Dear Jessica Brennan,
I’m not sure if you know these women who taught me as a young girl by coming through a television screen into my squeaky clean, very white, religiously oppressive and conservative family room, but I am grateful for them all.
Laverne and Shirley, and Lucy and Ethel, you taught me that girlfriends will carry you through the rough patches. It may be painful and uncertain, but it will also be hilarious. One good “thick and thin” girlfriend will stand the test of time.
In an era when my mother was telling me that I should be a missionary or a wife, Mary Tyler Moore, you taught me that I could be whatever I wanted to be and within that I could be my own woman. I could have a job and an apartment, and I could stand on my own two feet. You also taught me how to throw a hat in the air and catch it.
Liz McIntyre, I wish you were my guidance counsellor, but instead you were in a school that had a seemingly endless History class in Room 222. You taught me all about how to empathize with teenagers, but in your case, this happened amid the backdrop of women’s rights, race relations and the Vietnam War.
Edith, you, for many seasons endured the bigotry and verbal abuse of Archie Bunker, until you didn’t. I remember it vividly. I watched you Edith, finally find your own voice and your own power, and you showed me how courage causes a bully to crumble. I will say that again. Bullies crumble when presented with courage.
Katie, you entered a home with three sons, a dad and a male housekeeper only to have three sons of your own. That takes some getting used to. You taught me how to stand in my own space when I feel like a stranger in a strange land.
Julia, in your show by the same name, you taught me about being a single mother enduring and navigating prejudice in the workplace. I have been both a single mother and I have in my career had to navigate prejudice in a workplace. Thank you.
Oh Margaret Hoolihan. You showed me first-hand the pain you wore as the other woman. In full camo colour, I saw you as “the bit on the side” that truly believed Frank would take you home with him when the war was over. Later I saw a vulnerability in you that, through touching humour, demonstrated the humiliation of knowing that you had been the laughing stock. The one stupid enough to believe that you would ever be his choice. And then, you got mad. You showed me what happens when hell meets fury.
Perhaps the greatest lesson for me was the simple one I learned from Maris and Lilith. They taught me women could say no. Maris, by never feeling the need to appear at all and Lilith by always showing up and taking charge with a very few concise and earth trembling words.
Some might say I learned a little too much from Lilith.
Love,
Mum xo
