Clueless But Hopeful movies would all include dancing and kissing.

Last night I picked up my new book group book: "Suite Francais". It was written, and set, in 1940's Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation. (It will become obvious that perhaps this is not the best book for someone like me to read but I think it's going to be a great book so I'm along for the ride.) I didn't get more than a page into it before the words brought on a familiar pang.

"They had to dress their children by torchlight. Mothers lifted small, warm, heavy bodies into their arms: 'Come on, don't be afraid, don't cry.' An air raid."

Suddenly, I was there (in black and white, of course, it IS 1940 after all), leaning over a crib, dressing my child quickly with trembling fingers. Even though I was really lying safely tucked into my bed, hopped up ("hopped down"?) on Nyquil, I felt a shiver go through my body and then a slowly building ache for those mothers and their babies. When I fell asleep, I had haunted dreams of grabbing for little hands that kept slipping away.

As you might be guessing, I've always had a vivid imagination and had a hard time telling fantasy and reality apart. Cinematic portrayals of violence have always been difficult for me. The slasher/chainsaw/Freddy kind are fine, it's the torturous, "Silence of the Lambs" kind of violence that I can't stand. (I tried to watch that movie twice and couldn't get through it. I am still haunted by scenes from "Requiem for a Dream", "Pulp Fiction", and "Cape Fear". I know, without knowing anything about it, that I can never see a movie with the title "There will be blood", no matter how great Daniel Day Lewis is in it. And I stomped out of the room during the first five minutes of "A History of Violence" screaming "They're threatening a little girl with a gun? What the F&%$!? This is supposed to be ENTERTAINING?!! What the F%#$ is wrong with you F*&#ing people?!" Luckily, we were watching it at home so the only person present for my little episode was CG and he's seen so much worse, he barely batted an eye. And yes, you are forgiven for thinking it is sorta my fault for BEING THE ONE TO CHOOSE said movie given its title and my crazily extreme completely reasonable reaction to violence.)

(Did that just win the award for longest parenthetical statement or what?)

But even books do it to me. And since I became a mother, forget it, I'm a total wreck when anything even remotely hard happens to a child.

Our book group just finished "My Sister's Keeper" and "The Memory Keeper's Daughter". (We decided since we couldn't keep the titles straight, we should read them at the same time and get any confusion cleared up.) There is precious little violence in either of these books, but I felt so deeply for each mother, even the ones who made disastrous, selfish, or just plain sucky choices. There is so much loss and grief in each book and the mothers are at the center of it all. I kept thinking: "What would I do in that situation?" and "Oh God, please don't let that happen to Z/me. I don't think I'd survive."

I think it's a good thing to feel this connected to mothers everywhere, fictional or real. (The evening news is not a good thing for me at the moment. Anytime they show injured soldiers I think "That's someone's baaaaby" and reach for the kleenex box.) I just wish I had a little more control over it.