Behind Roxy & Kylo's Summer Blockbuster Day
I don't remember exactly how it worked. I just remember hearing some of my siblings talk about Dad taking them to the movies. E.T. is the movie I remember hearing about. Then, eventually, it was my turn. Mine was King Kong. Mom took us to the movies too, so going to a theater itself wasn't unusual. But something about that particular outing with Dad stayed with me. I couldn't tell you what made it different enough for my brain to hold onto it all these years. I just know that it did. Maybe that's the thing about memories. We don't always get to choose which ones stay.
Then I Became the Grown-Up
Years later, I found myself on the other side of the experience. I was now the grown-up taking two kids I loved to the movies, and it became one of the things we did together. We saw so many that I couldn't possibly give you a complete list now. But certain movies still take me right back to them when they were little. Finding Nemo is one. Mulan is another. I wasn't thinking about traditions or core memories then. We were just going to the movies. Pick one, make an outing of it, spend a couple of hours together, and eventually another movie comes along and you do it again. It seems wonderfully ordinary while you're living it. But childhood has a funny way of attaching itself to ordinary things. Years pass. Kids grow up. And suddenly a movie title isn't just a movie title anymore. It's a little timestamp from a life you shared together. I may not remember every movie or every trip to the theater anymore. I remember being there.
Our Thing Grew Up With Us
Eventually, those little kids weren't little anymore. Life changed, but that didn't mean our experiences together had to stop. When they were older, I invited them to visit and celebrate our birthdays together. I wanted us to experience something none of us had done before, so I took them to an outdoor movie theater. It was still us. Still a movie. But a completely different experience. Looking back, I think that taught me something about traditions I didn't understand when I was younger: traditions don't have to remain frozen in time to remain ours.
People grow. Circumstances change. Sometimes distance becomes part of life. The children we once took places become adults with lives of their own. Maybe carrying something forward isn't about recreating exactly what we used to do. Maybe we carry forward the part that mattered and allow the experience itself to grow with us.
"I Want Mine"
Then this summer, another one of the kids in my life made me see all of this differently. We've grown close over the years, and he loves hearing stories about the things I did with the older kids when they were little. We've seen plenty of movies together ourselves, so going to the theater wasn't anything new. But when Toy Story 5 came out, he wanted that one to be different. He wanted that to be his movie with me. And that got me.
Because I understood that he wasn't really asking for a movie. He wanted something that belonged to us. A memory he could point back to someday and say, "That one was ours." And somewhere in all of this, I started thinking about King Kong again. Dad probably had no idea that decades later I would still remember going to that movie with him. I certainly didn't know, as I began taking kids I loved to the theater years later, that some of those movies might become part of how they remembered their childhood with me. We were all just living. And somehow, the memories were forming anyway.
Why Roxy & Kylo Needed a Summer Blockbuster
Maybe that's one reason creating Roxy and Kylo's adventures keeps making me look backward at my own life. Their Best Summer Ever was never supposed to be twenty versions of the same kind of fun. I wanted them to experience life in different ways—to play, explore, learn, get wet, move, eat something delicious, try unfamiliar things, and sometimes return to something familiar simply because they love doing it together. A trip to the movies may not sound like much of an adventure compared with some of the other things they've done. But maybe that's exactly why it belongs. An experience doesn't have to feel important while you're living it to become important later. You don't know which afternoon, meal, movie, joke, trip or wonderfully ordinary outing another person is going to carry with them.
Creating their Summer Blockbuster Day helped me understand that a little differently. Traditions aren't meaningful simply because we repeat them. Sometimes their real meaning is the sense of belonging they create between the people who share them. Someone once gave me a movie I still remember. Years later, I became the grown-up taking kids I loved to the movies. Those kids grew, and our movie experiences grew with them. Then someone else came along and wanted a movie he could call his. And now Roxy and Kylo have theirs. I never planned that progression. I didn't even recognize it until I looked backward. Maybe that's my favorite part.
Keep Your Thing
Your "movie" may not be a movie at all. Maybe it's ice cream, fishing, fireworks, an annual BBQ, a road trip, pancakes on Sunday, a particular park, or some ridiculous little thing nobody outside your circle would understand. It doesn't have to look important. It doesn't have to cost much. And you don't have to recognize that you're creating a tradition while you're doing it. Just keep making room for the things you love doing together. Because someday someone may say, "Remember when we always used to…?" And if you're especially lucky, someone else may hear those stories and say: "I want one of those memories, too." Make room for them.
What Stayed With Me
Sometimes we don't realize we're carrying something forward until we look back and discover where it may have begun. A small experience someone gave us can become something we give to someone else—and eventually, something another person wants to be part of.
What About You?
Is there something special you do with the people you love that might have started with something someone once did for you?
