Are you familiar with Stars Hollow, Connecticut? It’s a quaint little borough with a town square with a gazebo, flanked by a diner, an ice cream shoppe, a music store, a bookstore. It’s the kind of place where there are town meetings, and everyone attends. And it’s fictional. The stuff of sound stages and quippy scripts. But that’s never been the point for me (though who doesn’t love a little witty banter in their prime time viewing). Stars Hollow is my runaway destination. It’s where small business is the rule rather than the exception. It’s where my bookstore-tea house-stationery shop would thrive, within sight of the gazebo where I’d eat lunch. It’s where a mother and daughter can live entirely off of take-out — Chinese food, pizza and danishes — and remain thin, porcelain-skinned and energized.
Just like Lorelei and Rory Gilmore, my family has lived off mostly take-out this week. It’s just been one of those weeks. Some weeks I have dinner in the crockpot, leftovers packed up for lunches, and non-frozen chicken in the fridge. This was not that week. Tonight, to step up my game, I brought home a rotisserie chicken and I felt like Betty Crocker. Not a paper wrapper or plastic fork in sight. To get the rotisserie chicken, I had to go just a couple of traffic lights out of my way. Traffic lights that, at 5:30pm on the Friday before Christmas, were basically like running a race that ended uphill. Double lane left turners, terrified that they might miss their light, ended up in the middle of the intersection while my light came …. and went. Tail lights upon tail lights. This would never happen in Stars Hollow. For one thing, I don’t think they even have a double left turn lane.
This week, I missed a meeting of some note at work. It was a snow day for the girls, 10 inches on the ground. They had predicted 1-3″! I stressed. I sent off a flurry of texts because I’d left my computer at the office, knowing that no matter what, I had to be in. I protested, with pithy passive-aggressive asides, that the assumption that I would, of course, stay home, even with my calendar pinging, is the very reason that I’m making 76¢ on the dollar. I missed the meeting; they pulled in someone else whose college-age child and four-wheel drive were unaffected by the snow. The next day I was asked if I had “gotten my children sorted out.” And I realized, that yes. Yes, I had. They’d slept in, woken to the news of a snow day, which is pretty much the best thing ever when you’re a child, and then watched movies in front of a fire. They were completed sorted.
The next day, I left work early to go to my daughter’s in-school music concert. “Are you going to be there? For sure?” she asked. And I was. And I remembered that sometimes you’re replaceable, and sometimes you’re not.
Sometimes we eat take-out with plastic forks. But for the most part, we do it together, which is more to the point. Sometimes we get home at 8pm and then do homework in the morning as we eat frozen waffles. But I buy real maple syrup. Win some, lose some.
A lot of the time, I feel like I’m nearly on top of things. So, so close. I filled out the field trip permission form, except it was double-sided. Got the very specifically requested cereal! But the milk’s expired. Remembered to sign the kids up for morning child care so I could make the meeting on time, except — snow day. So close. But tonight, after we ate rotisserie chicken and grocery store California rolls — because who could have one without the other — we all watched a movie, and now the girls and I are officially on Christmas vacation. So, the fact that we haven’t made Christmas cookies yet, or that I have yet to start shopping for my husband, or that I haven’t run in nearly two weeks… well, we’ll get to it. The important things got done. Daughter’s ballet recital, check. Music concert, check. Family dinner, regardless of utensils used, check.
So maybe I don’t actually need Stars Hollow to be real… although at some point, a few years from now, I’d like to visit again with my own daughters, and hope they love it, too. But I do need to remember that successful adulting is less about a week’s worth of organized, pre-planned dinners, and more about always showing up when you’re irreplaceable, which was really the best part about Stars Hollow, anyway, and it was by far the best part of “one of those weeks.”
Where you lead, I will follow. Anywhere that you tell me to. If you need me to be with you, I will follow, where you lead.