A Surprise to be Sure but a Welcome One

Here is Braeden's guest post.  I am starting to think I should stop blogging and just get my family to write instead.  I am loving this!

Running errands with your parents is a fickle mistress.  Sometimes you are good, and your mom buys you a treat. Sometimes the relentless nature of 45 minutes in a Joann fabric store is enough to set you over the edge, preventing you from deserving your treat.

So, when your father tells you that you are going to run errands together you have mixed feelings. Time with Dad is almost always good. Dad has great stories and opinions and big ideas which are fun to talk about.  When I was five years old the biggest ideas I liked to talk about were STAR WARS ideas.  My dad had begun the sacred process of indoctrinating me with the stories from a galaxy far, far away.  Anyone who knows me, or at least knows the contents of the photos app on my phone, knows that I have a love of STAR WARS that runs deep.  My dad planted that seed and now the fruit is most precious.

But like I said, even time with Dad can be marred by the rigors of a Saturday’s morning worth of errands. So, my feelings were mixed when my dad and I set out one morning.

Our first stop was at a movie theater in South Everett.  I wasn’t sure what we were doing there, but I trotted along.  We went up to the counter and these were waiting for us.  

As you can see the tickets have been enshrined by my wonderful mother in a scrapbook. Generations of my posterity will bless Dad’s name forever for setting my feet on the Star Wars Path.

I had anticipated Attack of the Clones for so long.  I had seen the ads on TV, and my 5-year-old mind was full of ideas about what had to happen in this movie.  I knew that Anakin had to turn to the dark side, but how? When?  Somehow the emperor was going to take over but was that going to be in Episode 2 or Episode 3?  I had decided that Anakin was likely to turn to the dark side in Episode 2 but the Empire would be created in Episode 3.  Such are the workings of the young fanboy’s mind and heart.

Say what you will about Star Wars Episode 2, (most people think that Hayden Christensen’s performance slaughters not just the men, but the women and the children too) but to me life is like a STAR WARS movie; even when it’s bad, it’s good.  Sitting there in that theatre with my dad Attack of the Clones did what every STAR WARS movie is meant to do: take me back a long time ago to a galaxy far, far away.  It captured my imagination, filled me with happiness, and fueled my love for politics and storytelling.  My favorite images from that movie are still carved on my heart:

But more than anything else from that good day, what has stuck with me the most has been the thrill of seeing a STAR WARS movie in a theatre with my Dad.  It is one of my favorite memories, not because of the clones and the lightsabers, but because it was with him.  

There’s a reason my favorite moment in all of STAR WARS is the ending of Return of the Jedi.  It’s because...