Returning to Stars Hollow

"It takes a remarkable person to inspire all of this."

We pad quietly upstairs for bedtime. Her cheeks smile, though tear-stained, eyes bluer than ever and bright in the dim glow of her bookshelf lamp. I can’t believe we’re finished, she says and pulls the covers up to her chin. I brush back her hair and kiss her forehead, the priceless gift of goodnight.

It’s rare for her to be so moved by something on the screen. You can sometimes see it simmering there, quiet and sorted beneath the surface, but not often above. These tears, then, I know are hard-earned, the release of something she may not be able to name for decades.

I was sixteen and a junior in high school¹ when the show first aired on the big box television in our quadplex on Gadwall. An ardent enthusiast of The WB² , I didn’t hesitate to add another show to my lineup. Curled up on the pilled, gray living room couch that first Thursday night, though, I knew this one was special. I just didn’t know how, quite yet.

For the show’s second season, just weeks after 9/11, we returned to Stars Hollow hollowed out and somehow hopeful. Later, I’d depart the beloved, quirky town and their on-going stories a few days before my eighteenth birthday and weeks before my high school graduation.

Some years following, I’d watch the seventh and final season’s finale, crying over tents, tarps, and lives stitched together to celebrate an ending just days from my own middle and beginning: finishing my first year of grad school and my soon-coming, summer wedding bridal shower.

Sure, I’d been the oldest daughter of a mother who was single some of the time. I was bookish and lived for school. Through all the years, the lives I saw on-screen and my own weren’t the same, though, by any means, but there was proximity enough to easily imagine, idealize, and sometimes even adamantly abhor what I watched.

The show wasn’t a reflection of my life, but in it I could mirror what I didn’t see in mine or easily choose different, knowing instead, what I did want in my story.

I didn’t know when I would introduce her to the show, but I knew some day I would. Many of her friends had seen it, already, but given the sometimes adult themes the show deals with, I waited. Some might say not long enough and others, too long. But for us, it was just the right time.

For seven seasons over five months, we meandered together through the ups and downs of what at first appears to be only two women, but then becomes three, four, and more. It is a whole cast of characters dancing in and out of each others’ lives while a teenage girl and her young mother come of age — this teenage girl and her middle age mother looking on.

The next time I returned to Stars Hollow in full, from start to finish, was in preparation for the Netflix special, set to air on our girl’s fifth birthday. A newly-minted mother of three, I was just out of the fourth trimester when I hit play, again, on the first episode.

That year, in more ways than one, I’d begun shedding the skin of the life and relationships I thought I knew, watching something new take shape. To reenter the world of the Gilmores and their community — after almost a decade and different eyes with which to see — was fascinating.

I could appreciate, be bothered by, and rediscover elements of what I was uncovering in that season in my own adult life. It was all there when I began to ask hard questions about mother- and daughterhood which would eventually lead me down the slow, but necessary road of facing the fantasies of my youth and starting to heal from its trauma.

I was not formed by this show, but it bore witness to my formation. A soundtrack, if you will, of stories that point to the beauty and challenge of change and of growing up. Which, come to find out, never stops.

We hurdled through the last two seasons from our recent sickbed. The boys, feverish with influenza and later pneumonia and a double ear infection, having taken over the living room. Her, the common cold, sharing my space during the day while I managed to stay well through it all. In the seemingly endless string of counters cluttered with medicine baskets and dispensers, nightstand and side tables with crumpled tissues, we took comfort in the ritual of lying side by side in the master bed and hitting play.

I could see in her, even in what was uncomfortable, an understanding of the show’s gifts. It’s an imperfect series with imperfect storylines and imperfect people which led to perfect ground upon which to build conversations in real time with the girl I get to call my daughter.

We talked about the jokes we love and the ones we don’t (those most at the expense of others), the pop culture references she didn’t get, or the bewildering decisions and conflicts people find themselves making, sometimes.

During a sad scene, I could stretch my hand across the pillow barrier we’d built on the day she was sneezing a lot, to hold hers, squeezing tight. I’ll do the same for you one day, when you need it. She squeezed back, better able to imagine the far-off day a boy might, too, break her heart.

This time around, sharing it with her, was no less surprising and satisfying than the previous two. Eight years, like the nine before, was enough time for me to grow up even more. To let go of some things and hold tighter to others.

It has been, in some ways, the most painful of my visits to Stars Hollow. But in others, the most rewarding. Somehow, that’s the gift of healing.

Because while I see in the distance what’s been lost that may never be reclaimed, I have right in front of me exactly what I’ve dreamed of and worked hard to make space for — a beautiful and close relationship with my daughter that will weather the storms life sends our way.

And not only that, but what I recognize reflected in this watch-through is that I’ve not — nor have I ever — done this alone. Though I may feel the lack of certain relationships, I do have community.

Maybe it’s imperfect. Maybe it could be stronger. Maybe I long for more than what I presently have, but I’m not incapable, though I may sometimes believe it, of doing what’s necessary to make it so. I want to give both us both the gift of people to “come home” to.

Nearing the end, she hesitated, unsure she was ready to be done. At some point, we all begin our list of beloved stories we’ll never get to experience again for the first time. Naturally, I assured her we could slow down or wait. Take all the time you need; there’s no rush.

But the pull was too strong, and we pushed on, eventually met by the exquisite rush of emotion that comes when the camera pulls back from a mother and daughter seated, once again, at a diner table drinking coffee and animatedly talking together. I can’t believe we finished, either.

I turn off her bedroom light and in the dark, remind us both: Stars Hollow will still be there the next time, both familiar and new, in all the ways necessary. And the best part is? You will be, too.

Thank you for reading. ✨

1. In the first season of the Gilmore Girls, Rory is a sophomore in high school and turns sixteen in the sixth episode.

2. Anyone else remember (and resent) when it became known as The CW in 2006?