Mary Poppins Revisited

One of the biggest joys of being a new parent is sharing the things you used to love with your own children. For years my wife has been stockpiling the Disney animated classics as they come out of the proverbial "vault," and now we finally get to reap the benefits. It's a real joy to see my little daughter seeing these old movies for the first time, to watch them become new again. Sometimes the fact of it alone gets me a little choked up. "These are your dreams now," we get to say. It's a cool feeling.

It's also a lot of fun to see these "kid's" movies for the first time in years and find out that they're still funny, charming, and amazingly relevant. Sometimes even more than they were back then.

A Jolly Holiday

I had a small epiphany when I watched Mary Poppins for the first time in at least a decade, probably closer to two. But it was a favorite of mine—my mom has vivid memories of a toddler me skipping through a zoo, singing "Let's Go Fly a Kite" at the top of my lungs—and my daughter, not yet two, can sit through the better part of its two-plus-hour length before getting bored, which is an epic amount of interest for her.

But it's surprising the things you miss as a child. The things you can't get because they don't apply to you yet. Mary Poppins isn't really about snapping your fingers to clean your room or jumping through chalk drawings or supercalifragilisticexpialadocious or dancing on the rooftops of London with chimney sweeps; these are all just fun diversions. It isn't about Jane and Michael Banks or Bert. It really isn't even about Mary Poppins.

The Life I Lead

Mary Poppins is about a man named George W. Banks, a man who has everything he wants and no idea what he needs. It's also, to a lesser but still significant extent, about Winifred Banks, a woman who bravely campaigns for suffrage but is too timid to speak her mind in her own household. It's also about spoonfuls of sugar and feeding the birds; you get glimpses of those two truths as a child but you don't understand their real context.

If you haven't seen this movie in a while I suggest you get it back out and watch it again. If you've never seen it you need to add it to your library. Every parent does. Watch it with your children. Let them be delighted by merry-go-round horses that jump their rides and tea parties on the ceiling. But in the end the wind has to change and Mary Poppins has to leave. That's as it should be. Because the truth is that the world would be a better place if the wind never needed to turn east to begin with, and Mary Poppins never needed to fly in on her umbrella at all.

Because Mary Poppins really takes place in a slightly sooty sitting room, where George Banks' world is coming apart and Bert is gathering up his chimney sweep tools. There, quiet, understated—probably the most boring part of the movie for a kid winding down from "Step in Time" and antsy for "Let's Go Fly a Kite"—Bert humbly sings what the entire 139-minute movie is really about.

You are the spoonful of sugar for your children. You are supercalifragilisticexpialadocious. You alone can make a story come to life, make your children laugh so hard they feel like they're floating, and build a kite that will make them a bird. You can make the medicine of life a little sweeter. And you need to do it now, before it's too late.

Don't ever forget that. You're not perfect, practically or otherwise, but do your best. Always spare a few tuppence to feed the birds. I'll try to do the same.