When the Pixar movie Up came out several years ago, it was on the heels of my mother’s death and my sister cautioned me not to watch it. “It’s too soon,” she said. “It will break your heart.” Up starts with adventurous Ellie and sweet, thoughtful Carl meeting, falling in love, marrying, and living a life of steadfast devotion. Then, Ellie dies. Widowed Carl sets off in his house, held aloft by a massive cloud of helium balloons, to find the spot the adventure-craving Ellie sought as a girl and never got to see, because life came along- Paradise Falls, South America.

Unlike Ellie, my mother did not suffer from wanderlust. “There’s no place like home” was one of her favorite expressions. I think the parallel I wanted to draw was the death-defying connection between Ellie and Carl. But life isn’t Pixar animation, and even though I sometimes regress into my childhood romanticizings, I am a fairly realistic adult. Death forces apart even the strongest human bonds, and those set adrift try to find mooring. I am grateful for my father’s resilience, and for resilience in general.

I will admit to watching the movie and the little-girl idealism burbled to the surface, wistfully trying to make that eternal and exclusive connection between my parents. But then it struck me that my perspective was all wrong. Rather than a child’s view, the Down looking Up, true parallels exist side-by-side. That’s when I saw the Ellie in me, and the Carl in Sam, and then, the possibility of balloon-borne houses and Paradise Falls floated into view, and just beyond that, the truth that we are each other’s best adventure.