Meeting Maria

I stayed home from church today with a pathetic sickly Wanda. She’s got a snuffly nose, a cough, a rattle and a roll. She can’t sleep without a binky but she can’t breathe WITH a binky so we are at an impasse. There is a lot of crying and snarfling going on.

I’m just getting over something similar to what she has, although I looked a lot less cute when it was my turn so I tried to nap in between rescuing her from the suffocating bink and alternately calming her with it.

When I woke up from my nap, the kids were watching a movie, something we don’t do much of on Sundays and Dan and I decided it wasn’t a great Sabbath day movie choice. I’m not sure that there’s anything religiously wrong with Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus, although the male/female relations are somewhat of an archetypal muddle. I think we decided it wasn’t a great Sunday movie because it sucks.

So we let them watch a movie that does not suck. According to my Grandpa, who saw it around one hundred times in the theatre when it was released, it’s about the un-suckingest movie that has ever and will ever be made. The hills are alive with it. You guessed it. We watched The Sound of Music.

I cried when they sang about the problem with a certain young novitiate named Maria. I cried when she had confidence in sunshine. I bawled my eyes out when she taught the children how to verbalize Solfège and don’t get me started on Maria’s favorite things. It is too much. I love that movie. It’s in my blood.

I love it because it reminds me of how happy my childhood was, even though my sister made me be Rolf when we danced along with “Sixteen Going on Seventeen.” It was a charmed childhood. Tonight I proclaimed that when Dan and I dress up as Rolf and Liesel for Halloween, I get to be the girl, all pretty in pink and he can be the pre-Nazi messenger boy.

Laylee was enthralled, talking about what an amazing governess Maria was. As I child I liked Maria, but I don’t remember thinking she was all that amazing. Weren’t all moms kind of like that? She very much reminded me of my own mom but with shorter hair and a guitar.

The best comment of the night came when the nuns were singing about Maria at the beginning of the movie and Magoo sat with a disgusted look on his face and said, “Why do they just go on and ON and ON and ON about it?”

We stopped for bed just as the Von Trapp family singers were climbing trees, about 5 minutes pre-firing, about 7 minutes pre-Edelweiss, somewhere near 20 minutes pre-most-romantic-dance-scene-ever.

So far my kids think it’s a happy movie with lots of singing and too many nun parts. But wait. It gets better. Tomorrow we get to finish up with icky romantic love and Nazis. Maybe we should just watch the first half again.

P.S. “Favorite Things” is still not a Christmas song.