Saturday afternoon I sat between my father and my son and watched The Millenium Falcon fly again.
My first thought was “there goes my ship” followed by “I bet I’d have to fight off half the theater for it” and then, “it is my ship and if my son is lucky one day it will become his ship, but it won’t be for at least a 100 years.”
You might think that’s ridiculous, but only if you are under the misguided impression that the The Millenium Falcon isn’t my ship because it is.
I suspect that if you had recorded me you would have seen me lean forward in my seat and focus upon it.
I suspect if you had recorded me and told me that you had I would have suggested you get a life and then watched it so that I could see what an ecstatic expression on my face must look like.
Is That An Exaggeration?
Ecstasy might be an exaggeration but saying The Falcon is mine isn’t because it is and don’t make me prove it because at almost 47 I am far more agile than you know and extra mean.
If you are one of the regular readers you already know my feelings about gifts and what the secret to a life worth living is.
You know the little moments are what counts and that I do my best to pay attention to them.
When it is all said and done what I want for my family and myself to be able to say is that we lived and we lived hard.
That doesn’t have to mean we climbed Everest, went skydiving, or engaged in extreme sports.
Nor does it mean that we didn’t do any of those things either. That is because I won’t let myself be hemmed in by black and white decisions that limit what we can or cannot do.
I won’t limit myself into believing that the only moments worth memorizing are those that involve physical activity because sometimes the ones that count are the memories that come from a shared experience like seeing a movie.
Did The Force Awaken Three Generations?
I think so.
You can discuss and or debate why Star Wars is so meaningful to people but sometimes that discussion leads you into missing the forest for the trees.
The Force Awakens took me back to being the eight year-old boy who saw Star Wars at a drive-in long before the world had moved into the digital age we live in now.
I remember when Darth Vader was the personification of evil and when every boy wondered if maybe, just maybe the Force was real and dreamed of becoming a Jedi knight.
And on Saturday I got to relive and share that moment with the two men that I share the most genetic material with.
Those moments don’t happen as often as we might want or like them to.
Life moves too quickly and we are far too busy, but for that one moment in time we got to share it.
And I suppose I ought to add that part of what I enjoyed most was seeing how much fun my son and father had together.
The young master isn’t quite so little any more and I can’t look at the future and know I had decades of living together anymore.
If all goes as we hope and expect it won’t be all that long before he heads off to start living on his own and I watch from a distance and wonder if I was a good Yoda or a so-so one.
Just To Clarify
The Millenium Falcon is still my ship and if you try to take it without my permission you’ll have to kiss Jabba The Hutt, with tongue.
I had intended to write this post on Saturday and figured that it might be better and more powerful when the movie and memories were fresher in my mind.
But life got in the way, there were things to do and stuff happened so I didn’t get a chance to write it until a few days later.
Can’t say if this post is better or worse because of it, I can only say it was a hell of a ride and I’ll always remember the smiles on my dad and son’s faces.
That is good enough for me.
