TV Inspires

03.31.21010

Rob and I have a number of favorite TV shows that we watch – mainly my picks, hee, hee, hee – and, last night, we were catching up on one of them, Parenthood. At one point during the show, Rob turned to me and said that the show builds up your stress and then eases it by having some touching moment that makes you want to cry. I agree. There have been very few shows, in my opinion, that were worth watching. Most family-oriented TV shows throughout the 90s and 2000s were so demeaning to family and, as a matter of fact, I just saw a blurb in the LA Times about how family shows are now changing to softer dialogue. I think this is great. Shows like Everybody Loves Raymond, for example, I thought was a good show at first, but after watching it a bit more closely, I realized how demeaning it is to men. This is a step backward. Feminism isn’t about putting down men and making them feel worthless, it’s about acceptance and fairness.

But back to the show. My favorite part of the day is when we all settle in for the evening after dinner and watch a little TV or catch a movie. We convene in Rob’s office (because that’s where I insist the TV be) and our two cats follow us in there and settle themselves on my lap, sometimes on top of each other, sometimes next to each other, but always on my lap. It’s a lovely feeling to be there with everyone I love and I sometimes wonder how much a child is going to alter this picture. I’m not saying this negatively.

There was a scene toward the end of Parenthood where everyone’s hanging out at the grandparents’ house and the guys were playing some basketball, the women, of course, were by the food and with the children, and the scene just brought me so much contentment. It made me think about all the x-mas holidays when we went to Chicago and how on x-mas day we’d go out to Indiana to my cousin’s and spend the day there with, like, 50 family members. Those big family gatherings are something I miss more than anything. There’s something about big families and holidays and the feeling of “belonging”. There’s a routine, there’s a system, and, as a kid, I never realized just how important this all was. It made me think about how empty I’ve felt since my grandmother moved back to Lithuanian in 1998 and that part of my routine came to a complete halt not to be picked up again, most likely, until we have kids.

Rob and I have a ton of friends here in LA and they’ve definitely become family so much so that when we talk about moving to another city it gives us both pause when we realize exactly who we’d be leaving behind. But these friends have their own families that they go to during the holidays or birthdays or other special occasions. They don’t come to our house. And now that my mom lives in Lithuania, my biological family has shrunk even more to just me and my sister; something I don’t want to ever lose but might. It makes me wonder why family becomes more important to us as we get older and becomes of the utmost importance to us when we have kids. When we’re teens we want nothing to do with our families but at some point that switches and, if we’re lucky enough, we still have them around and we can appreciate them. For all the havoc that families create, it’s those little precious moments we have with them that stay in our minds and hearts and maybe that’s a contributing factor to why people have kids.