growing up my mom fell victim to my brute side at the end of most days. hitting and screaming and slamming doors…i would think, “what was i so mad for“?? but when i watched this movie with her at least once a month i would see myself in ray. and then when my mom became an emotionally unstable alcoholic i became to understand ray on a totally new level. i began to understand my anger too as i watched ray flip molly off or hit and call her names. i see my mom in molly; wild and carefree, though, the other side of her wasn’t always as sweet or earnest as molly. but still, her childlikeness and unwavering persistence (maybe sometimes ignorance as well) to simply enjoy life as it is has always inspired me in some way. like ray, timing and circumstance has made me so emotionally stiff, but there’s a part of my mom (and molly) in me as there is in all of us that longs for that dam to be let free and flowing. to never stop crying and to dance in clacking little heels and to twirl in pretty skirts and be apart of the waves or the wind or something nice and effortless like that. hippie shit. but my rigidness and her carefreeness have always met where something undeniably painful lies. that connection is both what bonds us and makes it so hard for us to be around one another. i suppose it’s where our opposing coping mechanisms come to die and that’s too much for either of us to navigate. this movie is a picture of us in a time that i‘d never wish to go back to, but i do think back on quite often. she’s a wild one, my ma, but she was the first who taught me how to be with the sun.
