The Little Princess

Mami took Javi and myself to watch The Little Prince last night.

If there are any words I could use to describe that movie, they would be "simply magical."

Hands down, it's probably one of my favorite movies of all time now. Heck, even the trailer had me in tears.

Meanwhile, Mami and Javier thought it was "okay."

I'm sorry, friends, but "okay" is just not acceptable. It is nowhere near the appropriate opinion to have about this movie because it's so goddamn special to me now that it can't be considered anything less than divine. Besides, I could relate to the Little Prince on so many levels. hehe I guess that makes me The Little Princess :)

I cried a total of three times. Call me a sap, or a romantic, or a hopeless empathizer for humanity, but nothing will ever take away my ability to feel the world on such an emotional level.

Fuck it, I don't even know if I'm making any sense right now but the fact of the matter is my heart is fragile. Very much so. And I am a complete sucker when it comes to poetic romanticism and childhood memories and innocence and special bonds with people you never would have met otherwise. This movie is full of all of those things and so I couldn't help but sob with a heavy heart, and not even just at the sad parts; I would find myself crying because the feelings were just all so human.

And so that is why I was royally pissed off at my mother and my ten-year-old brother, who apart from having much-too-literal minds, just couldn't appreciate the writing or the artwork or the music of any of it on the same level as I did.

My father, on the other hand, is a lot more like me. He's a romantic and feels for the world the same way I do. He understands metaphors and symbolism and can appreciate beautiful artwork when he sees it. Besides, a large plot point of the movie is about an old man teaching a little girl how to be magical and find her inner value again, and that's kinda what my dad has done for me throughout my entire life.

Yes, history says my parents named me after Maya Angelou. Either coincidentally or on purpose, I will never know, but the name Maya means magic, or illusion. And my dad has spent my whole life telling me I just don't quite belong on this planet, that I am most definitely some magical creature far above our own species and have to tolerate lowlifes like him on a daily basis.

Now, I'm not saying any of this to sound like I'm diving in over my head here or anything. I'm just telling you the story how it is.

So my dad raised me believing I was magical.

When we lived in New York, he'd take me to the park across the street from our house in the evening, just as it was about to get dark. Right around the time all the fireflies would come out. He'd spend hours teaching me how to catch them. It took a while seeing as my hands were a bit too small to trap any. We'd never keep them though. We never brought out a jar or anything, like some people do.

When I'd get frustrated at my lack of success, Papi would catch about five in one hand and let me peek inside the hole between his finger and his thumb. I'd watch those fireflies light up and disappear, time and time again. And then we'd let them go. I'd be giggling the whole time until my mom would call us back inside. My dad said he sometimes mistook me for a firefly as I ran around that park at night, giggling until I couldn't breathe anymore.

When I was even younger, my mom was the one who worked all the time. My dad was a stay-at-home dad. And I was a bit of an attention whore, I will admit, even at the ripe age of 3. I demanded my dad's full attention at all times. He tells me now that it was exhausting but that it was totally worth it.

Since my dad was the only one at home, he was the one to take me to my swimming lessons, and ballet classes, and host my play dates, and pack my lunches, and pick me up from school. He was also in charge of doing my hair every morning. Now, my dad's hairdressing skills are limited to lopsided pigtails and one high ponytail. I preferred pigtails.

I will admit, he did get better at them over time, but I never really cared for all the sympathetic glances other mothers gave me. At 5 years old, I could care less that my pigtails were lopsided or that my dad had to carry my fluorescent pink ballet bag to class for me everyday. He was my Papi, and as far as I was concerned, he did all those things cuz he loved me very much.

My dad always tells me those pigtails I wore used to look like antennae, causing me to very much resemble a little bug of some kind. He swore that I flew like one, too. He's testified to my feet never touching the ground, saying I only flitted and fluttered when I walked. He said I was just magic like that.

My dad would also sing to me at night, after he'd finished reading about twenty bedtime stories, of course. To this day, I still remember me begging for him to keep singing Christopher Robin or Dona Nobis Pacem. And even after he'd left the room, I'd keep singing them to myself, trying to pretend like he was still there.

Now that I'm grown, of course I challenge and pester and give him a hard time. But I'm fifteen years old. I'm meant to do that. Besides, I won't act like it's not fun.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm all high and mighty though, either. After all, I am only fifteen. But I have grown up. Quite a bit, actually. And my dad knows that too.

But no matter how much I sass him back or challenge his own sarcasm or argue that I'm right, he still sees the little girl with antennae, fluttering about here and there, carrying a stuffed bunny in her hand at all times.

The other day, he came into my room to wake me up only to find me tangled in between my sheets, clutching that same stuffed bunny to my chest. I'm grown up but I'm still little. I'm still a kid that loves splashing in puddles and hates papercuts and won't eat her vegetables when she doesn't feel like it and giggles everywhere, no matter the setting.

And he knows that.

And he claims that's my best magic trick of all: choosing to stay innocent despite being surrounded by a world of darkness and chaos.

Now, he's not calling me ignorant or naive. What he means is that I still choose to see the good in people and I genuinely assume the best of every situation until proven otherwise, and yeah, maybe that makes me naive sometimes, but I'd much rather live a hopeful life than a hopeless one.

Papi taught me how to be magic and live and feel and just plain old be.

He taught me to love the unloved and to embrace the flawed and to accept myself as I am, imperfections and all. And if that's not considered some sort of magic, I don't know what is.

Wow guys. This started off as a movie review but then ended up just being a major shout out to my dad. Whoops.

#sorrynotsorry

Anyway, kid movie or not, I highly recommend you guys watch The Little Prince. I had to read the book when I was ten years old and granted, I didn't understand a lick of it then, but five years can do a lot to a person, and watching the movie—as slightly different as it was to the book—made me appreciate the story so much more. Please please please go watch it.

Hasta la próxima,

Much love xoxo

Maya

P.S: I have the best dad in the entire world and just because now that I'm older and realize he can also make mistakes doesn't make him any less of a hero to me.