Sunday, July 3, 2011

love etc...

i was all set to see the serious movie crime after crime about an abused woman who kills her husband in self defense and ends up in jail and then almost 20 years later the case was reopened  and she ends up having a frum lawyer defend her. it was raining today. the fact that it was a rainy day really depressed me, so i decided to see a lighter film. i ended up seeing love etc.
love etc chronicles five love situations in new york city. i would call them love situations instead of couples because not everyone ends up part of a couple and not all of the love documented is couple love.
the first love situation is a first generation american indian couple. we see them before during and after their wedding. though i've never been married i believe that they were portrayed more realistically than any hollywood couple on the silver screen.
the second love situation was  a divorced dad with full custody of his two kids. while he was a hands on dad, and quite buff i might add, he didn't do as well as one might think with the ladies.
the third love situation was the first love of a high school couple.
the fourth love was an elderly jewish couple named al and marian. they have been married 48-49 years. al is , sit down folks, ten years younger than marian. marian had kids from a former marriage when she married al. in about 1960. now they are 79 and 89.
the last love situation was a gay man who wanted to have a child so badly that he found an egg donor and a surrogate and had twins. it was not shocking to me at  all that a gay man would want to be a parent. some gay men have feminine qualities that would make them a good father/mother to a child. i found this storyline intriguing on several levels. of course his actual story was fascinating, but it also made me think. a lot of women go it alone and have kids or adopt kids on their own when they fear they will never meet a man to have a child with. straight men get squeamish when a women is too gung ho on marriage and feel like they are only being loved for their donation to the possibility of a future child . hmm .... on the other hand many men will reject thirty or forty something women because they think they are too "old " to have a kid, but no one bats an eye at this. these men certainly are only looking at these younger women  only for their wombs and baby making abilities. come to think of it except for one lone frum male blogger whose name and blog name escapes me  who wrote about hiring a surrogate to have his baby i have never heard of any straight men doing this. why don't they? it would take a lot of the pressure off of dating for them. there would be less fifty year old men trying to unsuccessfully date under 35 year old (wombs) women and they would have children. women have taken charge of their parenthood. why haven't men? or is this fantasy of finding a much younger woman to have kids with just an excuse not to get married? hmm... i really have no answers just lots of think questions.
true love is the etc. true love is going through life with another person. true love is being able to deal with the changes life throws at all humans and still stay together. there is spouse love, friend love  and there is parent /child love. we are  lucky to have  any of these loves in our lives.
on that note, on some sunny day in the near future im going to have to go see crime after crime.

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