oh yeah that.

let the record show that bestie saturday officially resumed on saturday, january 21, just six weeks into navy baby's life. 

oh, the normalcy! it's possible!

we braved the weather event AND sundance film festival madness to chisel away at the oscar nod list... 

we saw the descendants.

the descendants - the movie with really super authentic, native-approved  hawaiian music, george clooney has terrible hair and is costumed in the worst pair of dad-pants i've ever seen, and the only movie in the history of my life that brought me to sniffling, noisy, constant tears.

{the entire theater took in a collective sob, by the way. it wasn't just me.}

i have a really high tolerance for depressing movies, you know.  like, revolutionary road is depressing... a story of a crumbling, spiteful marriage that ends with a death? i mean, i subject myself to that kind of stuff for fun all the time. but the descendants? oy. that movie was so good. so much humor. and a ribbon of pure sadness throughout.

spoiler alert:

the last half hour is spent at the hospital, saying goodbye to george clooney's wife who's been taken off of life support and is dying a slow, deep coma death.  and just like in real life, the gravity of it all is masked by the family for the sake of the 10 year old daughter up until that point.  the scene where they eventually tell her is played out in the hospital room with silent voices, covered by sweet hawaiian tunes, but quivering sad, raw faces tell the story.

and that's when i {we} cried.

jen cried because she's a crier. she also cried because she's a mom, i'm sure.

but i cried because i've been there.

in fact, when she spied my wet tears, i didn't even try to hide it, there were too many of them pouring straight down my cheek.  i fumbled through my stash of napkins in the cup holder to wipe them all away, and all i could say was "i've been there."

except i wasn't 10 years old. i was 15.

that didn't make it any easier. it just made me five years more aware of how desperately i needed my mom to fight her way back to the land of the living*.

and then, in true bennion fashion, this very matter of fact conversation took place on facebook:

and so, today's tender, touching moment is brought to you by facebook.

thanks, mark z.

*if you know me in real life, you've probably heard the story. if you don't, read this, the quick and dirty. maybe i'll tell my version of the story someday. sometimes i forget it ever happened. but, i was talking to my brother, 4 years younger than me, about it a few months ago, and turns out - our stories are different. our memories are different. his is the 10 year old, 3rd of 4 brothers memory, mine is the 15 year old only daughter memory.