Shmaltz
When I was little, my mother and I shared a crush on Robert Redford. Together we mooned over Barefoot in the Park, Gatsby, The Way We Were and anything else that came along with him in it. So smitten, I bought fan magazines and Scott Joplin records, and she bought Streisand. And together we’d hum along.
It was not until one day when I was watching The Sting for umpteenth time that I realised what a terrible actor Redford is. My heart was broken, and so was my crush. I didn’t tell my mother, and later wept dutifully alongside her each time Out of Africa came on. Lousy as he is, there’s no denying the man has presence.
When she came for a visit not long ago, we reminisced about our crush and she swooned, oh my yes, he’s still the business, and, yeah, we sang the damn songs.
On the last day of her trip, after driving her to the station in Avignon I stopped at the supermarket before going home. As I was winding my way through the aisles, thinking of her and all that was said, Mm-hmm, memories… wafted out of Streisand’s nose and the loudspeakers.
And so there I was in the middle of the fruit section, rating cantaloupes and trying to get a grip on myself, clearly losing out to the ambush of misty water-coloured memories… of the way we were.
(And, now, thanks to this, I’ll have that song in my head for another three days. Oh, please, make it stop.)
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