It's a Wonderful Life

It’s Sunday afternoon; It's a Wonderful Life has come on, and the two of us begin watching it.  You quickly notice, “You like this movie,” and I smile, answering, “Yes, it’s one of my favorites.”  You tell me, “You look happy,” and it’s true; I am.

We’ve stumbled upon it fairly close to the beginning, I believe.  Mary is singing, walking in a bath robe, alongside George, after the two of them  have accidentally danced their way into a swimming pool at a party. 

The film depicts almost every romantic incarnation of young love that one can imagine: hints at accidental nudity (and in the 1940s!); a scene of heavy flirtation, abruptly interrupted by a poignant family emergency that, I imagine, makes Mary long for the kiss they never share all the more; the idea of what could have happened, had things been otherwise in her life; Mary’s attempt to make George jealous by talking to another suitor on the phone, in his presence, wearing her pretty dress, her hair shiny and curled; the steamy scene which follows, in which the two of them share the telephone, side by side, their faces just inches from one another, eyes locking and drinking in their attractive young faces, lips trembling; the ensuing wedding after all of these years in school, her never having forgotten him; the two policemen serenading them as they have their honeymoon dinner together beside a roaring fire in a formerly abandoned dilapidated leaky house in which she had made, in his presence, a wish to live with him as husband and wife, the racy allusions to the subsequent arrival of the stork…

And the two of us joke a little about the contrasting reality of it all later; great minds think alike, I suppose, and honestly, realistically speaking, it breaks no spell whatsoever that the film has always had on me – no spell broken in the least through the giving of voice merely to what I’ve for so long thought, perhaps even much before the demise of my marriage, long before the back-breaking, unromantic work of patching my own, old Victorian house together, long before the unspoken wish now for a mob of friends and family --  despite all of my gratitude for this beautiful life that I know that I have – to arrive with baskets of cash and a telegram telling me that my home is safe, that I won’t end up losing it, that there's no chance I'll go bankrupt.

I want to say, actually, that my "knowing better" almost makes the movie all the more enjoyable for me.

I’ll start here:  how often does it work for an 18-year-old girl to go away to college and return to her mother’s home only to be promptly swept off her feet by the man she’d begun to fall for just  before disappearing for school all those years before?

(Hadn’t we just been having this conversation the day before, as a matter of fact? The one about relationships and how a person can never really go back?)

How good of an idea is it, while we’re at it, for a woman to try to win over a man by making him jealous of some pathetic mere hint of a long-distance relationship with some goofy man in New York who schedules telephone calls to her, the girl’s mother acting as her own personal secretary?

Also, a honeymoon is a honeymoon, it is true, but what does it say about a significant other, I wanted to ask (ironically on the very day when the two of us had earlier stopped our bicycle ride/ jog to help an old woman who had tripped just down the street from your apartment) -- that Mary urges George to ignore the most unimaginable fear and chaos that had broken loose amongst the neighbors of his community, simply because the timing of the emergency happened to have coincided with the day of their wedding?

And how reliable a life partner will a man make, who screams at everyone and shoves everything off of a table in a kind of temper tantrum, having gotten a bit drunk and walked into a bar brawl, all because of a difficult situation related to money and work? And who then is so quick to contemplate suicide?

What kind of character does a partner have if he’s going to get on the phone to berate his child’s teacher, worst day ever or not -- an overworked, underpaid civil servant who certainly is not a banker like he is, simply for having given his daughter, her prized pupil, a flower? And who is uneducated enough to believe that colds are indeed caused by cold weather?

But I guess I have a fondness for that part of me that refuses to think, that only feels.  Perhaps I think of all of these little scenarios, described above, just as little bumps in the road -- that the original spark, the magic that draws two people together in the first place, is all that matters in the end.

But most poignant for me is this:  even at the moment of their very first kiss --  at the point when the forces drawing the two of them together become irresistible -- even then, George says to Mary, once again, but this time in a voice filled with rage and resentment (years after having dreamed aloud about shaking the dirt of the sleepy little town off of his feet and seeing the world),  “Now, you listen here! I’m not going to stay in Bedford Falls; do you hear me? And I’m not going to marry you or anyone – ever!”

And this, I suppose, touches a nerve for me.  In this 1940s film, these two 20-somethings are of perfectly marriageable age, not the least bit "too young" for the time period in which they are living.  And despite Mary’s longing for George --  and despite the fact that Mary will end up a housewife who paints and papers the walls while George is at work, Mary does manage to finish a college degree first,  before miraculously being reunited with the man who had managed to make her heart skip a beat four years earlier.  

Also, despite the fact that George ends up staying in the sleepy Bedford Falls, he becomes “the richest man in town!”  

I don’t know how strongly one could argue that they’ve interfered with each other’s dreams.  (Still, isn't it creepy and a bit haunting how angrily George had protested the idea of settling down with her? Does this mean absolutely nothing? Would a beautiful woman like her truly have ended up an old maid who worked at the library if she hadn't simply settled for this resentful man?)

Now, today, even at the ages of 30, 35, or older, how many marriages have I seen break apart, how many have I at least seen spin into a decade of never-ending devotion, misery, and unsustainable strain over one person’s feelings of being caged, trapped, over being offered, perhaps, a job overseas, over a feeling that something is calling him or her from across the country, over a  feeling a general anxiety that says, anywhere is better than here.  Any thing.  No more of the banister falling apart every time I run up it in Bedford Falls or Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.  No more trickle of rain indoors, in our kitchen.  No more certainty of what I’ll be and where I’ll be  and who I’ll be with, “tomorrow, and the next day, and the year after that.” 

No matter how stable a life might seem on the surface now, here, in this not-so-sleepy town -- now matter how many college degrees and graduate school degrees we have and seem to have accomplished something that looks right on paper, no matter how many mortgages or children or raises at work a person seems to have acquired, it seems as though it’s never too late, somehow, to have to sit on the edge of our seats, helplessly waiting to watch on as this wonderful life whispers into  the ear of a person we believed we knew -- knew better than anyone --  to listen as that voice is saying, come, follow me; let nothing stand in your way.  You are never too old to be alone again, to see the world.  No love it seems, will ever seem safe from it.