The Odd Life

I took the kids to see a major motion picture today. It was a coin flip between ParaNorman and The Odd Life of Timothy Green. Based on the Yahoo reviews, the Odd Life won out. Although there was one comment on ParaNorman which made me want to see it…“A PG Rated movie shouldn’t say sex, jackass, stupid and much less have gays in the movie. I am not an anti-gay person…” I thought that was adorable. I’m not an anti-gay person, but you shouldn’t have gays in movies. What?

Anyway, I’m glad we picked the Odd Life. It was pretty great. I’m going to spoiler alert the shit out of this thing (Bruce Willis is dead) so put on your earmuffs if you want to see it. It’s about Jennifer Garner being a reeaaalllly good gardener. So good, in fact, that when she and her husband find out that they can’t have kids, she just goes right ahead and grows a boy in her garden.

At first I had a little trouble with Jennifer and her husband not being real. Dude is a union guy…a factory worker…and he drives a fucking Subaru. Come on. And Jennifer has a shit job at a pencil museum, but somehow those two incomes provide them with this incredible country house. It’s all fancy-like and unrealistic, but man, once I got over those couple of things it was really enjoyable to see some real in a movie.

Both Jennifer and her husband were fucked up. You don’t really hear about her side of the family, but her aunt and uncle practically raised her and her sister is so over the top with the way she dresses her family and her formality, that you know she’s hiding some dark secrets.

The husband’s family of origin dysfunction is a big part of the story. His dad wasn’t much of a dad, so once Timothy sprouts, the husband sets off to be the dad that he never had. But, he fucks up. And Jennifer fucks up. They don’t know what they’re doing.

Neither do I. I had the thought recently that most of the differences in this world stem from something we all have in common…we all had the misfortune of having parents. Parents fuck up and that fucks us up. They raise us to be close-minded or they beat us or they get us thinking it’s okay to make fun of people. You know the list that’s true for you.

Or maybe you don’t. You can say, “I had the perfect childhood” like I used to believe, but then you start looking back and trying to figure out why you just feel so off all the time or so depressed or so unable to measure up and all the sudden it’s holy shit, my childhood was a mess.

The happy couple only has Timothy for a season. But, end up telling the story of their time with the garden boy when they’re trying to get approved to adopt a human. As they told their story, it was clear that they made mistakes with Timothy. But, they told the adoption agency that they wanted to adopt so that they could “make more mistakes.”

I thought that was great. There’s scenes with them screaming at each other. There’s a scene where they have no idea if they’re supposed to have their son’s back or let him fight his own battle. But, man the thing any kid wants is what they give Timothy…they fucking delight in him.

They have “home”. The safe place. The place you belong. There were a couple of scenes that got me where Jennifer and her husband could not have been more excited or proud of their boy and shared a wordless, eyes wide open “that’s our kid” moment. They were beaming.

I get that. My kids make me beam. Right on my face. They make my eyes twinkle. They’re my home. Riley told me tonight that she feels safe at my place. That means so much, because that’s what I’ve tried to create for the kids. Home. And safe.

They know I love them. They know I try. And they know I fail. As much as I want to do things right, I don’t want to be guilty of thinking I’m the perfect dad. Stuff that I can’t even see yet will affect the kids. But, they know that when shit comes up…and it will…we talk about it. Or we write about it. We deal with it.

And I guess that’s what the movie was to me…a chance for the kids to see what I’ve been trying to teach them. Fuck perfect. Let’s be real. I’m paraphrasing, but just the idea that the less thans or the not perfects can have a kind of happiness that those trying to keep up appearances will never know…that’s what I want for the kids.

Ha…I just looked up and saw the gold medal my daughter made for me for being a dad. I’ll bring it to therapy with her down the road as we try to sort out the gaps and the hurts and the stuff that I didn’t do quite right. I love showing the kids my imperfections…really I think that’s why I got Gold this year…they don’t want a perfect dad. They just want a dad who adores them.

And I notice that the more I write and the more I think about stuff that matters and the less I care about shit that doesn’t, the better in tune I am with what a fit from the boy means or how Riley is acting when she has something she wants to talk about.

I used to live in a state of mind where what people thought of me was everything. Then, I met a stripper dot dot dot and a lot of people didn’t think very much of me. I like it better that way. There’s no chance of me being over rated. I like talking about my shit, not my greatness. I like listening. I like trying to figure out a life that we have no chance figuring out with other people who struggle as much as I do. I’m fucked up, you’re fucked up. End of story. So, drop the bullshit and be uncool.