Well, I've been blown away yet again. Fifteen years ago I reluctantly dragged myself to the theater with my mom to watch a movie I was sure would be long and boring, after all I already knew what happened to the Titanic; it sank. Boy was I wrong. Titanic, the movie, was absolutely amazing. The character of Jack Dawson was so awe inspiring the way he loved life and always seemed to be happy no matter what. Rose was like any other seventeen year old, scared of her future and rebelling against everything she was. Her mother and Cal played perfect villains and Mr. Andrews and Molly Brown were the perfect substitute parents for both Rose and Jack. Despite knowing everything about the Titanic and her fateful voyage, I found myself falling in love with the movie and, like many others, went to the theater more than once.

My love affair with the Titanic goes back to teenage years when my sister and I sought out any information we could find about the ship. Finding the wreckage was akin to finding Atlantis and I remember the day Dr. Robert Ballard found the ship lying at the bottom of the Atlantic in 1985; mystery solved. We stared for hours at the pictures the little submarine brought up; it was like looking at a ghost. Since then, I've watched movies and documentaries, I've been to the gravyard in Halifax where a lot of the victims are buried (believe it or not, there is actually a J. Dawson buried there) and I've visited the travelling artifact show at our Science Center (it was amazing, I saw actual artifacts from the ship and I was given a replica passenger ticket only to find out that, among the six of us that went, the person on my ticket was the only one to drown). I still remember my oldest daughter, who is now eighteen, wearing her Titanic t-shirt, her blond hair blowing in the wind and standing on a railing at the park and yelling "I'm the king of the world!" And I can still see my youngest in my living room when she was about three years old, leaning over the end of the couch and yelling "Jump! Just Jump!" when the movie played the ship sinking. Like me, all my children loved the movie.

So, when I heard they were re-releasing Titanic for the 100th anniversary, I laughed. When they said it would be in 3D, I laughed even harder. Who would want to see that movie again and pay for it? I have seen it over fifty times and my kids have too. But, what the hell, they've never seen it on the big screen and it might be fun. I took them yesterday. I let them skip school and I took them to the big big screen (I think it's called AVX3D). It was like I had never seen the movie before. I sat back in my seat and three and a half hours just flew by. I fell into the story and watched one of my favourite on screen couples fall in love once again (only Scarlett and Rhett rank higher). I felt tears well up in my eyes as the band played that haunting tune and watched as the old couple lay huddled on their bed and the Irish lady told her children a bedtime story. My heart broke when Jack slipped beneath the water and disappeared and I smiled when Rose, young again, reached out to take Jack's hand at the top of the staircase after she died. And when it was over, I looked at my daughters and said "Well, did you like it on the big screen?"

"Mom," they said, "it was friggin' amazing!"