On Good Morning America, Angelina Jolie was being interviewed about her new movie, Beowulf. When asked why she took the role of Grendel's mother, Jolie explained that she felt excitement about playing a mother who would do anything, destroy anyone, to avenge her son.
"Interesting," I mused… "I'd always fancied myself 'Mrs. Jumbo,'" the loyal, fiercely protective, but also ethereally nurturing and gentle mother elephant from the movie Dumbo. I have felt this way ever since they took Max away from me and placed him in the NICU. I'm not sure if anyone knows this or not, but he was with me and in the "well baby nursery" for the first 12 hours of his life. It was due to his fluctuating body temperature and glucose level that they took him away. Although there were no "private" rooms available, they immediately "found" one, and put me in it. It was later I would find out that they do this for all NICU moms, so that they don't have to share a room with a mother who is able to keep her baby at bedside, especially the NICU mom's who were breastfeeding. I hardly slept that night, and when I did, it was fitful and uneasy. I was constantly awoken by crying newborns being whisked to their mother's to nurse, and all I could do was reach out my arm in the direction of Max…like Mrs. Jumbo reached out her trunk from the "mad elephant" trailer. During his stay in the NICU, I would come to see him every 2-3 hours to nurse and visit. During one trip, I was running a few minutes behind, and a nurse with NO bedside manner scolded me, "Your baby was screaming for you, so we went ahead and fed him." I'm sure they could hear me raging from Reston Town Center (that's a regional reference…if you aren't from Northern Virginia, just "go with it.") After a meeting with the head of the Neonatal Unit, the lead charge nurse and a patient advocate, everyone was VERY, VERY nice to me from then on out. It was my very first "Mrs. Jumbo" rant, and surely not to be my last.
Those "Mrs. Jumbo" feelings have been stirred up again and revisited recently, and although it makes me sad that I have to be a little extra potective…assertive…BITCHY…whatever you want to call it…it makes me feel centered and whole that I have that it me.
So here is my query…surely Angie Jolie and I are not the only two people who relate to fictional characters when we think of how we "mother." Or are we? So I ask you…who do YOU relate to in popular culture? I sure do wish mine was Beatrix Kiddo aka "The Bride" from the Kill Bill movies. I could TOTALLY rock the yellow jumpsuit AND the samurai sword. But I think we can all agree that deep down inside, I'm just a circus elephant on a rampage.
What say you?
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