Its hard to date the moment when I first became aware that I wanted to
be a social worker. Like most things in
my life, my interest in it grew out of the movies, life, and struggles in
between. This weekend, we watched two of
the movies that informed that disposition, reviewing the stories of fellow
travelers going through their struggles to make sense of the world, with its breaks, connections, ruptures, and moments where we connect once more.
I can’t remember which I saw first – Ordinary People, 1980, or Kramer
vs Kramer, 1979, – but both touched me. Stories of families grappling with
loss, they highlight the way people let each other down, and others swoop in to
offer support. Neither romanticizes the
point, but they point to the value of essential others, attachment, and affectional
bonds we all need to grow, develop trust, and foster resiliency, as we connect,
bond, fuse with others, and separate. Yet when they break prematurely, so do
we. This is the story of Ordinary
People. When the protagonist Conrad’s teenage
brother dies in a boating trip, he is left to pick up the pieces of his
memories, grief, and guilt for having survived. Few seem to understand, a
mother walks away, and a friend from the hospital where he stayed after he tried to take his life takes her life, and Conrad’s
therapist steps in, offering guidance, authenticity, and a reminder that maybe
it is not his fault that he held on. Maybe he did not do anything wrong after all.
Watching this film over three decades ago, I was
fascinated with what it could show us about how we manage, adapt, and cope with
very real pain, the awkwardness of not being able to get along with peers, and
the ways a new supporter can move us through such moments.
The film also highlighted the specter of a distant
mother, who could not quite connect with her son. Gradually the family and
marriage comes apart, while the father and son become closer, sharing their own
mutual engagement in making sense of their loss, while the mother becomes more
and more estranged. It is hard for me
not to think of Dad and our years together in Dallas before his divorce to my mother became
finalized. We watched Ordinary People and talked about Mary Tyler Moore and my mom. Dad compared the two, perhaps unfairly. What was similar was the marriages in
the movie and in life that both broke down.
Kramer vs Kramer, another story about divorce, only
extended this thinking. None of us choose parents. And parents certainly do not
choose us. But we all need each other in
families. Yet, when our attachments are
broken we all suffer. Capacity for trust
is eroded, resilience challenged.
Hopefully, we come out the other side, coping and growing up
together. That was the story with my
father and I. It was the story in Kramer
vs Kramer. But the pain in between is
very, very real.
Early in the film, Dustin Hoffman tells his wife about someone in the office, whispering, “committed suicide.”
My first godfather killed himself some four
decades ago. His son suffered for years
afterward. I will never forget when my parents told me about what happened. The
week before, we had been hanging out.
And now he was gone. It was the
first of many such laments. And it still
feels odd to remember. Maybe this was
what all those serious parents in the movies, or even my parents for that
matter, maybe this was what they were talking about late into the night?
Kramer vs Kramer and Ordinary People were movies about a generation that learned to make sense of divorce, seeing its vast impacts on all us, who survived it, as kids, young adults, and eventually parents ourselves.
I will never forget art class in fifth grade and one
of the kids in class, a young girl, and I were talking about dinners at home. She had had pizza the night
before. I told her that sounded great.
“Not if you have it every night,” she lamented and
started crying. There was something else
there. Her parents, like most of the kids in my grade, were separating.
My family suffered divorce, as did most of my friends,
and I regret the pain of that separation to this day. But of course, we adapt
as we all did, as the characters in the movies do, as we are all forced to.
My kids and I talked about the movies all weekend,
how good they were, and how sad they seemed.
They were in awe of the younger Meryl Streep. But who could imagine a mom leaving in that
way? And they were sad for the son left
behind.
But the making and breaking of affectional bonds is real and long lasting. Its something we
spend forever rehashing, as we navigate the course of our lives, from growing
connected to parents, separating from them, making our way through the world,
and connecting with others through time.
I am still glad those movies were made and to watch
them with my kids, who I hope will avoid enduring such breaks. But we can’t avoid life and its pain. We cannot avoid it. I just hope it won’t hit too hard as they
grow through this world.
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