He's been reluctant. He's even screamed and stomped about it. I was expecting Star Wars to be his request for a couple of weeks now, but no. Not yet. So far we've stuck with Disney movies Camera Guy and I suggest.
Although he's seen Dumbo before, it was a long time ago and I figured he wouldn't have remembered much of it. When I suggested it yesterday I got agreement from him. Score! So he and I settled down with our pizza (Camera Guy had a meeting) and watched. Now, as I am wont to do when watching TV or a movie at home with him, I talked to him about what we were seeing, what was happening and how the characters might be feeling about what's happening. I'm sure it would totally annoy most adults and some kids, but for he and I, it works. I promise to cut it out at some point in his life. Like when he's 16. Maybe.
It gets to the point in the movie that a beautiful bundle of joy arrives for Mrs. Jumbo and she is overwhelmed with love for her baby. He has beautiful blue eyes, (as they all do) and a cute as a button nose, um, er, trunk, and he looks equally thrilled to be there with her. And then the hateful, jealous, spiteful old biddie pachyderms start laughing, taunting and teasing the 2 of them because his ears are huge. Poor thing, I say to Cub. How do you think that makes him feel? Bad, he replies. We see Mrs. Jumbo and her baby stare in disbelief as the mean remarks continue to being hurled their way. They wisely decide to keep to themselves. Why are they being mean to him, Cub asks. Because he's different than they are, I explain, and they don't care that he is an elephant just like them, and has feelings, too.
As the movie progresses, we learn that the elephants are to perform a tower, one on top of the other, with Jumbo Jr. (disaffectionately called Dumbo by the old biddies) set to climb to the very top with a small flag clutched in his trunk. The obvious happens and he trips on his ears and collapses the whole pile and is ostracized and sent to go work with the clowns as punishment.
Jumbo Jr. is feeling horrible about the accident and goes to visit his mother, who has been locked up (if you don't know why, go see the movie, I'm not doing a review of it here, sorry) and reaches his trunk into her locked rail car to find her. She can barely move with the chains around her feet but manages to reach her trunk out and touch and caress him. I glance down at Cub sitting next to me and thought I saw the beginnings of his mouth turning down on the ends, as if in a frown. Did I see what I thought I saw? I keep glancing back every few seconds and when Mrs. Jumbo picks up her baby and starts swinging him and rocking him with her trunk, I again look at Cub and he's tearing up. My sweet boy is starting to cry. He understands the emotion, the overwhelming sadness at these 2 being separated and how much they want and need to be together. Now he's wiping at the tears in his eyes and asks, a cry in his throat, why she's there and can't be with him. I explain what we saw earlier and how she ended up in the rail car with signs on it that read "Mad Elephant" and "Keep Away!" He openly weeps, albeit for a short moment, but weeps at the thought of them being kept apart. I snuggle him closer to me and told him that even though they can't be together right now, she loves him very much and did what she did to protect him becuase she loves him so much.
As I have witnessed with my own mother, when I start to cry, she does, too, and now as my son starts to cry at the sight of mother and son being separated, I do, too. He reminded me of his dad and the way he mists up at a certain point with each Disney movie (they really do get the best music/lyric writers to pull at your heart strings, don't they?), but especially during Toy Story 2 when Jessie sings "When She Loved Me", the song about her girl, Emily, he turns to mush. I love that about him.
I hadn't stopped to think about the actual story of the movie we were going to watch, Cub and I alone. The mother/son dynamic and the fact that we'd be sans Daddy tonight, but it was actually perfect. It was truly a magical experience for me. And when it was time for Cub to go to sleep, the irony was not lost on me of my reaching my arm over his bed rail to rub his back, to touch and caress him in a way only I, his mother, can, just the way Mrs. Jumbo did for her baby to reassure him and show her love for him.
My journey tonight was one of watching my Cub express the empathetic side of himself and the pride it brought me to know he understands and feels the emotion of the moment. I'm a proud Momma.
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