stars in her eyes

there's a framed cross-stitch that hangs in my brother's room at my parents' house that's been there for decades.  my mom made it, following a pattern that resonated with her and now resonates with me.  it's of a little boy and his father, carrying their fishing poles, with the following verse beside them: "men are only boys grown tall.  hearts don't change much, after all."

this bit of poetry fits our family of four as much as it did my family of five, for chris has dozens of loves from his youth that he eagerly shares with our children today.  but if i were to re-create this cross-stitch, i don't think i'd choose fishermen to accompany the verse.  don't get me wrong; liam and chris have spent many an hour standing on the edge of the sound at the beach house, poles in hand, patiently waiting.  but i have a different image in mind.  MY re-creation would not have an image of fishing.  it would have an image of star wars.

oh, and one other change.  the father could stay the same, but instead of a boy, this father would be standing next to a girl.

yes, star wars mania has entered the mann household.  i knew it was only a matter of time; liam began receiving star wars-related birthday invitations within the last year, and as i peruse the aisles at target in search of gifts for his friends, i'm always amazed at how popular this movie series still is.  there are star wars lunch boxes, star wars t-shirts, and star wars legoes.  it's such a pervasive part of the preschool culture that the most popular halloween costume this past fall was luke skywalker.  or mr. spock.  one of those.

(forgive me for the mr. spock reference.  one of my sadistic pleasures in life is intentionally confusing star wars with star trek, just to drive chris crazy.  and ohmygoodness does it drive him crazy!  beam me up, scotty.)

but this is the funny thing: liam couldn't care less about star wars.  it's a wide-known fact that he hates movies, so it will come as no surprise that the first few times chris popped in one of the six DVDs from the star wars box set my brother gave us last christmas, liam immediately left the room in search of something more interesting.  but you know who stayed?  you know who watched the screen in admiration, eyes darting among the characters to choose a favorite?  you know who requested to watch another 10-minute snippet the next day, and the day after that?

yep.  susanna.

it's really quite sweet.  while chris and liam share dozens of interests -- most of them sports, whether playing them, watching them, or discussing them -- susanna and her daddy share this bond of star wars all to themselves.   chris's eyes danced as he began to introduce the characters to her.  (shocker: princess leia is her favorite.  but she's also partial to the ewoks and R2D2.)  he becomes animated as he explains the forces of good and evil as she at least pretends to follow along.  i know that he awaits the day, probably years from now, when she'll be old enough to watch the movies straight-through, sitting side-by-side with him on the couch as he re-lives the first time he saw them at the theater with his own father.

in the meantime, play-acting will have to suffice.  but even that's exciting, for chris ventured up to the attic last weekend to retrieve the star wars figurines he played with when he was a kid.  (they were in a box next to his 10,000+ baseball cards and GI Joes.)  i'm sure he always expected his son to take them over; but he's just as happy that his daughter is infatuated with them instead.  liam and i returned from the library to find chris and susanna crouched over her dollhouse, while obi-wan kenobi dined with dora the explorer over a meal prepared by han solo and barbie. 

i stopped outside her room this afternoon, watching her as she talked in the high-pitched voice she always uses when maneuvering her dolls and figurines around.  polly pocket was having a serious conversation with luke skywalker as she stood at the bottom of the plastic pink slide, apparently unsure that she could climb the steps to reach the top.  i couldn't help but smile as susanna ended their interaction.  "come on, polly," encouraged luke.  "you can do it!" 

and then, after a short pause, i heard the same six words that chris undoubtedly recited countless times himself when he was her age.  in her little singsong voice as she sat on the floor in her girly pink room, she clutched her daddy's 1970s luke skywalker figurine in her dimpled three-year old hands and said ...

"may the force be with you."