“Let’s watch Jurassic Park.”
Eyelids narrow, dark lashes forming a latticework of suspicion around sable irises. “You hate that movie.”
There was no point in denying her response. I do, indeed, despise Jurassic Park. It’s a troubling truth to most, but to none more so than to me. I should love this movie. I would love this movie if it didn’t come covered in a sickening glaze of Spielbergian schmaltz. As much as I loathe remakes, this is one movie I would love to see redone. I ask only for two things: more dinosaur-induced terror and no kids.
Still, I have my reasons.
Shrugging one shoulder, I head to the DVD shelf and slip the disc into the player. The truth was that it had been fewer than two days since we’d returned from Hawaii and I was already feeling a strangling sense of homesickness…for the beauty, for the freedom, for the unadulterated aloha of it all.
Our time off was steadily slipping away, like sand and warm water sifting and shifting around our legs, between our toes as we stood on random beaches, too beautiful to pass, too bountiful to stop at each one.
I needed to put out of my mind that soon enough we would be back to that mind-numbing regimentation of workweek predictability, broken only by two days in which to dream of the paradise that not even Milton could have sufficiently described.
And so I hit play on the DVD and did the only thing I could think of at the moment: lost myself to the world of Jurassic Park, filmed almost entirely on location on the beautiful island of Kaua’i, so breathtaking as we flew above the volcanic spikes and valleys, nothing more than black bands and silver buckles keeping us from shifting forward into the unrelenting rush of wind and soaring, if only for a few moments of unearthly perfection, above its verdant desolation.
We immediately began pointing at portions of the scenery as the Jurassic helicopter swooped into sun-dappled chasms, alighting atop a landing pad in front of falls we viewed a few days prior, smiling from the memory, laughing at the ridiculous joy of recognition.
All too soon, night descended on the cinematic landscape and nothing more was left to see beyond an imperfect plot, replete with forced sentimentality that I found as tasteless and unappealing as my first scoop of pasty purple poi.
Daybreak ascends once more, clever girl, and we catch a few more fleeting glimpses of that beautiful landscape as the Jurassic helicopter sweeps our heroes once again to safety.
Credits scroll, the only light reflecting in her dark gaze, as she queries, “So, did you like it this time?”
Another one-shoulder shrug. “I liked the scenery. I’m still waiting for it to end differently.”
An eye roll, barely visible in the semidarkness. “No matter how many times you watch it, those kids are never going to be eaten by the velociraptors.”
“One can dream,” I sigh, as we flick off the television and begin toward the stairs, to dream again of soaring above cerulean tides and emerald cliffs spearing the azure of heaven.
