Baby Mine

Ask any one who knows me fairly well and they will tell you that my favorite movie genre is kids movies. Put on a video that is intended for a toddler while I am in the room and I am a goner. I have a fairly large collection of kids movies that were purchased long before I ever thought that I might need to keep a child occupied and they are watched frequently.

As a little girl these shows were a big deal... back then we didn't have it on video that we could pop in when ever we wanted so I had to catch them when they would play it on T.V. All of the shows had their special time of the year that they were on. Mary Poppins was always on Easter Sunday, so was the Wizard of Oz. My parents were really good about finding out when those shows were on and getting us sat down to watch them. Even when we didn't have a T.V. ( which we didn't get until I was in third grade) my dad would bring us over to Gramps and Granny's or my mother would bring us to Aunt Kathy's house. It was a treat to watch these shows and we would often make a night of it.

Knowing my love of cartoons combined with my love of animals and my need to root for the underdog... it should come as no surprise that Dumbo was one of my favorite shows in the world. I would giggle through the song sung by crows about how impossible it was for an elephant to fly. I would watch through my spread fingers as Dumbo would run to get to the top of the elepant pile... knowing that disaster was about to strike. I would watch enthralled by the color changes and images of Pink Elephants. I loved everything about that movie.

The thing about Dumbo is that it was a bittersweet movie to watch, much like Bambi or Fox and the Hound. There in the midst of this wonderful movie was a sadness that was difficult to watch. Like the death of Bambi's mother and the end of the friendship between Copper and Tod, it was hard to watch Mrs. Jumbo get in trouble for protecting her baby. It was near to impossible to watch as she rocked him while "Baby Mine " played. From a very young age that part of the movie impacted me greatly. I would watch it broken hearted for Dumbo, because I knew how I would feel if I lost my mommy. From the time that I understood the movie I fought tears at that part of the movie.

My mother and I talked once when I was a bit younger about that part of the movie agreeing about how hard that part of the movie was to watch. My mother said that she too had to fight tears at that part of the movie. I took the comment at face value, assuming that she experienced that scene in the same way that I did. I believed that she responded the same way that I did for the same reasons that I did. I am sure that she did at some point, but I know now that there was so much more to it.

The other night I was rocking my little girl late at night. We are having some teething issues so we often don't sleep very well right now. So there I was at three in the morning trying to coax her back to sleep and I started humming Baby Mine. As I was humming and rocking the most precious person that I have ever met in my life, for the first time in my life I realized the depth of that scene. I thought of that scene as a mother. I envisioned the tearing loss that Mrs. Jumbo felt being seperated from her little one and trying to comfort him in what small way that she can. Just contemplating such a forced seperation creates in me a desperation. My daughter is napping as I write this and my arms feel empty and ache to hold her.

I always expected that when I "Grew Up" that the effect that scene had on me would change. That the sadness would disappear, like the dread of Wendy having to grow up in Peter Pan did. Or there would come an understood acceptance of the honesty of the scene, as there is when Copper and Tod realize that their childhood friendship cannot carry over into adulthood. This one time however a children's movie effects me as profoundly as an adult as it ever did in my childhood years.