Building A New Routine
22 Mar., 2024 - Brooklyn, NY
I want to talk about the 2000 film The Family Man, a movie that has somehow held my family captive every Christmas. The film stars Nicholas Cage as a hot shot Wall Street executive bachelor who wakes up on Christmas Day in a house that isn’t his with a wife and two kids in a life he doesn’t recognize. None of the people in his “former” life in Manhattan a day ago seem to recognize him nor know who he is; he is trapped in this bizarre, alternate reality. As he slowly reorients himself in this new life in the suburbs of New York, he surmises that this is his life if he had never gone to a Barclays internship years before, and instead stayed with his then-college girlfriend, got married, and had kids. He gathers his bearings getting accustomed to this new life, falling into the new routine of being a father to his kids, going to weekly bowling nights with his other suburban dad friends, pretending to be a Mets fan at parties, and relearning all the ways he can love his wife all over again. Over the course of two months, he eventually comes to love this life, feeling fulfilled by the routine of a domestic, familial love that wraps around him. Unfortuantely, he realizes that this life is just a “glimpse” that is the work of an angel he met played by Don Cheadle; though he refuses to fall asleep on his “final night” in this life, he eventually relents and wakes up back on Christmas Day in his old life as a playboy, now a changed man who longs to have his family back. The film ends with him meeting up with his ex-girlfriend, once-wife, asking her for a cup of coffee. Credits roll.
The Family Man is a rather light and romantic take on the classic Christmas Carol/It’s A Wonderful Life holiday movie formula, in which a lonely, despondent man who is capable of heart is guided by a spirit or an angel through the past and an alternate reality to show them their worth and impact on the people and community around them. My family and I first encountered the film together on Christmas Day, when we were browsing the TV after dinner and stumbled on a rerun of The Family Man on ABC, not ten minutes into the film. We watched the film through the end, entranced by this magical story of Nicholas Cage’s journey from stock exchange miser to wholesome, humble suburban dad. The film seemed to scratch this feel-good itch that justified and romanticized our ongoing life in the suburbs of San Francisco, a sentimental reminder and reaffirmation that we were a happy family together under a warm home, and that’s all we needed to live a fulfilling life. My mom in particular raised us with this strong family construal in mind, and I think that’s why this otherwise corny, forgotten movie has remained unforgetten for us through all of these years.
The film became a yearly holiday viewing tradition every Christmas, and I noticed a pattern of myself and my siblings wanting to show the film to each of our significant others at some point in time (I recalled Bre’s takeaway from the film was how much she lamented how the characters gave up their dreams for a family.). My brother, Evan, became particularly fond of the film, always quoting Nicholas Cage’s occasionally exaggerated lines (“I work at Big Ed’s Tires? Why?"), complete with his characteristic drawl and inflections. Years later, I was living in Long Beach and was hosting Evan for several nights as he was revisiting SoCal, seeing me and all of the friends and places he missed since leaving UCLA. On his last night, as I said good night to him and turned off the lights to the living room, he looked over the couch and said, “I’m thinking of Nicholas Cage in Family Man, when he’s not trying to fall asleep.” He reenacts the rolling eyes and heavy eyelids, exactly the way Cage did it in the film. I chuckled and closed the door. It was only two steps into the hallway that I realized what he was saying: Evan didn’t want his stay here to end. I figured out that The Family Man was his love language.
Sometimes I feel like Nicholas Cage in the final act of The Family Man, wantonly reminiscing on a “past” life that seems unreachable now. It’s been just over a year since I moved out of the house we rented in the College Estates suburbs of Long Beach. My phone reminds me of “One Year Ago Today” when I took pictures of every empty room of the house, a hollow maze that carried the echoes of our warm memories. I thought about how Bre and I had a routine, dynamic enough to never feel quite stale or repetitive, but nevertheless a general framework on how we lived our lives. We went to movies on select Thursday nights, saw shows in LA or Orange County when they came through, did our weekly grocery runs at the H Mart on Del Amo, and populated every space within and around that house. I’m not so much as nostalgic or mournful as I was when the move was a bit fresher last year, but I’ll have a moment when a song that came out in 2021 or 2022 comes on, or I revisit an old playlist of mine that I’d obsessively repeat in the car driving along the 405 or 22 in Orange County, and a memory briefly flashes by. Sometimes, it’s hard to even understand and remember that these seemingly mundane memories were parts of my everyday life.
Consequently, I also feel a bit like Nicholas Cage in the first half of The Family Man, a fish out of water learning to figuratively swim again; in this case, it’s me finding a new routine in Brooklyn as a fresh transplant. I believe that an essential part of integrating oneself into the city is rooted in finding that routine, and it seems like I spend most of my days or weeks as of late simply rediscovering the process of routine.
On Mondays, I’m keen on taking it easy at work, even so much as insisting to Bre that we get lunch within a 5-minute walking radius at A-Pou’s Taste, an industrial Taiwanese joint with the most filling $8 lunch bowls run by the cutest old Taiwanese grandmas who could pass off as mine from another timeline. That night, I’m contemplating going out to the Alligator Lounge for another round of trivia night or staying in for the night to avoid the chilly Northeastern wind, and snuggling up with Bre as we have dinner coupled with a TV show cocktail.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I like to go on morning jogs to McCarren Park and maybe pick up a pastry at Fortunato Brothers pasticceria at the corner of Williamsburg’s most Italian block on my way back. During the evening after work, I might go to a jazz gig that coincidentally features someone I either went to high school with in San Carlos or an old friend from my community college big band days. Hearing them play transports me back to the Carlmont Performing Arts Center on a winter or spring night for our Instrumental Music program’s semester-end concert, or to the College of San Mateo practice rooms when the sound of my friend Marc’s guitar would echo across the high ceiling.
On Wednesdays, I’m either out at a movie at Lincoln Square and picking up a late night halal cart dinner at my favorite one in Manhattan, Casbah, or simply staying in because I deserve some rest in a city that never sleeps. When I get back, Bre is coming back from an art exhibition hosted by an old college friend, recalling all of the creative crafts and ultimately inspiring pieces that spur her own creative urges. Back in California, we got used to one or the other going out given we always needed a car to get anywhere, so it’s rather unreal to see us regroup from different events and play a mini show-and-tell with each other. The experience is novel, a terraforming landscape no longer dictated by highways and traffic.
On Fridays, my unofficial weekend extender, I might be making a trip out to Times Square so I can pick up Broadway theater tickets just so I can avoid those pesky online fees (If I’m just a short ride on the L away, why not?). Or I’m fulfilling a lunch reservation for a restaurant that otherwise wouldn’t accept them had this been a weekend, before heading back to Brooklyn to get cocktails at Fresh Kills, where there is no menu, just a waiter asking you your spirit of choice and flavor of your liking.
On weekends, I’m usually making trips to Chinatown to either see my barber (Mr. Yi, who works out of a dingy shop on Pell Street with a floor so messy you’d think they had a carpet made of human hair), drop off some of my watches for a mod or repair at Tony’s (who operates a small cubicle neighboring Frank Ocean’s Homer jewelry booth), or just simply picking up some HK milk tea at Teado. We could also be starting off our days at a diner serving buttery eggs and dirty coffee, then at Central Park, walking by and through the Guggenheim, or sitting on the rocks to wrap up a book.
Sometimes all I really need to feel like I can be a part of this city is finding this routine that’s slowly taking shape and form, a place where I can know everyone’s name or have an idea of where to go to get everything and anything I need on any given day. It’s how I came to call Long Beach a second home, and it’s how I can call anywhere else another home if I try hard enough. And now that Bre and I are on a relatively more equal playing field in a new city, there’s more to explore for the both of us.
Something about The Family Man that continues to resonate with me is how much the film ponders the question of “What if?” and the nature of devotion. Nicholas Cage’s character starts off confidently saying he has everything he could have ever wanted in his life as a hotshot bachelor exec, only to find his alternate domestic timeline to be contrastly more fulfilling than anything Wall Street money could have bought, thematically tied together by his wife, played by Téa Leoni, softly saying the hokey rom-com-esque line, “I choose us.” What if I hadn’t moved to New York with Bre and discovered and experienced the city with her, and stayed out in San Francisco? Would I lose out on the chance to reconnect with old musician friends, forge stronger bonds with our friends already here in the Big Apple, and quickly integrate myself within the clockwork movement circling these boroughs? More than I like to admit, The Family Man is, indeed, a bible to expressing love in my family, and time and time again continues to prove it. I don’t think this could have ever been a question about choosing San Francisco or New York, or the cost-benefit analysis that each city would have to offer for me, and it was foolish me to even compare them. Instead, maybe it was simply a question who and what I chose. Simply put, I chose us, and the fresh routines we’ll forge that come with this new life for us.
