When I was still working I used this powerful film as a discussion starter several times. It tends to make folks react emotionally. I'm not an emotional person. I'm a left-brain, pragmatic, analytical robot.
But when I watched the movie a few days ago, sitting all alone on my couch, I experienced a big surprise. Toward the end something strange happened. I began to cry, to sob actually.
A few years ago a friend told me this story. In the year 2000, her daughter, who lived in Santa Monica, California, was helping to get a library started in her children's school. They had no building and no books.
She learned that the house that had been built for a movie there had recently been disassembled and stored. She asked that it be donated for the library and reassembled at the school. This was the house from "Life as a House". Later that year the movie premiered in a little theater in Santa Monica. The proceeds were donated to the library. So that particular house isn't just a metaphor. It will live on forever in the hearts and minds of the children who read the books they discover inside.
This, in its self, is both remarkable and healing.
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Check out my new book "Florida, A Love Story" on Amazon.
