's Crybaby Matinees? It'd let you get to go to the theater on occasion and still let you be with your baby.
4/27/2006 10:51 PM
said...
While I don't have a child, I do sympathize... somehow, in the last 5 years or so, my priorities have shifted. Where I used to see at least one movie every weekend (often two or three), I'm now lucky if I get to one a month. And while, intellectually, I know that my time is better spent hanging with my husband and cat, volunteering, going for walks, reading, seeing friends, and doing all the other things that seem to have supplanted movie-going... I still feel a little like I'm missing out on something. Please know that you're not alone, though!
4/28/2006 6:58 AM
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