Film binge ushers a reflective mood for the holidays

In November, over Thanksgiving weekend, I watched Tick, Tick Boom.

It is a partly biographical movie about the music composer Jonathan Larson, the man who wrote the iconic musical Rent and who tragically died a day before his landmark production swept Broadway in 1996.

I don't think I can ever forget how the first song unspooled in that musical, even though it was not featured in the movie.

"Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes. Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear. Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure? Measure a year?"

Larson perished from a sudden, fatal aneurysm. He had toiled for nearly a decade and a half to produce his musical.

On a loop, the song played over and over in my mind countless times, even when I was about to fall asleep.

At the time I was watching in my apartment in the China Daily compound, the weather had turned immeasurably colder, a hint of the frigid days that lay ahead.

It seems summer had skipped autumn and went straight to winter.

On Nov 26, the day after Thanksgiving, Stephen Sondheim, a friend and mentor to Larson, died.

The song by Sondheim entitled Send in the Clowns is melancholic and sad, making it especially plaintive for those who make a living putting words together.

This is my third Thanksgiving and Christmas in Beijing.

There is a certain loneliness when you spend holidays away from home.

The dry leaves, scattered and blowing in the wind around the sidewalks of China Daily, remind me of home in New Jersey when one season gives way to another.

Piles of leaves are everywhere when I drive around the back roads of the townships of Edison, Woodbridge, Scotch Plains and Rahway.

I think of family and friends near and far, and why I cannot see them during this ongoing pandemic.

My father comes to mind. He just turned 90 and is in failing health. If something happens to him, I cannot just jump on a plane and fly down to Manila given the havoc the virus is causing.

My dad is hard of hearing and does not want to use a hearing aid because it irritates his ears. My brother says he has a robust appetite though, which is a good sign.

But an argument breaks out when he tries to get out of the house because his poor memory means he may not be able to find his way back home.

Another person dearly missed is my daughter, who lives in the "City of Brotherly Love", Philadelphia, which with a tone of some asperity, is an oxymoron. I mean this is the same city which booed Santa Claus.

She is now an adult, but it is hard for me, her father, to think and look at her as anything but my little girl, the one with whom I watched the first Harry Potter film, and the last－some 10 years later.

Like most parents, I worry endlessly about her, especially when she asks me with some plaintiveness about when we can see each other again.

The songs I hear and movies I see on the television in Beijing help keep me hopeful and, for lack of a better word, happy.

The movies may be sad and so are the songs. They can make you cry, but on a cold, fall night in Beijing, they can also keep you warm with good memories. That is enough, for now.