Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I saw a sweet movie last night:  "The Meddler" with Susan Sarandon.  She portrays a woman who's husband has died and she moves across the country to be near her daughter.  She's at loose ends, and lonely.  You expect that her meddling in other people's lives will end badly, but it doesn't.  People appreciate her in a way her daughter cannot.  Her one failure is getting her daughter back together with her ex boyfriend.  Those scenes are realistic, and the gratitude shown by a young black guy she helps, a woman in the hospital, a young mother who is still wishing for a big wedding, and others feels just as real.  Her becoming a "grandmother" to the young mother's daughter is right.  There is a need and she fills it.  I did this myself ten years ago, and have never regretted it.  The Sarandon character is funny, and sometimes wrong, and way too intrusive around her daughter, but she is dignified, and given her due for struggling about how to go on after her husband's death.  We seldom see on screen older characters so fully alive and multidimensional.  The film speaks about people and situations and feelings that we don't see on screen among the young and beautiful.  I felt respected after the movie was over.  As if someone had seen the "real" me.