Movies and Volcanoes

The other night, Sam announced out of nowhere that, "love is like lava." We could not get him to elaborate, and I do not know if he meant that love is metaphorically like lava or if love and lava are similar words. Regardless, I am thinking it is a profound statement for a four year old. He is either right on with his phonetic skills or he is a big thinker/Pele worshipper.
I believe his metaphor is apt. Love, especially the love for a child is like lava. Explosive and ferocious. Slow and mushy. White hot. The foundation on which he will build everything else for his entire life. Unpredictable. All over the place. The Hawaiians have like 20 words for lava--all the different textures, viscosities, temperaments are differently labeled. The more intimately you live with something, the more specifically you identify it.
But anyway, back to love. M picked movies for this weekend. Let me preface the rest of the story by saying I know NOTHING about movies. I do not like trailers, movie theaters, movie theater popcorn, previews, art films, horror, or drama. I do not read about movies, I do not want to know about them. I haven't seen the "100 Movies You Must See." I am the customer Netflix loves--I keep movies for weeks because M thinks we "should see" something and then it arrives and I put it off and put it off until finally he watches it alone or sends it back unviewed. I really hate movies that are about wrongful imprisonment, movies with dramatic irony, or movies in which bad things happen to children. I find them too emotionally draining to watch.
So, knowing that about me, let me say that M picked Slumdog Millionaire to watch. I knew nothing about it except that the red carpet fashions for the cast were exciting at the Oscars. (I watch the red carpet stuff--I love celebrity fashion failures.) He said it would be "light" and "fun." It was chock full of bad things happening to children, wrongful imprisonment and dramatic irony. I cried and cried. And then I went upstairs and crawled into my kids' beds and loved on them as they slept and cried some more.
THEN we went to see Disney's Earth. Humans suck. Global warming sucks. Climate change sucks. Dying polar bears SUCK. I cried and cried and hugged my kids and cried some more.
Needless to say, next week we are going to watch Harold and Kumar and maybe Roman Holiday. Enough with this gritty realism.
But back to lava. Those movies drew up in me that primitive love that I have for my kids. That ferocious protect-them-from-all-pain-and-suffering, that desire to make the world safe for them. It draws up the slow moments of tenderness that will not last much longer as they age. The evils of the world are dwarfed when I realize how fiercely I would fight them to protect my babies. All those words we have for the love of our children--tenderness, adoration, spoiling, affection, cherishing, devotion--I thought of them all as they slept in their giant beds enveloped in the childhood scent of sleep. The more intimately we live with some one, the more intensely we feel for them, the more specific our language is to describe them.
Love IS lava.