Making it After All

There is a song that evokes such strong emotion in me that whenever I hear it I react viscerally. Something stirs in me and I go back to my former home, the place I first heard it, came to love it, got something from it that is really hard to explain.

Don't laugh: it's the theme song from the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

The show came out in 1970 and ran through 1977. It wasn't until about the middle of its run that it began to mean something to me. I was 11 in 1975; it was the year my father died, the year in which I began to be responsible for my little sister when my mother went out at night - cards on Fridays, bingo on Tuesdays, a date on a Saturday. It was a time during which I struggled; the middle school years were hard, a time I needed company, reassurance, a feeling that I wasn't going to fall off the edge of the earth.

Although I was supposed to be sleeping by the time my mom got home, I sneaked and kept the TV on the night of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. In the dark watching TV and listening for the slam of her car door, I'd hear it while the credits rolled and fly off the couch. I'd quick press the off button and run into my room, jump into bed. But she always knew. Invariably, I got into trouble for staying up past my bedtime and watching television. How did she know? Maybe she had extraordinary mom-eyes that saw things when she wasn't there, or some kind of uncanny power that enabled her to pick up on the guilty consciousnesses of pre-teen girls. But most likely it was the little clicks and pops the TV made after it was turned off, the fact that it was still warm.

I wished I could explain to her how it felt to have Mary Tyler Moore in my living room when she wasn't. My house was dark, the rooms silent but for my sister's sleep breathing, but the WJM newsroom was always lit up, the laughter, background music, coarse and loveable characters in living color beckoning me weekly. Mary Richards was beautiful and brave; she drove all the way to Minneapolis to start a new life in a hip studio apartment complete with that awesome wall-to-wall shag carpeting, and Rhoda, her funny best friend who was there anytime she needed her. She had the best hair flip, a lithe body that looked great in everything, and dates with some really foxy guys. But best of all, she had special relationships with her friend, newswriter Murray Slaughter, and her boss, the prickly Mr. Grant. They both always had Mary's best interests at heart; it was kind of like she had two dads.

My mother would be angry with me for disobeying her, for staying up late, for sneaking around and lying, so there was no explaining the draw, no way of even understanding it myself. But now I see it.

Every Sunday I try to catch the show. It's on MeTV at 11:00 p.m. and I get to stay up and watch it if I want! And I do, almost every week. Entertainment Weekly once ranked the image of Mary tossing her hat into the air in the opening credits as the number two greatest moment in television, but for me, it's the song...

Love is all around...you're gonna make it after all.