it's crazy how you can long to be in a place that you've never been. a place that only exists though a screen; though in my heart it's absolutely real. that's what stars hollow is to me. a small town filled with colorful characters. where everyone frequents the same coffee shop, attends town meetings, eats at a place with pancake in the title that never serves pancakes, gives real welcome wagons, has town carnivals and everybody knows your name (and is all up in your business. with love). it's quirky but so relatable; makes me feel nostalgia for a place unseen and people never i've never met.
i don't recall exactly when i started watching gilmore girls. as with most of my favorite shows it wasn't until well after it had begun. after watching a few episodes i knew it was something i needed i my life. this was back in the mid 2000's so i got my hands on the first couple of seasons on dvd. my best friend in high school and i would text each other towards the end of the day "taco loins & gilmore girls?" - setting our after school plans. (back in the T9 predictive text world johns would often auto-correct to loins... so we embraced that) we'd eat our potato ole's and binge watch lorelai and rory until it was time to start our shifts at herbergers. a simpler time.
i felt such a connection to the characters and their story. it pulled me in and made me want to be part of it. it gave me all the emotions; making me belly laugh, feel frustration, feel the love when luke and lorelai (FINALLY) got together, feel the heartbreak when lorelai and rory had their rift and anytime i watch rory graduate from chilton or the series finale i cry like a baby. though the real life story for my momma and i is very different, i related to the beautiful friendship between mother and daughter, especially when we have marathons watching the show together. like rory, my mom is my best friend.
my beautiful mom and i on christmas
i proudly own all 7 seasons on dvd. i have watched the entire series, all 153 episodes, at minimum 8 times. it's become my comfort show, my safe place. when i went to college i only brought one season at first - season 4 - when rory goes to yale. during times when my anxiety is being a real you know what i find some peace and calm immersing myself in the latest stars hollow happenings. most recently i re-watched the series in preparation for the revival which released late last year. i was out of the country when it debuted (i know, poor me) and it wasn't in the cards for my momma and i to be together to watch. but we planned out watching them at the same and would facetime after each episode to share our thoughts each little moment, reference, cameo appearance in case the other didn't catch it. i loved the revival. it felt like coming home to see all the characters that i loved together again. and i completely did not see those being the last 4 words. at all. and as long as when i google 'gilmore girls: a year in the life' and it shows a dash after 2016... i will live in hope that there just may be another season. because i've got some questions.
remembering how special this show is to me last weekend, made it feel quite serendipitous that it was lauren grahams book, talking as fast as i can, that became the first book i've read - cover to cover - in years. i'm not a believer that every single thing in life has a meaning behind it. sometimes a bird sh*ting on your car as you pull out of the car wash isn't meant to tell you that perfectionism isn't a thing. sometimes it's just a bird. sh*ting on your car. but i am choosing to assign meaning to this book breaking my streak of non-reading. because it makes my heart happy to think that the gilmore girls helped me out again.
if you've ever felt this connection to another world created from books, television or movies, or if you are a fellow honorary gilmore girl... tell me about it!
