We're planning to attend a dinner--and demands for a ceasefire are happening on various campuses. It's possible that the topic of Gaza will surface at our dinner, and it's highly unlikely that everyone at the table will share just one view, exactly one view, on Gaza.
At the same time, my daughter is demanding a particular kind of bracelet; the bracelet actually tortures her, because it can get so tight that it cuts off the circulation to her hand. But, in the moment, she can't access the memory, and she just wants the damn bracelet.
The "superbill" for today's doctor visit is allegedly ready for the insurance company, but this seems debatable. One spouse is prepping for months of "reimbursement" warring. The other spouse thinks that the doctor might (helpfully) intervene. He asks the doctor's receptionist for "filing advice." The receptionist says, "I have no advice." Optimistic Spouse dislikes this response, so he forgets it; a few days later, he asks again. Pessimistic Spouse says, "We already have an answer to that question. It's not an answer that we want."
The conversation turns to bedtime. Spouse One: "She is going to be unrested and unmoored tomorrow, and she won't have school, and I'm the one who will be managing this...." Spouse Two: "I notice that rest was not a subject of paramount concern when you allowed her to skip her nap the other day...."
All of this makes me think of "Manchester by the Sea," which is a topic of celebration on The Ringer this week. The movie is ostensibly about overwhelming grief, but (secretly) its real subject is just daily life. The astonishing script almost seems to be something from a documentary film. A doctor tells a patient he has five years left. "Congestive heart failure. It's not a good disease." The patient says, "Well, what IS a good disease? Poison ivy?" And, from the aggrieved caretaker: "Is this a fucking comedy routine?"
A man drives across the state of Massachusetts, to tell his young nephew, "Your father has died." He is driving to the nephew's school. He reaches the principal by phone, but the connection is spotty. "What? I can't hear you. The connection is spotty. I'm coming to get him. OK? I'm coming to get him....What? He's not there. He's playing hockey? He plays hockey? He is playing in.....Gloucester?"
And, confronting a sealed garage: "I gotta bleep it with a bleeper? I don't got a bleeper.....I don't live here...."
This is a movie that is aging very, very well.
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