*Sniff*, Rewind, Play...Again

Ron Howard makes the kind of flics that turn on my waterworks. On the Cinderella Man DVD there is a Bonus Feature that shows us some of the scenes that wound up on the proverbial editor's cutting room floor. The one that moved me so as o to mention it on this blog proceeds thusly: the main character Braddock, once a prize winning boxing champion now reduced to fitful day jobs on the dockyards, steps through the front door of his family's apartment where his wife has fallen asleep at the kitchen table, presumably waiting for him. She wakes, he smiles, he turns his pockets inside out and places a handful of coins on the kitchen table as he passes wordlessly into the bedroom. The camera, looking over his shoulder, shows him contemplating the clean sheets on the bed for a second before he lies down on the floor next to the bed face down so as not to dirty the bedding with his coal dust covered work clothes. The wife comes in and says something like, "Honey, we can always wash the sheets." Realizing that her words have fallen on deaf ears--for he has immediately fallen to sleep in his exhaustion--she quietly kneels down and then lies down, sidling up next to him on the floor.

Wow. Beautiful. I am speechless.

God send me a woman who would wait for me to arrive, who would take me into her bed whether pauper or prince, who would comfort me even as fate presses my face to the lowliest ignominy.

And God make me a man strong of heart, strong of will and strong of hand to provide for Her and ours; a man who would count himself lucky for a space on the floor next to her bed.