The Help (Again!)

You may recall that months ago, maybe longer, I posted a review of The Help by Kathryn Stockett on this blog and highly recommended it. In case you just crawled out from under a rock (which I hope you would not be reading my blog if that was the case!) they made the book into a movie and it's been out for a few weeks now. The film has been getting great reviews, partially, as I understand, because the screenplay was written by a close friend of the author's so it stays very true to the book (it does). And, because the casting is so excellent (it is).

After jumping through what seemed like a thousand fiery, flaming hoops, my friend Julia and I finally got to go and see The Help on Thursday afternoon. Whew. We'd be trying to get a group of friends together to go and see it and plans kept falling through. Finally, it seemed like it would work for some others to go on Thursday, so Julia and I found a babysitter for our boys, planned how I was going to go and pick her up (she lives half an hour away without a car), have dinner at our house, etc. However, at the last minute one of the other girls backed out and threw our plans into confusion. It was stressful, let me tell you. The friend didn't know all that we had gone through to make this happen, nor is she a mom so she didn't understand how precious this time was for us. BUT, not to worry, we still went and it worked out great. Believe me, we felt very strange and a bit guilty for driving away on a blazing hot Thursday afternoon to go see a movie. But away we went. Julia even had a 50 percent off coupon for popcorn and soda and we ate til our bellies hurt.

I will say too that we would not have jumped through so many flaming hoops had we not been so hopeful about the film. We'd both read the book and couldn't put it down of course (stop reading this post and go read the book if you haven't already!) and were excited to see if the film lived up to our hopes. And it did. It may have even surpassed them. The book and the film walk such a fine line between hope and despair, the painful and the grotesque and both handle deep issues delicately, but well. Both make you think (and cry a little). If you are a mother and watch this film (or read the book for that matter, but it looks different on screen than in your head I think), be ready, your heart will break into about a thousand pieces and you will go home and hug your baby.

Which is exactly what we did. Our boys are both named Liam and are about five months apart so we have a special bond already. We walked in the door and they both came crawling as fast as they could to see us with big smiles on their faces. Just what we hoped to see!

Rob snapped this shot of the little buddies for us as they waited for their mamas to come home. He said he hoped they would still be standing like this when we pulled up, but right before we did he went into the kitchen and they followed. It was still sweet to see them come crawling to us though.

"Hi babies!"