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Mr. Rogers and the Grandchildren
Yesterday I took my grandchildren to see the Mister Rogers movie, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Having returned to Atlanta from a traveling assignment in NW Alaska only a couple of days before, I was ecstatic that the movie about Mister Rogers was playing and that the children had not seen it. In the recesses of my mind, I remembered Buffy, their mother, remarking last year that she had seen the documentary, “Won’t you be my neighbor?” and she cried, was so touched by the memories it brought to her. The thought of taking them to something that so touched their mother who died last April gave me the “God bumps,” that feeling that I get when I think I am being led by something more powerful than me to go in the direction of that thought. The children’s other grandparents, Buffy’s parents, had taken the children to a movie a couple of weeks ago, and I wondered why they had not taken the children to this one. I was grateful that they had not, clear that this was my assignment.
The children, 5 year old girl and 8 year old boy, told of going to a movie, were delighted. On inquiry, I shared that this was a movie about something that their mother really loved, they balked.
“Is it a cartoon? We don’t like movies that have real people in them. It sounds boring. Can’t we go see something else? I wanna go home.”
