i’m enjoying a bit of a colin firth fixation at the moment. pride and prejudice (and i am not talking the recent keira knightly effort, i am talking 1995 colin firth mr darcy plunging into the pond) is airing on television at the moment, and i caught maybe ten minutes of it.

from there, it got me watching CIRCLE OF FRIENDS, an early colin effort, and it was so impressive to see him act without talking that a quick re-read of bridget jones diary was in order. that book was so groundbreaking. whether it deserves the credit or not, it kickstarted chicklit and the appealing habit of removing the word "i" from descriptive writing. nothing like being frugal.

and then there was a movie, and my goodness, of course colin firth was mark darcy. over the past few days when i have been flypapered to home i have watched the colin firth scenes of BJD twice. great expressions. shoulders as nice as magnificent’s and that is saying something. i lurrve toward the end, when he is all amorous, the hauteur replaced by this smouldering anticipation. mc watches that bit with me, because he knows he’ll always get a smooch or two and a cuddle out of it.

tonight i couldn’t write any of the three outstanding stories i have due, sela is ill and needing attention. no fever, but she isn’t sleeping and appears to be achy. magnificent was in at a normal time, and with his bad shoulder muscle, said he just wanted to relax. he had read his daily reading of the purpose driven life, and so could relax. so we opted to watch LOVE ACTUALLY.

i don’t get as much colin, but i might like this movie more than BJD. (but i do get laura linney, alan rickman and his magnificent voice, and emma thompson, another actress who doesn’t need words to act) let’s do a six degrees of kevin bacon, except it’s renee zellweger. the comment renee made to tom cruise in jerry mcguire "you had me from hello", sums up how LOVE ACTUALLY captivates me. i agree with prime minister hugh grant’s comments in the opening scenes of the movie. i’m one of those people who has been lucky enough to have several wonderful airport reunions with family members, old friends, and loves. airports are places of tears. and i have shed many a happy tear in airports.

one of my best memories of my mother is the summer i flew to canada five months pregnant. i arrived in edmonton, and walked down to arrivals. the last bit was going down an escalator. i remember she saw me appear, feet, ankles, knees….i could see her through the mirror, and i watched her face as she saw my bump appear. i walked off the escalator into her arms and she hugged me, but not for long. she knew how hard earned this pregnancy was, how we had lost sebastian’s twin, and she just wanted to look at me and my tummy. "it is so good to see you like this," she said. 

i remember saying goodbye to magnificentcharles the first time after we met. after that first week together i knew we were going to be together for the rest of our lives, but another movie line that makes a lot of sense to me comes from the ending minutes of when harry met sally, when billy crystal blurts out, "and when you figure out the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, you want the rest of your life to begin as soon as possible." i couldn’t concentrate on the wonder that i had met HIM, i could only concentrate on the goodbye. very short sighted and shallow of me, but that was a tough bye bye.

i remember friends coming to see me in vancouver one of the years i passed through there. i remember saying goodbye to sebastian and my mother as i headed to toronto to do another ivf. i remember my divine friend anne taking me to the airport after my last FET failed, saying, "you will come back, right?" and telling her, "you’re here, i will always come back."

that’s the way it is with friends and lovers. seeing them makes you cry as you realise you are in the presence of love, saying goodbye makes you cry, because you are bidding goodbye to a source of laughter, support, pride, love, humour, joy, and depth. and we’ve all lived enough now to know, maybe maybe, you just might not see each other again.

i am so grateful to have had these moments where i have cried. where i have seen my frugal dad emerge arguing with my sister from hong kong customs, where i have said goodbye to my brother, knowing he was being brave and facing what he needed to, where i have seen my father in law’s face crumple as he looked at the face of his newest grandson, who looks exactly like him, where i have been looking around and suddenly seen my little gran, waving and saying…."oooh tessie!".

and i love that until i can have another airport moment (and i think i will have several this summer!) that watching LOVE ACTUALLY will tide me over. or as colin’s fiancee says at the end of the movie, "just in cases".