What the Gilmore Girls Mean to Me

When I was a teenager, I faced a very difficult decision: to stay with the pimply, immature, (cheating) teen-aged boy and raise the family that we had accidentally started, or stop that in its tracks and move on with my life. Thankfully, I chose the latter and never looked back.

I have no regrets about my choices, because my life would be very different now if I hadn’t chosen as I did, and I kind of like the little life I have created.

Image Source: jeffmason on Flickr

When Gilmore Girls came on the scene, watching it gave me the chance to look in on what my life might have looked like, and I fell in love with Lorelai (because, seriously, LORELAI!) and Rory.

I identified so much with Lorelai: difficult childhood with busy parents; wanted for nothing, but never got what I needed the most—love and affection. Her stubbornness and fortitude in carving out a life for her and her daughter, with or without her parents in the mix, was something that I was going through at the time as well. When the show began, she was the same age as I was, and Rory was the same age as my child would have been.

I watched it with delight and a little wistfulness; the wistfulness being for their life, for it definitely was not the life I would have been living had I chosen that path. I watched without regret or any kind of “what could have been”, and it made me look forward to my evenings.

As a writer, I so often get to put myself in a story that belongs to a character and allows me to temporarily live a different life, if only on paper. Gilmore Girls was that come to life, for me; I got to watch my parallel life (only much better and way more entertaining), and I didn’t have to bleed on any pages to do so.

The Gilmore Girls: A Year in The Life revival was everything I wanted it to be. One night, after my fiery little ball of a threenager finally collapsed in bed, I poured myself a cocktail and got comfy. I had missed my girls!

It was a home-coming. I felt like I was dropping in to visit some very dear girlfriends that I hadn’t seen in years; you know them–the ones who, when you show up on their door, they give you their other Christmas onesie to wear and you both collapse on the couch with a glass of wine, picking up where you left off a decade ago.

I watch them both as I now imagine my daughter and I will be, at Lorelai and Rory’s ages, and it warms my heart. I still see so much of my own ballsiness and determination in Lorelai, and her hard-won success mirrors my own—I definitely do not own an inn, (fortunately!!!), but I fought hard for the good job I have and love it (even if my Facebook status sometimes says otherwise).

Instead of watching as a glimpse into the life that could have been, I now watch the life that will be, as my daughter and I grow up together. I am so grateful to Gilmore Girls for all that it gave me, and I am so ready for the future it has shown me.

That is, if my daughter and I both survive her third year of life.