Hillside Lights

The Happy Girl My Wife is Hanging out With

I didn’t need any additional reminders, the quiet solitude of a normally very energetic house was enough, but as I passed by a window last night I saw our entire backyard hill lightly illuminated. My Favorite Panamanian, the energy part of the equation alluded to above, continues her role as abuela day care for the BRS up in New Hampshire. Before she left she conducted a well-executed raid on one of her favored shopping spots – the Christmas Tree Shoppe. Part of her plunder (the only part not associated with one of her granddaughters) was a large number of solar powered LED lights for the garden.

That Hillside Last Night

She spent time over the weekend assembling and then liberally distributing them throughout her vast garden empire. I hadn’t really noticed on Sunday night because I assume they weren’t fully charged since they spent only part of the day outside. That’s what made last night so cool. I walked by a window with a view of the back yard hill garden terraces and stopped in my tracks when I saw the entire hillside sprinkled with her lights. It was strangely compelling and had the corollary effect of making me miss her even more. I am so married.

There is one advantage to her current posting. I get to see the BRS several times during the day when my wife and I video chat. I honestly cannot conceive of surviving without seeing either of my granddaughters regularly, at least on video. I don’t know how my parents’ generation survived without this. I understand more eloquently now what my three decade absence from New England meant to my mother and the rest of my family.

My wife’s absence and the aforementioned solitary house meant I was back at the cinema last night where I took in Adrift. For those of you who wondered if the Hunger Games Finnick O’Dair and Tris from Allegiant would have made a cute couple the answer is a resounding yes. These two genetically blessed actors portray a real world couple that set out on an ill-fated voyage (hence the movie) to ferry a luxury yacht from Tahiti to San Diego before running into one of those pesky mid-ocean killer hurricanes. Shailene Woodley towers over the film and completely owns the role as the woman who tends to her badly injured fiancé while navigating the crippled yacht to Hawaii over 41 days. The director does a fantastic job of portraying the vast emptiness of the open ocean and the mundane yet critical tasks required for survival in the situation. My only issue was the film structure. The film constantly jumps back and forth between the aftermath of the storm and scenes from when the couple first meets back in Tahiti. Just as the tension peaks with Woodley confronting yet another survival challenge the viewer is jerked back to an idyllic hand holding walk through a Tahitian paradise. It was jarring and made me resent each time we returned to Tahiti (never thought I would say that). In the end that editing choice robbed the movie of some of its power. It’s still worth seeing, just to watch Woodley chew up scenery.