Last night I tucked myself in tight under my impossibly fluffy blanket, rested my feet on Steve's lap and prepared to watch Disney's Frozen for the second time. I've been singing the soundtrack for the past three weeks since I first saw it and have become what some people might call obsessed. Now this is not entirely unusual for me. I think I watched The Little Mermaid some 200 times and can still quote every line, but that was when I was 8 and I've grow up since then. Right?
As I was listening to 'Do you want to build a snowman?' In the shower the other day, an unexpected and thoroughly unwelcome lump formed in my throat which stopped me singing and started salty tears streaming down my face and mixing with the shower water. What the hell? As I dried myself off they still hadn't stopped, and though I was not full-on ugly-crying, I was crying and this hadn't happened in a very long time.
Disney tapped into something inside me that has long been festering, rotting and ignored. Pulling it to the surface disguised by two adorable princesses is genius, but so genius that even as I watched all 102 minutes I had no idea it was happening. Disney cracked me open, scrambled my insides and sewed me back together more quickly and stealthily than Cinderella's mice made her ball gown.
We often see relationships between siblings played out in the media. Siblings who love each other a la Ross and Monica from Friends or Mitchell and Claire from Modern Family, siblings who fight (and occasionally shag), Boone and Shannon from Lost and siblings that though dysfunctional in their relationships, really love each other very much, like in Six Feet Under. However, the dynamic between Anna and Elsa was a relationship often unexplored, and especially unexplored by Disney and as it transpires, unexplored by me.
This blog will contain Frozen spoilers, so if you've net seen it, please do and stop reading here.
I have a brother. This often surprises people as I don't talk about him and unless you grew up with me, you won't have met him. My brother and I haven't spoken to in about 15 years. This is not something that bothers me much anymore. It's just how it is. We were never really close. Not like the siblings I knew growing up and not like the siblings I know now. I don't know what it was, but he was very difficult as a child and he grew into a difficult teenager and now I can't help but wonder what he's like as an adult, but I hope he's happy.
When I was little I always wanted to be friends with him. Desperate to play I'd knock on his door and beg him to come outside. It was rare when he did, and if he did we would play for a very short time until he grew weary of me and would then throw the ball really hard at my head to make me cry and I'd run inside. When we got our Commodore 64 (the height of technology in the 80's) I thought maybe this would be the very thing to bring us together, we could play computer games and talk about the characters at dinner, but that never happened. It caused more fighting and unrest within the house and soon he just started to ignore me. He was always in trouble at school and was often grounded or sent to his room. I remember knocking on his door once to see if I could come in to talk or to play UNO. He swung the door open with great force, looked at me with eyes that burned with anger and then promptly punched the door so hard in front of my face that the wood splintered and there remained a hole until we moved from that house many years later. 'That's your face if you don't leave me alone' I remember him saying. So I left him alone.
Now he had no magic powers like Elsa, but maybe in a way he was trying to protect me by isolating me. I'll never know, but I know that watching Anna knock on Elsa's door and ask 'do you wanna build a snowman?' broke my heart as if it was that wooden door those many, many years ago and I've felt shaken ever since.
I feel deeply connected to Anna in a way that is probably unnatural, but I feel like Disney finally made a princess for me, and though I'm 33, I'm nowhere near too old to appreciate it. After Anna and Elsa's parents died I realized as I was watching, that I had stopped breathing. My lungs burned and hot tears stung my eyes. I knew exactly what it was like for Anna to knock on Elsa's door again. The door Elsa never opened, but there was Anna still knocking, always hoping that Elsa would come to the door and be kind, be helpful, be there.
As I watched Frozen again last night, fully aware of this connection, I cried for Anna, for Elsa and for me because I understood exactly how Anna felt and I couldn't help but wonder if when the two princesses are shown on opposite sides of the same door, my brother's room was filled with fear and anger like Elsa's and I just couldn't see it.
I think of my brother every day and I always wonder about him. I've seen him a few times and we've said 'hello'. I gave him my phone number, but he never called. Maybe he'll never come back into my life like Elsa did Anna's, but I know that no matter how much time has passed and no matter how many horrible things have transpired, I'd still turn to ice for him, because like Anna I still love my sibling no matter what. Despite the eternal winter of our relationship, I'm still desperate to build a snowman with him.
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