Tag: superheroes

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Spider-Man: Romecoming

It’s a Marvel after all these years, but I am still an unabashed Spider-Fan. And that’s true whether the man behind the mask is Peter Parker, Miles Morales … or Mattia Villardita.

If you don’t recognize that last name, don’t worry; you haven’t missed the box office smash “Spider-Man: Far From Rome.” Mattia Villardita is a man from northern Italy who visits sick children in hospitals dressed as the superhero webslinger. During the pandemic, that even extended to organizing video calls for pediatric patients, delivering Spidey-pizzas to them, and organizing a kids’ play area in his home town’s hospital.

It’s been a colorful way to help others,  and recently it’s gotten him international recognition. Photos of Spider-Man receiving a thank-you from Pope Francis on June 23 and then giving the Pope a mask of his own rocketed around the internet… to the amazement of Mattia, who didn’t learn of his applause until later, since, as the Irish Times noted, the Spider-Man costume didn’t have room to carry a phone.

“To tell you the truth,” he told the Irish Times, “I expected that this meeting could spark curiosity, but not that it would go all over the world.”

Unlike Mattia, I’m not surprised at all.

If ever there was a superhero for all of us, right here, right now, it’s the webhead.

I latched onto Spidey as a kid, buoyed by comics and games and episodes of “The Electric Company.” It was a neat fit – a young hero with a quick sense of humor and a mind that worked faster than his web-shooters. As I reached my teen years, I even had a bit of a Peter Parker look myself, albeit with blue eyes instead of the traditional brown hidden behind the mask.

But it didn’t take me long to see what really made his heart beat behind those red-and-blue long johns. And what makes him still work today.

Then and now, he’s one of us.

Superman routinely saves the planet. Spidey’s had his moments, but spends most of his time with more local problems (as befits “your neighborhood friendly Spider-Man”).

Batman has the resources of a billionaire to help Gotham, both in and out of costume. Spider-Man sometimes struggles to make the rent.

Wonder Woman fought to become a champion, Spider-Man chose to become one when he saw how badly he’d screwed up.

He goes into battle scared and covers it with jokes. He’s got troubles of his own, but doesn’t let it stop him from helping someone else.

Flawed. Limited. Struggling. And still trying to help.

That’s us. Even if we’re a little less flamboyant in how we cover our mouth and nose.

That’s the family friend who visits because they heard the lawn mower was broken … and then stays to help tame a backyard that had become Wild Kingdom.

It’s the daycare helper who’s in demand to read again and again because “You do the voices!”

It’s the steady hand on the trembling shoulder, offering comfort at a time when there’s nothing else to give.

It’s the realization that we’re all responsible for each other. And that if we each do what we can, however small it might seem, it can make a difference.

Even without a Papal photograph to prove it.

I hope Mr. Villardita keeps up the good work. I hope we all do. We may not be able to climb a wall or swing between skyscrapers, but together, we can spin up a super amount of help.

And True Believers, that’s a world-wide web worth having. 

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This Looks Like a Job For …

Heather came home tired. No, exhausted. No … obliterated, as only a woman who has just spent five hours with two tiny nieces can be.

“You know,” my wife said as she collapsed onto our bed, “it’s not easy being Hoofoo.”

At that moment, I had to agree.

OK, I can hear the question: what’s a Hoofoo? It’s not a city in China. It’s not a secret owl-based style of martial arts. (“I now initiate you into the mysteries of Hoo-fu.”) It’s not even the sound someone makes after a long day moving furniture or chasing children, though that comes closer than some.

Instead, Hoofoo is to Heather what Spider-Man is to Peter Parker – an alternate identity with a curious origin.

It started with one of our nieces. Heather had practically been her second mom since the moment of delivery, and the newcomer spent a lot of time in our house. Even so, none of us were prepared for her first word to be “Heather.”

That was the last time it would come out that clearly for a long time. “Th” is tricky for a very young mouth to say and eventually our niece declared her aunt to be “Hoofoo.” And so she stayed. We wondered if the name would go away when the school years started, but by then, our niece not only had the habit, she had a younger sister who also picked up the call.

Hoofoo, it seems, is here to stay.

By now, it’s more than a nickname. Heather has always been the “cool aunt,” the one who can talk to children on their level without patronizing, come into their games and suggest new ones, and otherwise be the relative whom the kids love to see and whom the parents love to have babysitting. And when she’s around Riley and undergoes the Hoofoo Transformation (batteries not included), she seems to have boundless energy and interest, able to keep up with the wildest absurdities.

It can’t last, of course … but most of the time, it lasts just long enough. Only when the kids are safely out the door does Hoofoo surrender her powers and become simply Heather of the bad back, the Crohn’s disease, and the multiple sclerosis that is demanding rest NOW.

It’s a high cost that requires a lot of recuperation. But Heather knows how much the girls love to see her and how disappointing it is when she’s unable to share time with them. And so, she disappoints them as little as possible.

On some level, Hoofoo makes that possible.

Some of you may be nodding now. I think many of us have a face that we put on when we need it, to keep fears and worry away so that the job can be done.

Sometimes it’s relatively small, like the steps that allowed me as a young and shy kid to also be an actor that could trade pratfalls and cue lines with ease – a transformation as thorough as Billy Batson’s into Captain Marvel, and about as mysterious.

Sometimes it’s much bigger – like the face that let my mom keep life normal for three young kids while she endured treatment for breast cancer (an invader that’s long gone now, thank goodness), offering so much reassurance that we had no idea there was anything to be reassured about.

The phone booth moment doesn’t always work; even Superman can’t be everywhere. But it often works for long enough to meet the situation, because in the eyes of someone, we are a superhero. We’re their superhero.

And we’ll do everything we can to keep from letting them down.

No radioactive spider or magic thunderbolt could ever match up to the kind of power that that can create.

Truly, Hoofoo is in the eye of the beholder.

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Making Faces

At the risk of letting my inner geek out, I think I’ve figured out the real reason Spider-Man wears a mask.

Oh, don’t worry. This isn’t one of those oddball columns that discusses Superman’s immigration status or Batman’s patent protection. You don’t have to know the mighty Marvel footnotes in order to hang around here or care about how Hollywood treats caped crusaders. (Though if that sort of thing does light your fire, I’ll track you down for coffee later, OK?)

No, this has its roots in more familiar territory: in hospitals, in family, in simple conversation. And, as with so many things in this space, it starts with Heather and Missy.

My wife Heather got to spend the night at Good Samaritan hospital recently. Regular readers may remember that we’ve been chasing some medical mysteries worthy of Dr. Watson and not getting much in the way of answers. To move things along, Heather’s doctor suggested it was time for a sleepover, so that all the tests Heather needed could be run at once instead of strung out over weeks.

Logical. Helpful, even. Certainly appreciated.

But it did mean explaining a few things to Missy.

Despite her mental disability, Missy can be pretty sharp. Sharp enough to guess that when one of her guardians goes into the hospital and doesn’t come back right away, something may be wrong. Vanishing without explanation was never an option – not only do we respect her too much for that, but she’s stubborn enough to sit in the bay window for hours waiting for someone to come home if they’re not back on schedule.

So I took her up to the hospital in the afternoon and let her see that Heather was in good spirits. Missy lost her own mom to cancer, so we assured her that this wasn’t like that, that the doctor was just having a look around to see what was going on so Heather could feel better.

Even so, on the drive back, I could see Missy wasn’t entirely buying it. Not judging by the sniffs and red eyes and careful glances out the car window.

“It really is going to be OK, Miss,” I told her. And I believed it. But at the same time, as I tried to keep Missy’s worries at bay, I felt a sudden kinship with the ol’ webslinger.

Spider-Man, like I mentioned, wears a mask. The comics always have plenty of good reasons, starting with the need to protect his family from supervillain retribution. The fact that his real-world boss is a Spidey-hating jerk offers some extra incentive.

But masks hide more than just an identity. They hide feelings, too, especially fear and anxiety. Comic geeks know that one reason for the wallcrawler’s constant string of wisecracks in a fight is that he’s covering for nervousness, so that he can keep being a hero, to the world and himself. A mask makes that all the easier.

And it’s one that I think many of us have put on a time or too ourselves.

A good parent doesn’t lie to their child, or a guardian to their ward. I firmly believe that. But there are times when you stay brave to keep them from worrying, when your own fear and uncertainty have to stay out of sight so that you can help them through a tough situation. There are times when sharing everything you know and feel would just make the situation harder, especially when the real quest isn’t for information – it’s for reassurance.

I’ve been on the other side of this long ago, when Mom had to deal with breast cancer while my sisters and I were in grade school. We knew that Mom saw a lot of doctors and even went to the hospital sometimes. But Mom and Dad never weighed us down with stress we didn’t need. We knew we were loved, we knew we were safe, and we never knew about the anxiety they felt in the small hours of the night until much later.

There’s a funny thing about reassurance, though. If you provide it enough times, you can start to feel it yourself. “Fake it ‘til you make it,” Mom is fond of saying. I can’t argue: not only is Missy doing better, so am I. In talking to her, I was somehow talking to me, too, and making both of us stronger.

Sometimes, over time, the mask can create the hero.

And that’s a marvel more real than any radioactive spider.