Thirtysomething Revisited

In 1987, I sat on my bed nursing my baby son while I watching a new television show called Thirtysomething. I was not yet there but my life was. I had been out of college for six years, married for five. We had two children and lived in a broken down, charming old house on Pine Street. My husband was going to grad school at night, our family business was on the skids, and we were close to broke. Most of our friends from college were married but had not yet begun having children. Remember, this was the eighties. The era of "Yuppies", " Dinks" and Baby on Board signs. While my friends traveled the globe and bought expensive new houses, I was feeling isolated, struggling to forge my identity and to keep the romance alive. My life freakishly mirrored the plot lines of Thirtysomething . So much so, that at times I thought to myself, "this isn't entertainment - this is my life." It was a hard show to watch. On the one hand, I was comforted by the struggles of the characters of Hope, Michael, Elliot and Nancy as they, too, wrestled with the same issues that faced me every day. On the other hand, they depressed me. It was too real. Too close. Too right on. The show lasted four seasons and tracked the demise of Elliot and Michael's advertising business at the very same time that we lost ours. It was, life imitating art imitating life - it blew my mind. Never had a television show entered my very psyche. Torturous as it was at times, when Thirtysomething went off the air in 1991 I missed it and I missed the characters as if they had actually been my friends.

Last weekend, my husband, to whom I have now been married twenty-seven years, came home and told me to close my eyes and to hold out my hands. When I opened my eyes, I found myself looking at the newly released DVD set of the first season of Thirtysomething. Instantly, I began to cry. There were the faces of my long-lost friends. I looked at my husband and it was as if he had found a keepsake, a treasure from our past - that had been locked away deep in my memory. I was ecstatic. And I was terrified. It was then I realized that this television show that had paralleled our lives nearly twenty years ago had the potential to unleash painful memories that I had either long since left behind or spent hours processing in therapy. But my curiosity about how the show would hold up by today's standards and shear nostalgia won out. With trepidation, I began to watch.

From the first twangs of the theme song, I was instantly transported back in time. Like watching an old home movie, I found myself pointing out the Fisher Price high chair, the Volvo wagon, the mobile over the crib, the playpen, the swing, and the Little People farm house- all of which we had. Sesame Street, Mister Rogers Neighborhood and Raffi played in the background. I groaned over the home repairs, the shoulder pads,and the big hair. At Elliot and Michael's office I laughed at seeing the IBM Selectric typewriter and the green bar computer printouts from some main frame computer the size of my living room- remnants from long before the days of cell phones, laptops, Google and Facebook. That was the fun part.

Then I began to moan and wince at some of the self-indulgent, seemingly trivial concerns that plagued these young marrieds. Conflicts that seemed utterly inconsequential dominated their day to day lives. I wanted to slap the character of Hope for being so rude and moody to her mother. And I recognized in that moment, that over twenty years had passed since those days of nursing my baby son. I am closer in age to Hope's mother than I am to Hope. And while the issues I faced in my early married life were challenging, at times devastating, and often overwhelming, unlike the characters in Thirtysomething, I now have the benefit of both hindsight and perspective. The show is still as true as it was twenty years ago. A brilliant script - painfully honest and full of genuine angst. It wasn't easy to watch back then and it's still not. The difference is, I am now fiftysomething.

There is a poignancy to revisiting this chapter in my life. But it is a chapter that feels like a distant memory. The show did mirror my life back then. But it doesn't now. Time does indeed march on. My son is twenty-two years old and will graduate from college this June. My daughter is nearly twenty-five, the age I was when she was born. No doubt, they will have their own thirtysomething journey. And some day, they too will look back and sigh.

In one particularly moving scene, the cast is gathered in Hope and Michael's living room and in the background, Joni Mitchell's "Circle Game" is playing - eerily echoing the ache that filled my heart as I watched the youthful moment unfolding before me.

"And the seasons, they go 'round and 'round. And the painted ponies go up and down. We're captive on a carousel of time. We can't return, we can only look behind from where we came and go 'round and 'round and 'round in the circle game."

And so it goes.