One Recommendation and Two Disrecommendations

Okay, say you are in your third trimester of pregnancy. (And actually three dear friends of mine are.) My brother recently moved to Omaha and they have a restaurant there called "Burger Lust." I think we should go. I am an unapologetic carnivore but when I'm pregnant, I am a hopeless and brazen red-meat enthusiast. Ask Geoff how many times he's tried to quickscan a menu for the phrase "steak tips" or whatever the closest thing to London Broil happens to be. Anyway, my sister said it was yummy and you could even get guacamole on your burger, which secures Omaha squarely on my personal food map. As we used to say in college, "Anyone up for a 'let's go?"

Winter is our season for Netflix, cozy nights in cramming Oscar picks and getting transported by what we joke is "the magic of the movies." Last night, I was sorting bed linens and we had a double feature-- Two Films to Depress and Disturb You. The first one was by this female Australian animator. It was called "Look Both Ways." It was one of those overlapping plots movies but had these animated thought-sequences which where the characters' fears and anxieties of train wrecks, shark attacks, multiplying cancer cells. The animation pieces were imaginative but the payoff was not satisfying enough. When your setup includes testicular cancer diagnosis, a fatal stumble near a train track, and characters who are misogynist blame-shifters, I think you have to do alot of unpacking and winding around to get to a satisfying resolution. The writer was ambitious but too many crazy images viewed at night is a recipe for insomnia if you are 36 weeks pregnant.

I was pregnant with Clara when we watched "Fahrenheit 911," I spent the first 20 minutes asking if it was real footage. The second 20 minutes shaking my head in disbelief and the remaining time passed out asleep out of hopelessness. We watched "The Road to Guantanamo" last night. It was the story of four British men whose travels to Pakistan went painfully and dreadfully amuck. Three of them were accompanying the one who was set to get married. Can you imagine travelling to your friend's wedding in your homeland and taking a little tourist jaunt and ending up in Guantanamo Bay as a prisoner of the U.S. Marines? Held in captivity for 3 years? I wept at the inhumanity and how the sequence of events just got more convoluted and more desparate. I thought it preserved the men's dignity, it didn't have the Jerry Springer tabloid sheen to it. Not really the Abu Ghraib sort of zoo that makes me embarassed of our country. It did have a surprising and redemptive ending but again, I was asking, "Yes, but still what they went through?!" I usually yawn when people get all bumper-sticker-righteous but a professor I had said, "The personal is the political. Voting should be a visceral experience." I can't pretend that I am that informed. Geoff laughs at my ability to care ONLY about the weather. So I have a few news sources I follow and some folks whose politics I trust but when I see films like this I am jolted. I am confronted with the scarier end of the human spectrum.

So, I ask, "Is this the kind of world I want to share with a new baby? How can I make it safe enough? How can I protect and equip her for the range of experiences she will have?" I don't know. All I can say is, unless you have the ability to fall gracefully into a dreamless sleep or the yogic will to visualize healing all around you, don't rent these films.