We're Gonna Make It After All

Originally published at KarenVernon.net on March 11, 2023

In honor of International Women’s Month, a memory mined in a writing class some years back:

A letter to Mary Tyler Moore upon her death (January 2017)

Dear Mary,

Your Mary Tyler Moore show, I learned this week, was considered groundbreaking in the 1970s. Groundbreaking? For me, not so much. Instead, pure comfort, woven into cherished childhood memories.

In my blossoming years – ages 7 to 14 – my grandmother and I spent nearly every Saturday afternoon and overnight together. Is it coincidence these were the same years in which your show aired? Could the debut of your show, in fact, have been the genesis of our longstanding weekly ritual?

Early afternoon each Saturday would find me near the front door, listening for the sounds of Nanny’s arrival to retrieve me from my home in “the country,” to free me from confinement. A brief visit – me chomping at the bit – and we’d depart, bent on adventure. Tame by any standards – a few hours of department store shopping along Main Street, then on to a favorite local restaurant for dinner. At last, a retreat to her small, tidy apartment for the evening. No matter what, a stop by the grocery store first, stocking up on snacks for the TV marathon that was to come.

Seven p.m. meant Lawrence Welk – fount of oft-remarked wonder by current friends and family, when they are treated spontaneously to the storehouse of show tunes deeply embedded in my brain, bursting forth with no warning when an occasion presents itself.

Then, speaking of groundbreaking, up next was the controversial All in the Family. Historical accounts say M*A*S*H was next in the lineup, but in my memory Archie and Edith were followed by either The Jeffersons or Maude – really, what must Nanny have been thinking to imprint these radical ideas on my impressionable psyche? On the other hand, perhaps this explains a lot.

Sandwiched between these shows and those that followed (The Bob Newhart Show, and our beloved Carol Burnett), there you were. Mary Richards, plucky single career woman, journalist, girl next door, figuring out life on your terms. A marvel that, upon your death this week, I’m struck at last by glaring similarities in how my own life unfolded, the wide-eyed awe with which I approached my early career. More wondrous still, how did I never think to view you through Nanny’s eyes, and see her reflected there?

On the surface, you and she couldn’t have been more different. Nanny, widowed at 22, when my grandfather was taken from her in one of the last battles of World War II and buried in a distant land. Left with two young daughters, Nanny went to work at whatever she could find, from serving students in a school cafeteria, to eventually sewing in a textile factory until she blissfully retired.

A neat generational stack, she, my mother and I resided in 20-year-increments. Mom was 20 when I was born, Nanny 40.  Rooted in her rural Appalachian community of family and church, Nanny was bigger-than-life. Gregarious. Her laughter and raucous comments always rang out loudest and longest. She was “all in,” and all “out there.”

The adult in me sees a counterpoint of pure grief that ran through her life as well. Mostly, that side of her was quiet. For the young girl that I was, she was the picture of womanly independence. She never remarried, considering no other man good enough to be allowed into her daughters’ lives.

Now, I see how young she was, too, on those shared Saturday nights in the ‘70s. Those years, those times of cultural upheaval, were among the most treasured of my childhood and adolescence. An overnight respite every week from my home overcrowded with younger brothers. A time to indulge in little treats of clothes, or special snacks. To most assuredly bask in the luxury of undivided attention. A time to benefit from her opinions (of these, she had many) and to absorb her teachings on fashion, politics, and “how things are done.”

Wide-eyed wonder now, again. Could it be that I was gift to her, as she was to me? Now, I glean the loneliness she must have felt, the need for companionship, the deep desire to care and to be cared for. To count on someone for one night each week – to share her home, a meal, ideas and hopes and dreams. A ritual to rely on. The inside track of laughs. Undergirding memories to cling to for a lifetime.

Mary, you gave us much more than a TV show. When you said that you were “gonna make it after all,” you proved to us that we could, too.

In gratitude, to strong women who led the way.