An Ephemeral Thing: Movies With My Mom

Every weekend, for more than fifteen years, I’ve gone to a movie in a theater with my mother.

As best as I can remember, it started after my dad died. We weren’t strangers to going to the movies — in fact, we saw a couple a month, either as a family or in smaller groups of two or three — but the formalized act of going to a movie with my mom only really started after that point. It started out as a nice outlet, from what I can remember. A way to get out of the house, a temporary distraction, a way to waste a couple hours. But what it’s turned into has become one of the most treasured parts of my week.

Even when COVID hit and movie theaters closed, we popped popcorn at home, found a movie on streaming, and sat down to watch something. Movie Day used to be a Saturday, and then at some point it migrated to a Sunday in order to avoid big crowds for new releases. I don’t think the specific day mattered, just the routine of it, the repetition, the ritual. The chill of the theater, the fragrance of the popcorn, the sniffles and ruffling and throat-clearing from the other patrons… all of it is a part of the bigger experience. I love every part of it. I love the badly dated wallpaper murals on the Cinemark walls, and the black and white framed photos of long-dead stars and starlets. I love sharing a big bucket of popcorn with my mom and making fun of the commercials before the movie starts. I love the shared experience of both the movie and discussing it afterwards during the car ride home.

I’ve routinely turned down all sorts of social invitations on the weekend in order to keep my standing movie date, but that’s not to say that it’s rigid. There are some weeks where nothing interesting is playing (or worse, we’ve seen all the current releases we’re interested in), and we opt to watch something at home. Some weeks life gets in the way and we’re forced to skip it. But then we just pick it back up the following week. No matter what the rest of the week has looked like, we still head to the theater together. We’ve even gone to the movies together when we’ve both been furious at each other, arguing bitterly in the car on the way to the theater and in the concessions line until we take a two hour pause, after which time we’ve resumed the fight or calmly talked it over (both have happened before). But it doesn’t change the routine and the ritual.

Occasionally I’ll be struck by the thought that this arrangement won’t last forever. Something will eventually happen that will break the streak permanently, and what might have been one of our temporary hiatuses will instead turn into a permanent one. But I think for the time being, I’m just really grateful. I don’t know how many people have the opportunity to spend a dedicated amount of time each week with one of their parents, and I think I’m terribly fortunate to have been able to do so for as long as we have.

So if you’re looking for me on some Sunday morning, probably right around noon, you’re just going to have to wait. My phone is on silent, jammed into my pocket. I’m unavailable for an hour or two, maybe more if the conversation is lively. I hope you’ll understand.