The other day, my teenager and I got into one of nowadays frequent verbal exchanges that end with her effectively telling me to mind my own business, since she is grown up and all that and is capable of going through life without her old man trying to teach her at every opportunity…
With a heavy dose of sentimentality – not at all common for yours truly, believe me, – I thought back to the time when she was a little girl, wholly dependent on her parents and not giving them a single reason for worry. Those happy days have been well commemorated in the movie that I made for Becky’s 10th birthday.
Among the scenes in that movie is one where a 4-year-old Becky tentatively dances to Ottawan’s “Hands Up” in our erstwhile Brooklyn apartment. Despite the fact that this song holds a firm place in the “pantheon” of Western musical acts of my youth, it is now mostly associated in my mind with my daughter’s dancing.
By the way, the popularity of this song in the former USSR is well illustrated by the fact that the best YouTube clip of it is that from a concert in Kremlin, some 20+ years after the song first came out.
That actually reminds me: I need to start working on Kimmy’s 10th-birthday movie. She’s been asking about it for at least 5 years now.