I appear to be having a mild nervous breakdown. It’s nothing to worry about, I’m sure. But just in case, steer clear of bell towers for the next few days.
See, last weekend we were all supposed to go to North Carolina to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ with my in-laws, but my daughter got sick. Being one of those helicopter moms that believes in not leaving a child behind while I’m in North Carolina feasting on Peeps and celebrating the Joy of Jesus, I stayed behind with her in NYC.
So there we were, alone in New York City.
Our apartment has never been quieter or cleaner.
You could eat off the toilet seats. If you were a pervert, I mean.
My daughter was sick, but the kind of sick where she would cough twice, ask for a Mocha Decaf Frappuccino and read a gossip magazine about the cast of Glee. (I strongly disapprove. I seem to have an allergy to Leah Michele that is almost as strong as the one I have to Jane Seymour. Yuck.)
I promptly proclaimed myself pre-sick and took to my bed.To watch Sex and The City reruns on TV.
I was a loyal Sex & The City viewer. I had loved creator Candance Bushnell’s column in The New York Observer, where she’d written about Big as having a fax machine in his bathroom in The Hamptons. (I’m pretty sure it was Big. It may have been Medium.)
I loved the series unapologetically, I adored Carrie and Miranda, especially. Although when the series premiered in June 1998, I was a month away from giving birth to my oldest child, I found the characters relatable. Not in their fashion or sexcapades, obviously, but in their friendships, their dinners and lunches and cocktails. Their discussing everything that until then seemed unmentionable.
I loved them for being unapologetic, for making it in the big city, for having great shoes.
So it was a huge shock, when last weekend I curled up to watch an episode, my first since the series ended in 2004 (when my kids were five and two).
I couldn’t relate. Oh, I still related to the cocktails and the friendships. But as Carrie flitted about New York City, a new purse on her arm in every scene, one thought distracted me.
Why doesn’t she call her mother?
Why don’t any of them call their mothers?
The women who gave them life?
The women who took care of them, stayed up endless nights, worried about them, loved them, and who that very moment were missing them, albeit it off-screen.
Yes. I’m Marinka and my daughter is going to be thirteen in a few months.
I see the writing on the wall.
Thank God she still needs me to get her Frappuccinos.
One year ago ...
- The Friendship Club - 2013
{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter: Mamabirddiaries
April 28, 2011 at 9:52 am
God I loved that show. Maybe their mother’s were cruel and selfish. Unlike us who are giving and selfless. I’m going to get my kid addicted to Frappucinos so she will sick around.
Twitter: sellabitmum
April 28, 2011 at 9:57 am
Aw, you are such an awesome mommy blogger. Sobbing here over the beauty of your words. They grow too fast and drink coffee so young.
Oh shit. When do I have to start thinking about my daughter leaving me & not calling? She’s 2. How long can I stay in denial that she won’t always want me to kiss her 73 times a day?
My son is 9 and he told me that he doesn’t like it that I kiss him so much.
I’m doing as well as can be expected.
Twitter: NorthWestMommy
April 28, 2011 at 1:01 pm
My son turns the other cheek to be kissed. Not what Jesus had in mind I am sure. He is only three, I don’t see this situation improving at all.
Thankfully I was brought up behind the iron curtain. I will survive.
Twitter: penbleth
April 28, 2011 at 10:17 am
I keep my daughters locked in their rooms at all times, except for today when 16 is out getting her hair trialled for her prom do. I will let her out completely when she is 36, not a day before.
There will be no leaving. Or, I’ll go with her. Won’t that be fun for both of us?
I’m going to make my 6 year old daughter sign a contract that I can go away with her to college and be her roommate. That document will totally stand up in court, right?
I think Miranda’s mother was the only one they ever talked about. She was dead, as I recall. I wonder what that means?
Twitter: SheSuggests
April 28, 2011 at 11:12 am
Yes! I always wondered the same thing! And none of the mothers were ever at any of the weddings, not the brides’ mothers anyway.
My mom still makes me call her twice a day, though I can’t for the life of me understand why she can’t just talk to me through the cord, the umbilical cord, she wouldn’t’ let the doctors detach it.
I kid you not, I was thinking about the same thing the other day. I came to the conclusion they were all dead.
Twitter: danasfeast
April 28, 2011 at 12:35 pm
Leah Michele makes that show nearly unwatchable for me. Of course, it might be all the singing too.
Welcome to the word of the maturity/decline/degeneration.
My mother used to say that we are only a mycelium for the growth of our children.
Since Madison Avenue people invented the concept of “The Golden Years†a lot of people over 40 live through the realization that the best part of their life is well behind them, may be as much as 20-30 years behind.
When and how these 20-30 years were spent remains a mystery.
The surviving peers get uglier and nastier by the minutes.
Generally older people are not pleasant at all.
These sweet smiles of the well groomed octogenarians going to the houses of worship only mean: “I know what you are going into.â€
Aw, this made me sad. I’m a freak of a child, and talk to my mom about a dozen time a day, to the point where she knows what time my kids went to bed, what time they woke up, and everything in between. And now that I’m a mom to two boys, well, I hope they’ll call me at least once a week. If not, I’ll just pop over next door and pay them a visit. Every day. As soon as the two houses next to mine go up for sale, I’m buying them. I don’t want them any further away than that!
Twitter: hotcomestodie
April 28, 2011 at 1:03 pm
You are so mental. The show was called Sex and the City. Obviously mothers don’t have sex.
Twitter: suebob
April 28, 2011 at 1:04 pm
I see my mom twice a day, every day. She can’t get rid of me
Loved the show but at the time always thought they must have had terrible relationships with their mothers and that explained the whole flighty, selfish, inability to truly love and put someone else first personality they all seemed to share. Except Miranda who seemed more grounded and was eventually a mom herself. If I remember right Miranda’s mother died during the series because they all went to PA for the funeral. Later Miranda took Steve’s mother in to live with them after she (the mother) having dementia issues.
Twitter: Issascrazyworld
April 28, 2011 at 2:12 pm
I talk to my mom daily and she just moved to my state, which makes me so freaking happy.
I recently re-watched SATC and I found it to be funny and so un-realistic. I loved their friendship though. That always sticks with me.
Twitter: wendiaarons
April 28, 2011 at 2:34 pm
Obviously the only person who can solve this is DONALD TRUMP.
Twitter: debontherocks
April 28, 2011 at 2:56 pm
SATC only makes sense to me if I take Marge Simpson’s advice (which I almost always do) and see the characters as gay men. Or more specifically, as Drag Queens. Drag Queens don’t have mothers. They are born of their own will, duct tape and palette knives. But Drag Queens aren’t Queen’s all week long. When they become boys again on Sunday evening, they call their mothers, yes they do.
Twitter: debontherocks
April 28, 2011 at 2:56 pm
OMG I can’t stand not being able to edit my typos.
Ha! That is a bad development. Just try and concentrate on the cocktails and the shoes next time.
Twitter: MisfitMommy
April 28, 2011 at 5:39 pm
Well, you know, Darth Vader was the only one who seemed to care about HIS mom. Just sayin’…
😉
Exactly! Where was mom? Did they all grow up alone in the city subsisting on shoe leather and virgin cosmopolitans? I think not.
Also, I hate that Glee show-totally because of Leah Michelle. Puke.
Twitter: emjnj
April 28, 2011 at 8:50 pm
I still love the SATC and the original series soundtrack, but I was caught in quite a moment the other day when I was humming “Sexbomb” and some of the lyrics parted my lips with my 4-year old in earshot. She has a really enjoyable interpretation…
It think made me think is it time to retire the cosmos/Manolos/clubbing daydreams and send my young lass to a convent stat? I’m sure her father would approve. What say you?
PS- Those SATC ladies are obviously ungrateful little prisses who needed a good swat on that pants to be reminded “All that I am or hope to be I owe to my mother.” Abe Lincoln knew that and if SJP thinks she is so smart she should too.
Twitter: amommyinthecity
April 28, 2011 at 10:18 pm
I hope my daughter calls me everyday when she gets older. Not because she feels like she has to but because she wants to.
Twitter: fromtracie
April 29, 2011 at 1:56 am
I have never thought about that when watching SATC. Freaky. Where are their moms? Or any family member, really? It is as though when they met each other, their previous lives ceased to exist.
Twitter: kalisah
April 29, 2011 at 1:01 pm
I find that I relate more to The Golden Girls now than I do the Sex & the City girls.
What? What???
Sorry. Have wine in sleepless body. I think i’m having a problem similar to young Ladrinka. What are we talking about here again?
Twitter: mannahattamamma
April 30, 2011 at 10:38 am
Those characters existed in that realm after college and before children, when young women think that they don’t “need” their mothers and act all independent and shit. Then they have kids and they realize HOLY CRAP I NEED MY MOMMY! And it’s at that point that a person is really grown up, I think, when she realizes that she needs her mommy EVERY DAY.
Twitter: RighteousVent
May 1, 2011 at 5:22 pm
Maybe the lesson here is: once your children leave the nest, go open a shoe store that sells really hot purses and accessories. That, or a wine bar. This way you’ll be the coolest mom around and they’ll definitely come calling! (And btw — i cannot believe it ended in 2004… it didn’t seem so long ago…). I recently had surgery and seized the opportunity to rent a couple movies On Demand that I knew my husband wouldn’t care if I watched without him. One was the second Sex and The City. Well… it almost made me wanna take to a bell tower myself. A total embarrassment (for all involved: me for watching it, them for making it). I was beyond disappointed. The actresses and their characters deserved so much better than that gratuitous travelogue and fashion show. It was so weak, so full of cliches… The dialogue sucked, to put it mildly. It totally bummed me out, and no amount of oxycontin was gonna make the pain go away.
So I tried to cheer myself up by watching Eat, Pray, Love… and holy sh*t. What the hell happened to that one? Good book, awful movie. And Julie Roberts usually picks some pretty decent work. Again, another utter disappointment. Maybe next time I should just rent The Fast and The Furious…. at least the cars are cool to look at, as are the guys, and I won’t have any expectations to be squashed.
And didn’t you know? Unless it’s a sitcom or Meryl Streep melodrama, mothers of hot, sexually active women are rarely seen on a screen. Unless you’re Diane Keaton. She manages to make an appearance as a pretty cool mom every so often.