I was 13
when I saw Queen’s Radio Ga Ga video.
We lived in Tucson Arizona and MTV was
new. I didn’t know what the song was about. Google wasn’t around and I didn’t
own the album so had no liner notes to refer to. I liked it though. There was a
sadness to it that my changing body understood.
I’d sit alone and watch your light
My only friend through teenage nights…
The quiet
revolution taking place in my body added it to the soundtrack of those puberty
years riddled with uncooperative feelings I wasn't equipped to handle; foreign
desires I couldn’t place.
Tonight I
heard it again and it echoed in me that same faraway sadness. Another revolution
in my body 34 years later and I knew it belonged on this soundtrack too.
We took the boys to see Bohemian Rhapsody. I promised Shaune several months ago to see it in the theater with him. He grew up loving Queen, fascinated by his Dad’s News of the World record.
I worried
it might be too grown up for Naveen. All the other parents in the line-up
headed to The Grinch with their kids.
Was this good parenting?
Both boys
were spell-bound the entire two hours and thirteen minutes.
Rami Malek was Freddie. He blew us away.
I am moved. I want to do my
best. I want to see my kids not through the lens of my own controlling parenty
self but through the eyes of one who SEES them. One who sees the great potential that lies in each single
human being and finds a way to nurture it and make it come to life. I want to
rejoice because I can love. Even if it is imperfect and jagged. I can love.
You made them laugh, you made them cry
You made us feel like we could fly (radio)
Thank you
Rami. Thank you Freddie. Thank you my sweetheart for insisting we go to see it.
