Movie Recommendation

For our anniversary, my wife and I went to the movies. We're not really movie lovers....I think her favorite movie is Elf and mine is Major League. Not exactly Citizen Kane and The Godfather.

We saw Away We Go, with John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph. In short, it was the perfect movie for us to watch at that time in our life together.

Brief synopsis: Burt and Verona are pregnant. They travel the country, searching for a place to raise their child. Along the way, they interact with acquaintances, friends, and family, each with their own parenting styles.

For my wife and I, this really opened our minds to parenthood. At the time we watched the film, we were not pregnant....merely toying with the notion of trying to have a baby.

Here's a rundown of the parents Burt (which, by the way, is a name that I love) and Verona encounter on their trip:

1: Burt's parents, Jerry & Gloria (Jeff Daniels & Catherine O'Hara). Jerry and Gloria are planning to move to Antwerp (Belgium, not Ohio) for a few years, and wouldn't be around for the birth of their grandson. The elder Farlanders are decently selfish and self-absorbed.

2: Verona's old co-worker and her husband, Lily and Lowell (Allison Janney & Jim Gaffigan) in Phoenix. Lily and Lowell have two children. They seem to be miserable in their role as both parents and spouses. Lily might be sauced the entire time, and refers to her kids as fat and dumb. Lowell is a pathetic ball of lame hate, quietly voicing his distaste for, well, pretty much everyone.

3. Burt's cousin LN and her partner Rod (Maggie Gyllenhaal & Josh Hamilton) in Madison, Wisconsin. LN (Ellen, to you and me) and Rod are, for lack of a better term, new-age douches, worried about their energy and their spirit more than anything else. LN doesn't own a stroller, because, "I love my babies. Why would I want to push them away from me?" LN and Rod are very condescending toward people who do not share their own wacky beliefs.

4. Burt and Verona's friends Tom and Munch (Chris Messina & Melanie Lynskey) in Montreal, Quebec. Tom and Munch have several adopted children, and are incredible parents. WE find out later that Munch has had several miscarriages. Very heartbreaking, actually.

5. Burt's brother Courtney (Paul Schneider). Courtney, a single father, is terrified that his daughter will be permanently scarred because his wife walked out on him.



While it might seem as though Burt and Verona are perfect, and everyone around them is crazy, I see it differently. I see them as two people who want to do the absolute best for their child, but aren't sure what best is.

Eventually, Burt and Verona begin to make promises to one another, based on their interactions with the people they met on their trip:

Burt: Do you promise to let our daughter be fat or skinny or any weight at all? Because we want her to be happy, no matter what. Being obsessed with weight is just too cliché for our daughter.
Verona: Yes, I do. Do you promise, when she talks, you'll listen? Like, really listen, especially when she's scared? And that her fights will be your fights?
Burt: I do. And do you promise that if I die some embarrassing and boring death that you're gonna tell our daughter that her father was killed by Russian soldiers in this intense hand-to-hand combat in an attempt to save the lives of 850 Chechnyan orphans?
Verona: I do. Chechnyan orphans. I do. I do.

My wife and I see a lot of ourselves in Burt and Verona....a bit nervous, a bit scared, and a bit apprehensive. Luckily, though, as we look around us at other parents, we have fantastic role models. No LNs or Lilys in sight.

I think the quote that sums everything up about being a good parent, though, is from Tom, the father of the adopted kids...

It's all those good things you have in you. The love, the wisdom, the generosity, the selflessness, the patience. The patience! At 3 am when everyone's awake because Ibrahim is sick and he can't find the bathroom and he's just puked all over Katki's bed. When you blink, when you blink! And it's 5:30 and it's time to get up again and you know you're going to be tired all day, all week, all your fucking life. And you're thinking what happened to Greece? What happened to swimming naked off the coast of Greece? And you have to be willing to make the family out of whatever you have.

You might hate Away We Go if you watch it, but I hope that, if you do, you smile a little bit, laugh a little bit, but, most importantly, think about our role as a parent, or a future parent....or whatever your situation is.