#SOL18 Day 17 The Flower

Friday is often "Family Movie Night" in our house. We have a "smart TV" which includes Amazon right on it. Most of the time, we select a new movie to buy to add to our Amazon library of movies. We are building quite a collection. I always encourage my children to watch one of our purchases again, but they always seem to want a new movie. It's way cheaper and more convenient that actually leaving the house to go to the movie theater, and by Friday, I'm usually fine with spending the money to have some snuggly couch time with my 7 year old and 5 year old. 

 Last night, Alex chose Ferdinand, a movie based on the story of the flower-loving, peaceful bull. Near the beginning of the movie, there is a part where the young Ferdinand is trying to protect a little red flower that he found. The other bulls don't understand his peaceful ways and pick on him. One bull angrily stomps on the red flower, crushing it. Right at that moment, my son's eyes filled with tears and he wept with sadness about the flower. 

 I scrambled to tell him the flower would pop back up again (such a lie) and it would be okay. His reaction surprised me. It was sad to see the flower crushed, but I didn't realize how upsetting it was to him. I think he really felt how much Ferdinand loved the flower and felt outraged/sad that the little flower got crushed. 

 Megan, meanwhile, spent the next portion of the movie worrying that Ferdinand was going to step on flowers at the farm he escaped to which was literally covered in flowers. I told Megan he wouldn't and it was fine, but the worry persisted. I think she didn't want to see her brother upset again, but it was the meanness of crushing that one little, lone flower that saddened Alex- not really the idea that a flower might get stepped on by a flower-loving bull. 

 The movie was very sweet and made me think of the dangers of toxic masculinity- the idea that we all have a role to fulfill and you mustn't step out of your assigned role. Ferdinand was big and strong but didn't want to be a fighter, even though that is what every other bull was brought up to be. There was the theme of being yourself but we often find that in movies with girls as protagonists. I don't recall that many movies that show a boy choosing to do peaceful, artistic things instead of fighting. (If you know some, remind me!)

 There are many moments in a day and even more in a week and so much goes by and out of my mind, but I know I will hold onto the moment that my son felt so much empathy for a little bull who loved a red flower. 

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