Home Alone 2 (with you)
Christmas time and we've been out all night.
You've been talking shit no one understands, the way you do when you're drunk – and because English is your second language people can't be sure if you're super-smart and talking over their heads or if you're actually just free-styling your own version of the exquisite corpse. I think it's the funniest thing ever.
Finally we make it home, settle our tired selves
on the hot mat and turn on the TV.
It's Home Alone 2.
I'm all upbeat and hyped and
doing little air-punching movements ‘cause we're in love and you're so foreignly hot and Home Alone 2 is on and there is nothing better I could imagine watching right now.
Kevin McCallister is already going through
the character-forming section of his trials and tribulations by the time we tune in – his blonde locks lapping like pure shine around his pink exclamation- marked face.
You're rocking around the room doing things
that you do – putting on house shorts and a singlet, rolling around on the mat, talking to yourself.
The baddies are really just a device to help
Kevin and his family realise how much they mean to one another, I say. His absence is what hurts but matters the most. It's a coming of age story. It's a love story.
The movie goes on and I get really involved –
I forget you're there.
Kevin is over it. He's lonely to the point of
despair. He misses his mother. He goes to the Rockefeller Christmas tree and prays for only one thing, to see her again. And then there she is, calling his name.
And this is when my heart finally knows
what my mind has for years – that I won't ever find a tree laced bright enough with festive lights to guide my own mother through dark city streets. There are no streets that connect our separate worlds.
And I turn around and realise you've been
watching me the whole time – and even though neither of us has spoken and I've not started to cry yet you say really quietly Mags, do you miss your mother?
And I am so startled, and so shockingly sad that
I cry in front of you for the first time. I cry on you for what seems hours and your white top feels like the fabric of some cradle and for a while you let me be a kid again, a kid who got lost and can't seem to find her mother anywhere, no matter how hard she looks.
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