"Ricki and the Flash" & "Night Train to Lisbon"

I recently watched two movies that moved me in different ways ... The first was about a rocker that never made it but tried. She had left her husband (Kevin Kline) and kids 20 or so years prior to the now of the movie when she returns for two brief stays to help. Brought me to near-sobbing and that uncomfortable throat feeling that follows upon childhood tears. Meryl Streep -- this time with her daughter -- "knocking me alive," once more. Thanks, Meryl!

The second film was another recent one ... "Night Train to Lisbon" ... about a Swiss teacher who precipitously leaves his world when it accidentally intersects with an artifact from the now historical revolution in Portugal that had occurred in the early 1970's. I couldn't move away from the Lisbon film, either, but the Streep-Kline-RickSpringfield piece really got to me -- Ricki and the Flash! Both films about leavings and wishes for reunion. Goodbye's and Hello's. Sadness and Glee! Both quite beautiful, in their own right.

I suppose the films -- both about Third-going-into-Fourth Quarter types -- intersected with my life and with M's ... and, maybe, with the tragedy that surrounds Donald Trump (I nearly wrote Donald Duck) and his rather undignified and disrespectful clown-walk in the direction of political power. I can't imagine Trump's story having an ending that will be satisfactory for him -- that's sad, too; the protagonists in these crafted stories find their own resolutions ... no happily ever aftering ... but resolutions, nonetheless.

Even for those of us who manage not to live solely in the inalterable past or to be terrified by its unpredictable kin, the future, our present has its connections to those distant Worlds. One of my kids just got back from vacation with her family and another is leaving, today, with his. Our third kid (a kid who should get his invitation to join the American Association for Retired People, that is, will be turning 50 pretty soon leaves on business trips to the Lands of Very Far Away every few weeks. Three kids?  No more throwing our kids into the backs of a 1969 Volvo wagon for M and I ... Our kids' turn to do so (this time with baby seats and -- when the grandkids grew -- seat belts and cars that regularly start), I suppose. And, now, not likely to be too many more all-family vacations. I'll miss that, am sad about it but hopefully still able to celebrate how my kids have built their own rituals ... their own lives.

In brief, I suppose, the Good Life includes the layering of life's times:

Allowing Oneself to Miss the Past,

Vigorously Swimming in the Present

and

Fascinating -- even if betimes, nervously -- about the Future.

 Stanley Kunitz commends the readers of his poem, The Layers, indeed, to:

'Live among (those) Layers

(and) Not (just) the Litter.'

What an opportunity it is to live!