I remember watching the first run of “Gilmore Girls” with my mom when I was five or six years old, not quite understanding the jokes fully but still idolizing the mother-daughter relationship between Rory and Lorelai Gilmore. Their relationship seemed so flawless to me: They were a hilarious, cute, inclusive, and generally fun mother-daughter pair.
But even more important than these qualities, as the song during the title sequence suggests, they were there for each other when they needed each other, and this seemed like the ultimate goal in a mother-daughter connection to me.
I had no idea at that point that my relationship with my own mother would grow to be not all too different from that of the Gilmore girls.
Losing my father when I was 11 years old was tragic, but it gave my mom and I the opportunity to become close on a different level than most mothers and daughters. It didn’t occur to me until my freshman year of college, when I rewatched all seven seasons of the series, that the mother-daughter relationship I’d looked up to as a little kid had become my reality.
I spent most of the weekends in my teenage years making popcorn and laying my head on my mom while we turned on a good (but cheesy) movie. Not unlike Rory, homework and studying were my top priority, and then spending time with my mom was what came next. Anywhere we went, people were astonished at how much we resembled one another.
Eventually when I came to college, she was the first person I called when I needed something — it felt like there was nobody else who could understand me better. I wasn’t as lucky as Rory though, because the trip from Los Angeles to Seattle is not as simple as the drive from Stars Hollow to Yale. But whether I’d gotten in a fight with a friend, received a bad grade in a class, or simply just missed home, she was always waiting for me on the other end of a phone call.
We might not have always had the same witty banter as Lorelai and Rory (which could have been due to the one major difference between my mom and Lorelai –– my mom only drinks decaf coffee), but my mom brought me up to always incorporate the optimal levels of fun and weirdness into my days. When my mom took my college friends out for dinner freshman year, they were not surprised at the loud fun she brought to the table.
While I reserve my outspokenness for those who know me exceedingly well and can at times feel embarrassed by how loud my mom is, I’ll always appreciate the way she taught me to laugh so fully, and I’ve learned to carry that me wherever I go.
Of course there have been rough patches: We can’t forget season six of “Gilmore Girls,” when Rory delves deep into dating Logan, lives with her grandparents, and stops talking to her mother. It seems only natural that mothers and daughters have difficult moments with one another, and this becomes even more likely the more similar they are. Similar to Rory, that moment wasn’t in my high school years, but we sometimes butt heads now that I’m older.
However, just as season seven of “Gilmore Girls” showcased Lorelai and Rory as close as ever, that’s the type of relationship my mom and I continue to have.
Although having a mom double as a best friend is complicated, I wouldn’t change it for anything. The Gilmore Girl life is the life for me.
Reach Opinion Editor Rebecca Gross at arts@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @becsgross
