The Hills are Alive

I’ve been raiding my mom’s house for her copy of “The Sound of Music” for weeks, with no luck. Our family has a habit of mistreating DVDs, which means that some are downstairs on top of the basement DVD player, some are in a multi-disc stack in the family room, some are in my room in the wrong cases, some are in the three DVD folders throughout the house, some are in the back of the CD folder under the TV, I think “Grown Ups” might still be in the DVD player in the car. So the idea of hunting for and finding a single disc in our house in next to impossible.

I finally found it yesterday in a white paper sleeve in Chandler’s room, next to the “Adventures in Odyssey” tapes and her old phone with all the buttons. I couldn’t wait to get it back to my house.

I’ve had the urge to watch it since Chandler and I drove back from Minneapolis. Since we had nothing to do but listen to music for twelve hours, we listened to lots of musical soundtracks, since we know the words to nearly all of them. And “The Sound of Music” came on. We were both in a production of it in high school – me as Sister Berte, she as Liesl – so we had fun reminiscing over our version of it, put on over a decade ago. Then “Edelweiss” came on. And when Liesl sings harmony with Captain von Trappe, Chandler sang harmony with me. And I had to look out the window so she wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes.

That trip was melancholy for me. She was coming home for my wedding, the first time the five of us had been in that house together since Christmas and probably the last time all five of us will be in that house again. See, I try to be tough with this whole new phase my family is in, but it actually makes me sad. My family was supposed to be different. We’d all stay close, we’d all be together. And now there’s the story that everybody is sick of hearing about and Chandler’s moved away and she’ll probably never live close to me again and Austin’s going away to college and I’m married with my own house and my own life. And nothing will be the same.

So I watch “The Sound of Music.” I remember playing the wedding march on our ancient stereo and taking turns with Chandler walking down the stairs in this ugly grey dress we got from our grandmother, pretending that it was we who were getting married. I remember watching the movie on Sunday nights before school. I remember watching it at my grandparents’ house and thinking how jealous I was that those von Trappe kids got to hang out with Maria. I remember riding my bike around our neighborhood singing “Do Re Mi” like they did. I remember being part of my high school’s production and feeling like I was part of one big musical family.

I remember the Mother Abbess’s words as I head out to odd jobs to make money while I’m pursuing my dream of being a writer.

I asked my mom for my own copy of the movie for my birthday this year – my movie collection at my house won’t be complete without it. Not so much because it’s a great movie, though it is. But I need that nostalgia. It makes me think of when things were better. It makes me sing for a minute.

And then I don’t feel so bad.