Hormones and Motherhood - Ho!

last night we watched an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender called "Tales of Ba Sing Se" which is a series of vignettes focusing on various characters in the show. One of the stories focused on Iroh, and shows him in his normal milieu of a slightly silly old man with subtle hints of his hidden depths. The ending is just beautiful, showing him lighting incense and setting up a picture which turns out to be of his son who died years earlier in the war. You hear him sing a song he sung earlier to stop a child's crying, this time with his own tears of sorrow and remorse. This was one of the last episodes Mako, the voice of Iroh, recorded before he died which makes it especially poignant. The story is exceptionally well done and true to form, I sobbed all the way through it and am in fact fighting to hold back tears just thinking about it.

Just now I escaped upstairs to avoid the sobbing that would accompany a scene in The Incredibles when Holly Hunter's character's plane goes down with the children on board. I remember also tearing up over this scene when John and I saw it in the theater, as well as actually sobbing when Jason Lee's character attempts to kidnap the baby at the very end. It was a similar situation when we went to see Revenge of the Sith - when Palpatine directs Anakin to the Jedi temple, I knew exactly what it meant and I remember just burying my face in John's chest and crying I was so upset.

Before I got pregnant with Michael, there were very few things that touched me like that, and only then if I happened to see it when it was just before my period was due to start. Now that I almost have two children, it's a pretty safe bet that I'll be affected by these types of scenes, animated or otherwise, since it's almost impossible to turn off motherhood even for an few hours at the movies.

Not the most coherent of posts, but it's not been the most coherent of days. At least the contractions have stopped which is the other reason I came upstairs.