When things go awry on the children’s visit to the bank with their father, Jane and Michael run away. They find Bert—the father-figure they would prefer—who, instead of consoling the children, invites them to look at the situation through a different lens. He suggests that maybe their father is bitter and angry because he is alone. He reminds them that unlike the two of them, their father has no one to turn to or depend on when the going gets tough—a classic predicament that society has repeatedly cemented as a necessary part of manhood.

But in the closing scenes of the movie, we see a man broken, cut loose from his routines and securities and little luxuries. Maybe it was when Bert reminded him that his children will age (it did seem that only another man could reason with him, unfortunately), or perhaps it was Michael offering the bank his precious tuppence that chipped away at his father’s impenetrable core. Either way, right when Mr. Banks’s uncontrollable anger would typically take over, we instead see a man freed. He laughs with reckless abandon as his boss fires him for letting his children get in the way of work, the greatest moment of shame for a man so career-obsessed. All the men at the bank think he’s gone mad, but his mind is on something more important—mending a kite for his children. He rushes home, desperate not to miss another moment of the fun and love he has so long denied himself. 

I wish I could have a chat with P.L. Travers herself. I know characters like Mr. Banks are not born out of dust. It’s the serious kids who imagine that a Mary Poppins might come and save their heavy souls from premature adulthood. I suspect Walt Disney might have something to add about his own father, as well. Childhood emotional repression might not be the father of genius, but it appears to be whimsy’s creative fodder.

I’m sure I missed all these lessons when I watched this movie as a child. I loved it for entirely different reasons—Mary Poppins was beautiful, and she sang and danced with the children, and I always hoped there was something romantic going on between her and Bert. But I have to wonder if, perhaps, my young brain subconsciously loved this film because I saw hope for my own relationship with my father, that one day laughter would permanently shake him out of his gravity and into the playful dad I had only seen in brief glimmers. If a children’s movie could make him dance and sing, anything was possible.

My father’s granddaughters have now forced him to return to the world of Mary Poppins, and I see him in a constant state of play with them, whether or not the soundtrack is booming in the minivan. Now I dream of the day when I hope to dance with him to “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” at my hypothetical future wedding. (I choreographed the dance we’ll do when I was just nineteen years old. Mary Poppins taught me that we all need an imaginative study break.) 

I wish I could tell P.L. Travers and Walt Disney that they did what I believe they set out to do in this movie—helped soften a man hardened by the world he was subjected to and expected to shoulder. They gave my younger self a hope, and like Mr. Banks, my father now lives into those joyful songs. Let the Air Force Admirals call him a madman. He has a kite to fly.