In case you missed it, this year is the 50th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s summer blockbuster, Jaws. Jaws is one of my favorite movies and I have seen it at least 30 times over the last 30 years or so. But I’ve never seen Jaws on the big screen until this year. The music was louder, Bruce was bigger and the theater was packed. I usually watch Jaws with family or a small group of friends, so watching it with a large group of strangers made the viewing experience new to me. We all laughed at the fisherman on the dock when he said “A what?” after Hooper explains the shark they caught is, indeed, a tiger shark. We all lifted our Narragansett cans and crushed them in unison with Quint. And we all jumped when Ben Gardner’s head popped out of his sunken vessel even though we all knew it was coming.

The first time I watched Jaws was when I was 8-years-old. Thinking that might be too young? Maybe. I saw my dad sitting on the couch in our home in South Hadley one day intently watching something on TV.

“What are you watching?” I asked. I was then invited to sit and join with a “Oh you have to watch Jaws!”

From what I remember about that first viewing was John Williams’ haunting score and feeling anxious as it played. After Pipit the dog disappeared from the beach and Alex Kintner died after wanting more play time in the water, little me was feeling scared. I stayed quiet in hope that Quint, Brody and Hooper could catch the monster that lurked beneath in the end.

“Did you know that they shot this movie off of Cape Cod? You know … where your grandparents live.” my dad tells me.

Oh, you mean the place we go to every summer and holidays? That place? That’s when it got real. I was washed with relief when Brody finally blew the shark to smithereens, but just a few weeks later we were on the Mass Pike on the way from western Mass. to Chatham visiting my grandparents. I found myself sitting on the beach watching the water discerningly. This is when my mom’s spidey sense kicked in and asked why I wasn’t in the water. When I was a kid, it was difficult to get me to sit to put on my sunscreen before I took off running into the water seconds after we put down our beach gear. I would even cry when my mom told me she didn’t pack my bathing suit on Thanksgiving because it was too cold. I would crawl towards the water anyway in my ski jacket and snow pants.

“Did you let her watch Jaws?” my mom asks as she darts her eyes to my dad who just got settled into his beach chair. My dad and I looked at each other and shrugged with a look of “Maybe?” on our faces. My mom’s eyes rolled and she assuaged my fears by telling me sharks don’t actively hunt people and one wouldn’t be so close to the shore. That’s all I needed to hear and I popped up from the beach blanket and went darting into the ocean. The next summer I remember asking my dad, “Can we watch Jaws again?”

Ever since, Jaws has always been a way for me and my dad to bond and take the time every summer to sit down and watch our favorite movie together. Lines from the movie were uttered in everyday conversation: “You sharking today?” would be my dad’s way of asking if I had a shift at the South Hadley Big Y deli, referencing Quint’s line: “I’m talking about workin’ for a living. I’m talking about sharkin’.” As the years went on, Chatham had become almost a shark destination which only made every subsequent viewing that much better and every trip to the beach a little more exciting, peering out to the horizon when the shark warning flags were waving to try to catch a glimpse of the real thing.

I lost my dad a couple of years ago. The first time watching Jaws without him there or not being able to text him something like, “If you see a shark, Hooper, swalla!” as I was watching it was hard. Watching it on the big screen this summer as he had back in 1975 in Holyoke was a way I could see the movie from his perspective all those years ago. It was the first movie he took my mom to when they were dating.

Some people see Jaws as one of Spielberg’s best, the original blockbuster, or just the perfect movie to watch on the Fourth of July. All of those things are true, but for me it’s a way I can still spend 2 hours and 10 minutes with my dad.

Erika Heyer-Watts, formerly of South Hadley, lives in Farmington, Connecticut. She was a former Gazette newspaper delivery girl and intern.