Harry Potter

After watching the final Harry Potter, I felt like I should go back and watch the first again.  It has been years since I have seen it.  I remember seeing it with my kids when they were probably far too young to remember it.  We've had the DVD forever and the kids have watched it many times in the first couple of years we had it.  But during all that time, I never really watched it with them.  It was just on in the background while I puttered around cleaning or something.  I'll guess that we picked up the DVD when the kids were 3, 4, and 5.

I was surprised that watching the original would make me think so much of my own kids and how they've grown.  It felt very much like Harry, Hermione, and Ron were old childhood playmates of our own kids and we had a 2 hour film of them in our collection.  I thought a bit about parents of the actors and how these films will be like the best family vacation films ever.  I can imagine how much I would love a two hour film of my own children as they grew up... one a year for 8 years.  Even if they were playing characters totally unlike themselves.  There is just something about seeing the look in my children's eyes when they are happy and playing.  Oh they were all so young.

They grow up too fast.  Time slips by too fast.  There will always be new stories to tell.  But I do feel a real sense of mourning for the stories that end.  All too soon my own children who are now 11, 12, and 13 will race through their final years of school.  Hopefully there will be less danger in the world than poor Harry and friends had to face!  But the story my children write will be more precious to me.  I am afraid to start it.  I don't want it to end.

A strange string of thoughts

Okay... so Amy woke up humming the tune to "Those were the days" which got me humming it.  Then I played it on YouTube and that made me think of songs by Doris Day.  So I played a little Doris Day.  In that list she sang a song with a co-star, Gordon MacRae.  It was a lovely song and his voice was really amazing.  I was surprised I had not remembered the actor.  So I looked him up on wikipedia.  His bio sums up with, "Gordon died in 1986 at his home in Lincoln, Nebraska." My home town!  It was just sorta weird.  So I looked up more and found a picture of his headstone in Wyuka Cemetery.  That particular graveyard is the largest I can recall in Lincoln.  Related to that search I found out that his widow died just a couple of week ago (also in Lincoln).

Strange how things work when we start chasing a string of thoughts.

Dominating my thoughts has been Doris Day.  On one side I know virtually all the roles she most fondly remembered for were so completely sexist and stereotyping.  Yet, how could you not dream of that perfect Hollywood world?  Movies have certainly changed.  But I still look back on those films (old even before I discovered them) as some of the best I've seen.  Doris, of course, is an amazing performer.  I do wonder sometimes who the greatest actors of our time will turn out to be.  I think folks will look back on Sandra Bullock in a similar way as Doris Day, but Sandra will never carry a tune the same way.  Hard to say what time will bring.

Doris Day is still knocking around after all these years.  Born in 1922, she'll be 88 this year.  I don't think I discovered her until the mid 80's so she would have been in her 60's already.  Ah the magic of movies... Doris will be stealing the hearts of young fans for at least a 100 years.

The real Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff lived a far from perfect life.  Her story is inspiring by itself.  It highlights many of the flaws remaining in American gender roles at the same time it tells of her ability to overcome.  I only hope I can be so resilient in my own life.  When Doris sings in my mind, I feel I can be.