Dear Evan:

I want to try and explain why I get misty during the opening minutes of “Star Wars.” And during the end, and at times in the middle.

“Star Wars” tells the story of a poor boy in a hot climate who gets to go on grand adventures and finds out he’s not just something more but something noble: a Jedi knight, an avatar of goodness. I’ve never gotten to the last bit, but when I was a poor boy in a hot climate, it felt like I could. The movie resonated with me, back when it first came out. Sure, we kids turned sticks into lightsabers and eventually saved up enough to toy around with the movie’s action figures, but to me it was something more. A promise, I think. An unfulfilled promise, it turns out, and maybe that’s why I get misty.

I’m writing all of this because this past Saturday you and I had Daddy-Evan day, our first attempt to watch the three good “Star Wars” movies back-to-back-t0-back. I brought out a foot-tall talking Darth Vader doll, dug it out from a bin in the garage, which you obligingly clutched just long enough for me to take a picture.

After that, you slept while I relived a movie I’ve watched… well, so many times I stopped counting. I laughed; I raised my eyebrows at the unnecessary additional CGI (the “special editions” are all I own on DVD); I made sure you knew Greedo shot first; I cheered Han’s return during the Death Star run. When Luke turned off his targeting computer at the end and John Williams’ score moved into a beautifully dreamy serenity, my chest tightened and my eyes stung. As always.

I do remember the first time I saw “The Empire Strikes Back.” Your grandfather took me and your Uncle Benjie for my birthday, the summer of 1980. He surprised me on the way with a toy playset based on Dagobah, the planet where Yoda hides. We still didn’t have much money, so that was a huge thrill for me.

You paid a little more attention to “Empire,” which is funny because emotionally I don’t connect with it like I do the first film. Oh, I like it an awful lot, and consider it to be superior in a lot of ways, but on an intellectual level. I don’t get misty. I don’t get choked up.

I also  remember the first time I saw the third movie, “Return of the Jedi.” That one came out in 1983, but I was late to see it. I wish I knew why. My family didn’t go out to movies a lot — didn’t go out a lot, period — but your grandfather and grandmother knew how important “Star Wars” was to us. I did eventually see it, and in the theater, but don’t remember it having much impact. I was eager to watch it again, to see how, with you curled peacefully unconscious into the crook of my left arm, the movie hit me.  We didn’t have time that day, though.

I wonder what will be your touchstone, what books or movies or television or — hell — holographic virtutainment will resonate with you from these early years until decades later. Will you write letters (or — hell — record holographic virtucommunications) to your own son about “Star Wars”? Will a piece of my childhood become a part of who you are? I hope so. I hope that teariness I feel, that longing for a goodness in the soul that supposedly personified the Jedi, will get you a little weepy when you’re cradling your own child in your arms.

Love,

Daddy

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