Dear Brandeis community,

 

Movies are both a regular fixture and a rare treat in my life these days. We have made family movie night part of our Friday Shabbat rituals for more than three years now, the girls tumbling from the candles and challah downstairs to the TV room and popcorn. Some of you have heard me grumble about how hard it gets to find worthwhile family movies when you get up into the hundreds of nights spent watching them, but the calm and routine of pajamas and togetherness makes the challenge of the search well worth it.

 

Less common in my life raising young children is what we wistfully call “grown-up movies,” a category much of the world simply refers to as “movies.” But this week a night suddenly offered itself up: the girls asleep fairly early despite the time change, and I had no evening events or work that absolutely needed doing. Looking into what movies were available on demand, we saw Arrival—a movie a few people in the Brandeis community had recommended to me, due I think to the foregrounding of linguistics in its plot (which centers on humanity’s attempts to engage with aliens who land on earth). The recommendations had been strong—an excellent movie they said, deserving of more attention than it received. And so we put it on.

 

I will not take anything away from the film but rather just prepare you better than I was prepared to let you know that there is another significant plot device that my recommenders failed to mention which involves the parent’s experience of the death of a child. This takes place in the first minute of the movie. Let me tell you, I was not expecting such emotional intensity from a movie about aliens. The rest of what my recommenders told me was true: the movie is fascinating, engaging, and well acted. And, it turns out, emotionally wrenching.

 

When the movie ended, I had that particular parenting feeling of wanting desperately to give my children hugs and kisses, to tell them I love them, to remind them what a miracle they are to me each day. But I’m also enough of a veteran parent at this point that I avoided the impulse to wake them up with kisses, and so left it at a lingering look into their rooms as they slept. It did, however, leave me thinking of another Shabbat ritual—not one we keep in our household, though it is one I feel great affinity for—the blessing over the children. In that blessing, the parent wishes for the child the strength and wisdom of his or her biblical forebears, and for God to guard the child, show them favor, and grant them peace.

 

 

And to that, for my children and yours, I say a hearty amen.

 

Wishing you all weekends full of the blessings of children, my friends!

 

Warmly,

 

Dan