Are You Happy in This Modern World?

Easter weekend is all wrapped up, and it could not have been more lovely-my mom goes out of her way to make holidays fun for the kids (and the big kids, too)-we play games and hunt eggs and eat too much candy. It’s delightful.

I also took an extra day off just to spend with my girls, and it could not have been a lovelier day. Each of them got to pick a movie to watch- Betsy is going through a Dirty Dancing phase just now (Betsy in many, many ways is her mother made over) and Felicity picked Return to Oz. I loved Return to Oz as a kid. It’s a bit of a trip to watch as an adult because it truly has many frightening moments for a kid’s movie, but it is also just so much more true to the nature of the books.

(We watched The Wizard of Oz on Saturday because I always associate it with Easter because when I was a kid, that’s when it was on tv. The version that I had taped as a kid-on a Beta tape, mind you-had a commercial for McDonald’s that I loved so much, and I looked it up on YouTube and showed it to the girls-it’s called “My Little Sister” and it’s about this brother and sister growing up and sharing McDonald’s together and I swear to you, it’s the reason that I always wanted to have a big brother.)

We also, of course, are continuing with our 90210s, and we have reached the college years (Betsy has rightly assessed that they are not as good as the high school years). It’s interesting, watching these storylines that meant so much to me when I was a young teenager and seeing them through my wizened, 40-year-old eyes. Paul Johansson portrays John Sears, who is the newest wrinkle in the Dylan/Kelly saga-I love, love, love Paul Johansson because he is Bart Jeffris in the tv movie, The Laker Girls, which is honest to goodness one of my sister’s favorite movies of all time and I love that character.

Anyway, in 90210, Paul is the guy trying to lure Kelly away from Dylan, and since I have never been a fan of Kelly and Dylan, the first time that I watched this, back in 1993, I wanted John to succeed-even though he of course turns out to be a total louse. This time around, though, he just seems like a creep-he’s one of those guys who only really wants Kelly because he can’t have her, and it’s obvious that he would dump her if she did break up with Dylan for him.

(It is the opposite of Dean Cain’s character, Rick, who truly fell in love with Brenda, and who she dumps because she wants to be with Dylan-the girls and I both agree that even though we love Dylan McKay with all of our hearts, we would have chosen Dean Cain over him-and they have never even seen him as Superman.)

It's a bit fascinating to me, how differently I feel even toward fictional characters on television shows- I want to scream at Kelly, I want her to realize that a guy who will cross any line to get her to cheat on her boyfriend is not worth it. I want to insist that she and Dylan realize that they tend to coast on obvious physical attraction rather than truly discuss hard topics.

Does it make me wiser this time, that I know these things? Or does it make me unable to push past my hangups to reach that bliss that is falling in love? I don't know the answer, and I promise I know that it's more complicated than Kelly and Dylan's endless breaking up and getting back together.

But just now, as spring has given way to these beautiful 70 degree days, and my girls still want to watch all the movies and 90s tv shows, and Jesus has risen and all is right with the world, I'm grateful for all of these hard as heck lessons in humility and grace that the past 3 1/2 years have seen fit to send my way. We'll figure it out as we go.

Til The Sound of My Voice Will Haunt You...

This past weekend was not my weekend to have the girls, and so one of my tasks was to create new index cards for our movie collection (the old ones were color-coded, and my aesthetic tastes have changed and I want them all to be black ink on white cards now). When I showed the girls the new system, Felicity hugged me and said so sincerely, “I love you, Mommy, but you have too much time alone. You need a friend.”

It was too sweet.

I perhaps do have too much time alone, but it’s all good.

(I listened to a new-to-me podcast while I was redoing all of the index cards called 80s All Over in which the hosts dissect every single movie that came out in a certain month of a certain 1980s year-I listened to January 1980 and February 1980 and both were completely fascinating.)


Of course, I also read, and the book that I’m reading is too wonderful not to gush over, even though I still have about a third of the way to go until it’s over. Daisy Jones and the Six came so highly recommended by many people whose opinion on books I trust and it has not disappointed.

It’s fiction, but written as an oral history of a band’s creation and ultimate demise. I’m sure that it helps that I love oral histories (my all time favorite being Live from New York, which such a dense look at my most beloved Saturday Night Live). It’s an interesting approach that I appreciate as a reader and a writer and a complete and total lover of dialogue.

The band at the center of the book, not by accident I am sure, is reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac. I grew up loving Stevie Nicks, as girls of my age do. But Fleetwood Mac, like all the things about the last few years of my life, became a lifeline to me when I couldn’t find words to describe what I was grieving at the end of my marriage.

(I sort of always want to tell the people who reach out to me to ask how I managed to handle the grief, “You will have your Rumours period.” I don’t, because of course not everyone is me, but I always think it.)

My Rumours period began with just listening over and over to the album, and to “Silver Springs,” which of course was Stevie’s contribution to the break up album that got shunted aside. I dived into these peoples lives, Stevie and Lindsey most especially, and I would sink every night into the sadness of their relationships ending and marvel at how they had the ultimate karma of making each other sing these songs about their infidelity.

I still have days where I just want to sink into their grief, find solace in the fact that I’m not all alone in trying to make sense of what to do with the bits and pieces of a relationship that has no home anymore. Living in the aftermath of a person that you loved turning into someone that you do not recognize-that is what most of those songs are to me.

I also had the absolute joy to see our high school production of The Music Man and it was absolutely wonderful. I say again and again that my girls and I are so blessed to be a part of a public school system that values the arts as well as sports, and I truly mean that with all of my heart-I wish that all kids could have the kind of well rounded education that East Muskingum Schools provided to me as a student and that they are providing my kids.


And Tiger Woods won the Masters, and Saturday Night Live was new, and I had a glorious weekend, mostly alone.

This Holy Week is full of all the things-track meets, piano lessons, Passover dinner with friends. So it was grand to have a weekend to myself to be quiet and get my book geek on. Even if, as my girls so gently try to point out, I maybe need to get a life.

Suspend Donna Martin, Suspend Us All...

Listening to Olivia and my Johnny croon “Summer Nights” makes for a pretty fabulous lunch hour.

Last night, the girls and I finally reached what is likely my most favorite episode of 90210 ever, in which the entire Class of 1993 walks out of their final exams in the most 90s protest of all time, “Donna Martin graduates!”

Anyway...

This past weekend I managed to watch two movies in the theater, which is a lot even for me. But I was desperate to see Us.

I don’t mind at all seeing movies by myself, but I have found myself wishing that I had managed to find someone to go with me to see this one because it is a movie that requires much dissection and thought processing after it’s over. I’m still piecing through much of it in my head. I am most fortunate to live in 2019, though, and listened to three separate podcasts about it- 1A, Pop Culture Happy Hour, and (the best one) Still Processing, which compared the storyline to Toni Morrison’s Beloved and was a bit mind blowing to me.

The last time that I can remember feeling this much soul stirring over a movie was District 9 and I completely took for granted having a husband to talk it over with, days and even months after we watched it. It’s these tiny little pieces of life that hit you hard and make you feel ridiculously alone.

The girls came home early from their dad’s house on Sunday and so we also managed to see Dumbo, which I thought was very good. It’s quite different from the animated Dumbo, but in ways that make sense for this telling. Tim Burton can be one of my favorite directors (see Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands), and he can also be one of the most exasperating (see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and character choices that I may never forgive him and Johnny Depp for). Dumbo is going to be among my more favorite Tim Burton movies, with its message of the magic of a mother’s love of course going straight to my heart.

In the meantime, track is in full swing, and my girl is doing amazingly well. I have promised the girls that I will watch all of the Marvel movies in order to be properly prepared for The Avengers: Endgame. (I did really enjoy Captain Marvel, which I do recognize was marketed to women about my age, and it has given me hope that with Betsy’s help I will be able to understand the other movies that spring from these comic books-I have a hard time following comic book movies sometimes.)


Spring is here, Olivia is now singing "Strange Twist of Fate" from one of the most underrated movies of all time, Two of a Kind, (I know, maybe I just love Olivia and John too much), and life, for today, seems most charmed.