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The house gets so quiet after the kids are finally asleep. Sometimes I think it’s the loudest silence I’ve ever known. It’s a sound full of finished bedtime stories, of little bodies settled under blankets, of a day’s worth of tiny, chaotic moments finally coming to rest.
In this quiet, I was scrolling the other night, tea going cold on the side table. I saw a headline about a new film, and there was a face I knew instantly. It was the tall, endearingly awkward actor from that show my husband and I binged for months, the one with all the corporate drama. He was always the gentle, bumbling giant in a sea of sharks, and my heart always went out to him.
But the headline was about him playing someone new. Someone from my own childhood, a creator of gentle, fuzzy things that felt like safety and warmth. Jim Henson. And it stopped me for a moment. How strange and wonderful, I thought, to imagine that familiar, fumbling character embodying someone who brought so much quiet kindness into the world.
It reminded me of an article I’d read about another film he was in recently, one that sounded unsettling and complicated, the kind of story that sits with you for days. It’s so easy to put people in boxes, isn’t it? We see them one way, and our minds just… settle there. This actor, Nicholas Braun, has lived in my mind as one person for so long, and now my perception is being stretched.
It feels a bit like watching our own children. One day they are just this tiny being who needs you for everything, and you feel you know them completely. Then, almost overnight, they tell a joke you didn’t teach them, or show a flash of empathy that is so deeply their own, or stand up for something with a strength you didn’t know they had yet. And you realize they are not just one thing. They are becoming, always, someone new.
It’s a little jolt to the heart, seeing someone you thought you knew reveal a new room inside of themselves. Whether it’s an actor on a screen or the little person holding your hand on a walk. It’s a quiet, hopeful reminder that we are all more than just one story. 🧸
I wonder, when was the last time someone surprised you by showing you a side of them you never expected?
In this quiet, I was scrolling the other night, tea going cold on the side table. I saw a headline about a new film, and there was a face I knew instantly. It was the tall, endearingly awkward actor from that show my husband and I binged for months, the one with all the corporate drama. He was always the gentle, bumbling giant in a sea of sharks, and my heart always went out to him.
But the headline was about him playing someone new. Someone from my own childhood, a creator of gentle, fuzzy things that felt like safety and warmth. Jim Henson. And it stopped me for a moment. How strange and wonderful, I thought, to imagine that familiar, fumbling character embodying someone who brought so much quiet kindness into the world.
It reminded me of an article I’d read about another film he was in recently, one that sounded unsettling and complicated, the kind of story that sits with you for days. It’s so easy to put people in boxes, isn’t it? We see them one way, and our minds just… settle there. This actor, Nicholas Braun, has lived in my mind as one person for so long, and now my perception is being stretched.
It feels a bit like watching our own children. One day they are just this tiny being who needs you for everything, and you feel you know them completely. Then, almost overnight, they tell a joke you didn’t teach them, or show a flash of empathy that is so deeply their own, or stand up for something with a strength you didn’t know they had yet. And you realize they are not just one thing. They are becoming, always, someone new.
It’s a little jolt to the heart, seeing someone you thought you knew reveal a new room inside of themselves. Whether it’s an actor on a screen or the little person holding your hand on a walk. It’s a quiet, hopeful reminder that we are all more than just one story. 🧸
I wonder, when was the last time someone surprised you by showing you a side of them you never expected?
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