A Morsi movie review

I went to see Kit Kittridge, American Girl this week. Actually I went twice. I took my daughter and liked it so much I talked Bill into going with me to see it a couple of nights later. It’s a kids movie, I guess, but there is so much kid still in me that I’m not bothered by silliness. And I felt the storyline had tremendous depth and a lot to think about in our current economic times. But I don’t want to ruin it for anybody who hasn’t seen it. And I don’t really want to talk about that part of it.
What stuck with me in the movie was not how daring and resourceful and bright Kit was. She was, and that was great. She and Ruthie and Stirling represented the young people raised in terrible economic times that would grow up to fight and win a world war. Tom Brokaw called them the Greatest Generation and I would never argue that. I know and remember so many who grew up in that time and I admire them tremendously.
But as I watched the movie, I just couldn’t get over the realization of how young Kit’s parents were.
I guess I hadn’t really thought of that before. Somehow I’d always pictured the adults in that era to be, well...adults, wise and certain and in control. But you know they weren’t. They were no more wise than we’ve been. They were as uncertain as humans always are. And during the depression, so much of the world was out of control.
Kit’s dad went from an up-and-coming business owner to standing in line at the soup kitchen. And Kit’s mom goes from serving the ladies of her club in the garden to being on her hands and knees in it trying to scratch out food for the table.
The grace displayed on screen, probably couldn’t hold a candle to some of the stories our grandparents or great-grandparents could tell.
I remembered a story my dad told me about he and my grandfather. They had been hired to harvest a farm and they were to be paid in sorghum. Dad said it was just the two of them, one man and one boy on a huge farm. They worked for weeks in terrible conditions and awful heat. When they got paid their sorghum, they took it home in triumph only to discover that it was rancid.
My Dad was furious. He told me, "I wanted my father to go back and kill that farmer." But grandpa didn’t. Instead he said, "Son, now we’ll know never to work for him again."
Dad would shake his head when he told that story. Sixty years after it happened, he still was amazed at the decency of a man who could take that kind of injustice and somehow live over it.
It made me wonder about myself. Sure, I’ve had some tough times, some heartbreaks. But those seem small in comparison to what these people faced. I don’t know that I have the fortitude, the grace, the decency that my grandparents had.
And if perhaps I actually do...well I’d just as soon never find out.