I drove to the local mall, met nine other women to have lunch at Panera's and take in a movie that's the talk of the town right now. When the email came out last week, suggesting we 'celebrate the end of the school year' with this get-together, I'd heard of the movie, but emailed that I'd never taken in a single show. We don't get HBO. I have issues with HBO, and being a bit expensive isn't one of them. Several other women were in my boat, but we agreed to make it a date. It was suggested we dress up, in keeping with this movie's theme - which I thought was mostly girlfriends, shoes, lunches out, etc. Some of us dressed to the nines, some wore jogging suits and ballcaps and everything in between. We bought our tickets and marched in.

One woman in our group, the oldest at close to age 70, told us right before the previews began that she'd never seen an 'R' rated movie, on purpose. One asked if it got too bad, would any of us be willing to walk out. Several of us said 'yes', we'd be right behind her.

So, in review - the movie started by fitting in the big 'F' word within 30 seconds, to secure the rating. I thought, 'okay, well that happens - moving on.' As I got to know the characters (and a good number of our group had never seen the show) I realized one was a bit enthusiastic about 'doing the tango' with the opposite sex, and the sharing of her escapades was TMI. I think they could have left out a scene or two, gave us an idea where it was going, but left something to the imagination. They obviously disagreed.

Call me naive. I did not know semi-full frontal male nudity was 'R'. I'm pretty sure what we saw used to be 'X'. It came in snippets, and I confess I never saw it lasting long enough to head to the door, but as I looked around our group, there were eyes averted. One pulled her hat down over her eyes. I would have been embarrassed to watch it with my kids, or my mother.

Should I have walked out? I don't know. I enjoyed sitting at lunch, looking around at the faces of the women in our group, seeing the bonds that have grown over the years. Two have husbands out of work, one is moving very far away, one has a young son in the Army, one is in an empty marriage, one has cruel parents who continually inflict hurt on her. Women who care about each other, share the ups and downs of their lives, friendship. I enjoyed that. A year from now, when I move away, I will leave that behind. There will certainly be friends where I'm going, but friendships like this take time. So I sat and savored that a bit.

I think the underlying theme of the movie was what I was savoring. In real life, as opposed to on the screen, these women I have called dear friends for more than a decade rarely talk about our intimate lives, and even then it's with a bit of humor or complaint. What could have been a really good movie, about how our lives weave in and out of each other, how we're there to support each other, tell each other the truth when we need it, and listen to us lie to ourselves when that's all we can bear - the movie could have stopped there. I gleaned the good stuff out of the 2 1/2 hours we sat through, but looking back, I think I have to say - skip the movie, go out for coffee with one or nine of your girlfriends and call it good.

Labels: Glimpse of the Heart