Confronting the Dark Lord
Written By Alice Bradley
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In the living room, my husband and son are killing each other. "Zat!" cries Henry. "Zat zat zat! I got you with my lightsaber!" "But I am your faaather..." Scott gasps, clutching his stomach. It's too late. Henry, 5, has gone over to the dark side. There's a lot of killing going on in our house. Most of the carnage occurs on Saturday mornings, although occasionally there's time for a duel or two before school. This can be problematic, since once Henry has his dad's attention, he doesn't want to let go. "But we haven't played at aaaall," Henry will moan, even after they've been whapping at each other for the past hour. It's never enough for Henry — if he could play Star Wars with his dad every minute of the day, he would. He recently told me his idea of the Best Weekend Ever: "Dad and I would play Star Wars," he said, "for two days without stopping. We would go to sleep and wake up and still be playing Star Wars." "That does sound great," I said. I pictured Henry nudging Scott awake with his lightsaber at 6 a.m., his Darth Vader mask affixed to his face. "We meet again," he would intone, while Scott whimpered. Maybe I could go away for the weekend while the boys enjoy their quality time? This might be the Best Weekend Ever for me too. "Then, at the end of the two days, you would come and bring us new toys and ice cream," he added while checking my expression. Was she really going to go for it?
That pretty much sums up Henry's relationship with both of us. I'm good for toy purchasing and food giving, but all he wants from Scott is time. Time to play Power Rangers, or Invading Pirates from Space. But mostly time to play Star Wars.
Scott complains about Henry's Star Wars obsession, which I find hilarious. I had to endure a great deal of George Lucas's creations well before Henry came into being. When I met Scott 12 years ago, he identified himself right away as a die-hard fan. "It's sort of my thing," he said, if not on the first date, then shortly thereafter. "I'm very into it." He warned me, and I dated him anyway. I simply didn't consider what "very into" meant. I thought it meant that if someone mentioned Star Wars, he'd reply, "Ah, yes, know it well." Perhaps a wistful look would come over him. Maybe he had a few Star Wars–related books. As an aspiring filmmaker, he doubtless admired George Lucas, and I could respect that. But I assumed it ended there. You will note the ominous foreshadowing. Then I learned. There were the 20-year-old home movies: Scott and his best friend reenacting the deadly standoff between Han Solo and Greedo, Scott leaping and tripping around his backyard, a lightsaber hand-etched into the film. It didn't end there. I learned that Scott turned Star Wars on "as background noise" whenever he worked, or cleaned, or ate, or sat. That he read Star Wars fan sites every morning and evening. That if he happened to be flipping through the channels and Star Wars was on, he had to watch it. That he was currently building a few models of Star Wars ships. And he worked on them while watching, yes, Star Wars.
It's not that I loathed Star Wars, at least not at first, but I had never been all that enthusiastic about it. I wanted to be Princess Leia just as much as any typical girl in the 1970s. But I moved on. I wanted to be Wonder Woman. Then Mary Tyler Moore. I developed an obsession with Garfield. The usual stuff. That I grew out of. And yet, despite Star Wars, we continued to date. We moved in together. I didn't move out, even when George Lucas decided to reissue the Star Wars trilogy with updated effects because he hates me, and then — what the hell! — create a NEW trilogy because he really hates me. I watched a lot of Star Wars in those years. All for Scott. But I still loved him, damn it, and we forged ahead with our own trilogy: First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes Henry in the Baby Carriage.
Next: Henry Skywalker is born
From The Force Is With Us. Always. Copyright © 2008 by Alice Bradley, essay from Things I Learned About My Father in Therapy edited by Heather B. Armstrong. Copyright © 2008 by Heather B. Armstrong. Published by arrangement with Citadel Press/Kensington Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. www.kensingtonbooks.com
Henry was born in October 2002. "I can't wait until the first time he watches Star Wars," Scott said to me during one of our first days at home. He was looking down at our 7-pound lump of innocence whose mind was unblemished by Lucasian mythology. "Can you believe he doesn't know about Star Wars yet? It's going to be amazing."
"I know, and can you imagine how great it will be if you wait until he's the same age you were when it came out? Then it would be like this special rite of passage for him. You were, what, 6? We should definitely wait until then. Man! That's going to be something!" I said, trying to muster up a little enthusiasm.
Scott saw right through me. "Six years? You think I'm going to wait six years? If he could hold his head up, I'd show it to him right now."
"The years will fly by. I bet you won't even notice how long it's been." "I'd be surprised if I can wait two years." "Scott. A 2-year-old can't watch Star Wars. It's not age appropriate." I had just learned about things being age appropriate and I liked to pull it out, to show that I knew something about child rearing. "Three years, then. I can fast-forward through the violent parts, you know. It's not like he'd notice."
I made a lot of noise about not liking Star Wars, but the truth is, I love my husband, and my husband loves Star Wars, and I like it when he's happy. If Henry fell as hard for Star Wars as Scott did, I thought, it would make Scott happier than if his son were doing quadratic equations in pre-K. I actually worried that Henry might grow up to be a boy on whom Star Wars didn't make any particular impression. Maybe he'd prefer playing cowboy, or dental hygienist. Perhaps he would suffer from a delicate constitution, and space scenes would make him vertiginous. Maybe he'd enjoy lacrosse. What would Scott do with a son like that? I soon discovered that I had nothing to worry about. One December morning, two years into Henry's life, Scott sat our son on the couch and played a few minutes of Star Wars for him. Until that point, Henry was your typical truck-loving toddler. He would look at books about space, but was far more interested in, say, articulated crash rescue vehicles. Just a few minutes of Star Wars would change all that.
As was our weekend custom, I was sleeping while Scott took the morning shift. I wasn't there for Henry's transformation to Rabid Star Wars Fan. I'm not sure what annoyed me more — that Scott was showing him a movie we had agreed to wait on, or that I didn't get to see his face at the moment of discovery. No matter: This was his dad's thing, and his dad got to be there for it. When I walked into the room, they were huddled together on the couch. "Don't get mad, I'm just showing him Yoda," Scott told me. There was Yoda hobbling about, messing with syntax, doing what Yoda does. The scene ended, and Scott turned off the television. Henry was pointing at the set, as if Yoda had been permanently imprinted on the blank screen. "What was THAT?" he said. His favorite Tonka truck fell off his lap. He didn't notice. Scott said, "I think he liked it!"
Henry couldn't stop talking about Yoda all morning, then all day, then all week. Scott does an excellent Yoda, and I do not. Henry wanted to hear Yoda. Often. Thus was Scott called upon, often while at work, to utter such grand statements as "My best pal, you are," and "Eat your green beans, you will." It was my job, according to my son, to conjure up tales of him and Yoda sharing adventures. I tried to transform Yoda into an upstanding model of toy sharing and peaceful snack negotiations. Henry cut me off. He was not interested in my useless morality tales. Only his father understood what he needed: more Star Wars.
Next: More Yoda, Please
Then, one fateful day a couple of weeks later, Scott headed down to the basement and brought up his beloved Star Wars lunch box. It was dented and broken, the hinges no longer functioning, wrapped in masking tape to keep the parts together.
A label was taped across the top: FIGURES. Henry danced around Scott as he pried the box open. The top popped off, and there was every known character from the Star Wars universe. Princess Leia. Luke Skywalker. Darth Vader. Han Solo. Han Solo in Hoth battle gear. Boba Fett. Death Star Engineer #6. And ships too: X-wings and A-wings and B-wings; every variety of wing was crammed into that tin lunch box.
"Maybe we could give him just a few of these?" I said, but Henry was already elbow-deep in the lunch box, hyperventilating. "What do you think, buddy?" Scott said, but Henry could barely hear him.
I fought the intrusion of all this Star Wars paraphernalia for a while — couldn't we have waited? Wasn't he too young for it? Didn't most toddlers still watch Bob the Builder? But then, it didn't matter if we never bought a single Star Wars toy; Henry's Fisher-Price gas station morphed into the Death Star and his tea set became the Millennium Falcon. Scott went to work, and I was left alone with Henry's incessant questions regarding ancillary Star Wars characters I had never heard of. Right from the beginning I assumed the role of ignoramus. No way was I going to get roped into this. "I have no idea who Bib Fortuna or Bell Biv DeVoe or whoever is," I said. "Let's call your father."
And so it has gone for the past three years since Henry's introduction to the world of stormtroopers and rebel alliances. Sure, he's since enjoyed the company of other men: Superman, Yellow Power Ranger, the Decepticons. But he'll always be a Star Wars fan because that's his connection to his father. And there is no end to the universe of Star Wars entertainment matter. When they run out of films to watch, there are books; when they read the books to tatters, there are fan sites, animations, short videos. Almost every morning they find something to watch online. It doesn't matter to Henry how bad it is, as long as lightsabers are featured and he can sit on his dad's lap while he watches.
These days, according to Henry, only Scott can play Star Wars right, and I consider this to be an excellent development. This is payback for my years of conjugal loyalty despite my now searing hatred of George Lucas and all he has wrought. I have been known to exaggerate my cluelessness in order to encourage this line of thinking in Henry. I was told long ago that I didn't play Star Wars correctly because I talked about feelings, so now I'm sure to mention some character's emotion the moment my butt hits the carpet. "Let's play Darth Vader Is Sad Because No One Likes Him!" I suggest, and am abruptly exiled from the playroom, forced to read a book by myself or enjoy a hot bath while Scott gets to rebuild the Death Star.
Despite how much Henry clearly worships him, Scott feels guilty much of the time. Guilty that he has to work late, guilty that he's not doing enough for Henry or that what he is doing, he's not doing right. He can't give Henry all the time he demands, and as he nears 6, Henry's needs are increasing by the day. No human being can give Henry what he really wants, which is for time to stop so that he and his dad can lose themselves in an alternate universe, one where their lightsabers really work and their best friend is a Wookiee.
Scott can't always be here, but when he is, he's up for anything his son proposes, time (and space/time continuum) permitting. And Henry knows it. When Scott's at work, I watch Henry plotting new adventures for them to play. Because Scott is a film editor, Henry understands that his father "makes movies," so now Henry plans the movies he'll make. At bedtime he tells Scott all about his newest idea. "It's called Return of the Empire, Strike Three: Galaxy of the Jedi." (We hope that Lucas doesn't sue him for plagiarism.) More than anything, more than being a Jedi, Henry wants to be just like his dad. So he must be doing something right.
About the Author: Alice Bradley lives with her husband, son, cat, and dog in New Jersey, where she writes the blog Finslippy. She is still trying to wash shellacked cinnamon bun out of her hair.
