Did you cry during The Wild Robot, and why was it the migration scene?
In the midst of planning for our month-long camping trip last summer, I found myself distracted by a scene from the movie The Wild Robot. My husband looked up from his very diligent note-taking of our RV route to find tears streaming down my face as I watched Roz, the robot, reach for her surrogate, Brightbill, who was ready to “leave the nest” with the rest of his flock. My husband looked at me, both concerned and confused. “It’s a story about motherhood,” I said with certainty.
If you have never seen the movie The Wild Robot, I have watched it a couple of times, though, since being wrecked by the one stand-alone scene. It is pretty good. Roz, the robot, finds herself stranded in the wilderness surrounded by animals that are all trying to survive in their biological food chain. Robots are incapable of feeling, and Roz struggles to understand the delicateness of life until she rescues a little egg, Bightbill. Filled with the understanding that Brightbill is smaller than the other birds in his species, she raises him and teaches him to fly so that he may one day rejoin his flock for migration. Somewhere along the way, Roz realizes that caring for Brightbill has made her his surrogate mother and instilled a deep sense of nurturing- something a robot cannot feel. When it is time for Brightbill to migrate with his flock, Roz realizes she is not ready, wanting to be stuck in time where Brightbill depends on her, because Roz knows that under her care, he is safe, while also realizing that it is time for Brightbill to accomplish his first migration without Roz.
I don’t have kids who have left the nest yet. I still tear up thinking about the day they will go to middle school. I do know that I have felt that exact same desire to freeze time. I know that despite losing so much of myself to motherhood because that is what was, and is still, required of me, I would do it forever.
Every time the kids reach a new milestone of independence, I am a mixture of excitement, joy, and grief.
One day, they will not need me to walk them up the stairs because it is too dark. One day, they will not ask for a movie night because they want to go hang out with their friends. I will always hope that I tell them how much I love them, not because of what they have accomplished, but because I had backstage passes to their childhood, and I was there for everything. Every fear, every laugh, every mistake, every learning moment, and I love them fiercely through it all.
