Tonight during dinner I pantomimed Faye Dunaway's Joan Crawford from Mommy Dearest for my three kids. I'm still surprised by how much I got into the role. I briefly explained who Joan Crawford was and how there was a book, and then a movie, about her life called Mommy Dearest. I used the word berserk to describe Joan's character losing control after discovering that Christina left some cleanser clinging to the bathroom sink, or was it the bathtub? I got down on my hands and knees and wailed, "Scrub Christina, scrub". My kids were appalled, but laughing pretty hard just the same. No time for a costume change, and I was raging in the kitchen about wire hangers, favoring to beat my pretend hanger against the air instead of one of my kids. All in all, I put on a pretty good show. But it didn't end there. I told the kids that now that I'm thinking about Joan Crawford for the first time in 30 years, maybe I need to see the movie again. I said, "You know guys, I've lost it before. With each of you." I'm grateful that Rowan cut me off so quickly, "Yeah, but not like that."
Maybe I need to invite a bunch of my girlfriends over to my house for a viewing with popcorn and wine. Who knows, we might empathize more now that we have kids of our own.
