A trio of cousins relive a magical movie summer
"I saw Jaws again the other night."
To the others, this was a plain and abrupt confession. But for my cousins and I, it was a ticket to another world.
Instantly, I was transported from a Christmas dinner table in the middle of winter to a downtown sidewalk in the blazing heat, from a trio of parents playing middle-aged catch-up to a gaggle of giddy cousins unable to civilize their 13 year-old countenances.
My cousins and I, now in our early forties, exchanged a secret look, momentarily separating us from the turkey and the meat pie and the everyman philosophizing about the state of the world that is part and parcel of any family gathering.
Trapped within the triangle our eyes traced was the shark, that great, hulking gray-white brute that monopolized that faraway summer, the one we spent on the burning concrete outside the Nelson Theatre, back when movies for the under 14 set cost a dollar, a sum even we found easy to come up with - so easy, in fact, that attending screenings of Jaws became our defining ritual that season; grander, parent-engineered events, like vacations to faraway lands, in-town trips of cultural interest, even the much-anticipated excursion to the fair, became giant distractions, sneaky schemes to unfairly wrenched us from the playground we never wanted to leave, the dark, anticipatory confines of the Nelson, as it pulsed to John Williams' minimalist theme.
How many times did we see it that summer of 1975?
Once a day I seem to remember, but it was probably more like once a week, maybe once every two weeks. If that number strikes me as low, it's because all of the time in between was spent animatedly recounting our favorites moments to each another, or clipping images of the film from newspapers and magazines, or talking it up to our parents (each of whom thought we were nuts, of course), or, like many a group of kids that summer, acting it out in public pools; you couldn't find a facility in North America that season without at least one child cast as a shark, and all of his or her companions as prospective snacks.
A voice (an uncle? Aunt?) hemmed or coughed or started up about something in the news, and the link between my cousins and myself was broken. The summer sun set and it was Christmastime.
As insights of various kinds made their way around the room like cranberry sauce, I began to examine the cousin who had uttered the line, prompting the secret visual handshake of the Jaws brotherhood. She was as beautiful as ever, though decidedly worn; she had just gone through a complicated break-up, and was suffering the burdens of single motherhood. The other member of the brethren, her sister, was now contributing something about recent business problems, while I, internally, was toying with laying my recent career crisis on the table like a steaming bowl of mashed potatoes.
Each of us, it occurred to me, was still living in that fateful summer.
We had each faced the shark, and were just now emerging, as if by the Nelson's side doors, from the darkness into the light.
