Gilmore Moms

For years on television the Moms were pretty ditzy and useless. Even on a show I really liked way back when called "My So-Called Life," the mom was this neurotic narcissist (yikes, is that how you spell it?) and her very cool daughter, played by Claire Danes, didn't like her much. Daughters always like the dads better. The dads are level headed and sane and interested in the daughter's lives--except when they're not. Moms are supposed to be grown up. They're supposed to be a little bit distant but loving. Or else they're idiots.

Then came the Gilmore Girls. Loralie and Rorie (again, my spelling may be way off here) are a perfect match, bantering with each other rapid fire with a familiarity that no other mother-daughter pair on television has ever had. They are friends, above all, friends who love each other, respect each other and would die for each other. And yet this friendship takes nothing away from their mother-daughter relationship. Okay, sometimes Rorie has to play the mom role--when Loralie simply can't cope with her own mom or one of her odd boyfriends, but when Rorie needs a mom, Loralie is there for her, offering love and whatever wisdom she can muster. I remember reading some child "expert" saying, "Your child doesn't need a friend. She needs a parent." I think you can be both.

My daughter and I love to watch the Gilmore Girls. We smile in recognition as the two of them try to hash out their lives together. There's a scene where Rorie graduates from her prestigious school, and Loralie wants her to scrawl her name somewhere. And my daughter and I laugh because on her birthday we passed a house that just had new sidewalk poured in front of it, and I slammed the car to a stop so she could go out and write her name in the wet cement. Unfortunately, the cement had hardened. But it's the sort of opportunity we can't pass up even if her prep-school friends are in the back, wide eyed and open-mouthed.

We are a certain type--Gilmore Moms. The most important person in our lives is our child with whom we share most everything. We understand that she will have secrets, she will have parts of her life she doesn't share, and we will, too. But the private areas are smaller than the parts we share with each other. We like the same music and same TV shows. We watch movies together, go to concerts together. We tell each other how we're feeling. We forgive each other. We laugh together a lot.

Last week my daughter and I drove to Florida. I showed her the church in Jacksonville where I had spent great portions of my childhood. It's like a castle and she was fascinated. I showed her where I had scrawled my name in the choir room in 1967. I took her to stay with my godfather and explained to her he was the closest thing I'd ever have to a father. We drove to Fort Lauderdale and then took a trip to South Beach where we slipped into stores to laugh at the $250 jeans and $150 shirts. We ate on the roof at Ernie's where I used to eat with her father. I showed her the apartment where I lived as a single woman a half block from Biscayne Bay. And the house where her father and I lived before she was born. We had such a good time together. I'm glad I'm a Gilmore Mom. I have someone in my life who knows me better than anyone else ever could. And still loves me--that's the mystery of it.