70 Years Ago...

So, this week has been a little crazy. On Friday, I went over to Emma's house for a birthday party/sleepover. I had a lot of fun...eating pizza, going to Blockbuster, eating cake, watching movies, and staying up until 4 in the morning with Emma, Anita and Sylvia.
On Saturday, I watched a little tv until my grandmother came over to sit with my bro and I while my parents went to a Christmas party hosted by one of my dad's friends, our seatmates at the Wake basketball games, the Goodman's. They ended up bringing home some cream puffs and cheesecake for us, and it was delicious.
On Sunday, my dad and I watched some football, even though his fantasy team is officially out of the playoffs. We almost finished the crossword puzzle from the newspaper, and that pretty much sums up our weekend.
Yesterday, my mom went to the dentist, then over to the oral surgeon's to have a wisdom tooth pulled. Now she gets to (sort of) feel how I felt when I got mine removed...except she only had to get one pulled, and she didn't have to be put under, have stitches, etc. but I digress.
Today, we are celebrating her birthday (which btw, is today). My aunt is coming over for dinner, and then giving Mom her gift. They are also exchanging their annual "ornament exchange" ornaments (a family tradition between Mom and her sisters). So tonight promises to be a good evening.

Now, onto my reasoning for the title of this post, my new semi-obsession, Gone With The Wind, which premiered 70 years ago to the day in Atlanta, Georgia (that's 1939 for those of you who don't like math). If you haven't seen the movie, I seriously suggest you do...it's worth the length (3 and 3/4 hours). Warning: spoilers coming up, so skip the next paragraph or two if you want to read the book or see the movie and don't want to know what happens ahead of time.
Basically, it's about a young girl, (well, not really a girl...she's 16 at the beginning of the movie, 28 at the end), Scarlett O'Hara, who lives in Georgia at the start of the Civil War. She is deeply in love with her neighbor, Ashley Wilkes, but Ashley is getting married to his cousin, Melanie (weird, I know...apparently, it's tradition that the Wilkes' marry their cousins). So anyway, Scarlett, being the hard-headed woman that she is, still proclaims to Ashley that she loves him when she speaks with him alone in the library during a barbecue at his family's home. Overhearing this conversation is the rogue blockader from Charleston, Rhett Butler, who, over the course of the story, falls in love with Scarlett, who is still enamored with Ashley. Scarlett marries twice, but she never really loved either of her husbands, only marrying Charles to make Ashley jealous, and Frank for the money to pay the taxes on her family home, Tara. She marries Rhett after Frank's death, and they have a daughter, Bonnie, whom Rhett dotes on constantly. But Scarlett and Rhett's relationship soon becomes rocky when Scarlett suffers a miscarriage after falling down a flight of stairs trying to hit Rhett, and Bonnie dies when she tries to jump a tall fence with her pony. Rhett, tired of Scarlett's never-ending love for Ashley Wilkes, leaves her the night Melanie dies of a miscarriage. Upon asking what would become of her after he left, Rhett's last, and most famous words to Scarlett, are "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
The heartbreaking story details not only the physical struggles Scarlett faces during and after the war (like working in the fields when all the slaves their family owned had been freed), but also the emotional struggles (like the deaths of both of her parents, her first two husbands, and eventually, her daughter, and sister-in-law). Over the course of the story, Scarlett grows, not only physically, but, more importantly, emotionally, and realizes that her love of Ashley was nothing more than infatuation, and that in that infatuation, had pushed away the person she really loved, Rhett. The story ends with her vowing to get Rhett back, and her famous line, "Tomorrow is another day."

Overall, it's a wonderful story. In celebration of the 70th anniversary, TCM (Turner Classic Movies) is showing the movie on tv at 8:00pm tonight, followed by a "Making of a Legend" segment, describing the making of the movie. (I'm DVRing/recording both, even though I'm probably going to be receiving the DVD for Christmas.) And if you like the movie, I would really suggest reading the book. As always, the book goes into much more detail than the movie. Don't be afraid of the length (1,037 pages), since it's such an easy read. But the movie is an easy alternative...I mean , you can't go wrong with Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, and Leslie Howard in the leading roles. A great story of love and loss, Gone With The Wind is truly a classic.