SOMETHING ABOUT MARY

After getting dumped in Denver and checking into the hotel, I had to book my flight home, tail between my legs. Sitting in a nondescript hotel room with an ugly sofa and a clunky black desk way out of proportion for the space—Evan would have hated it—I imagined an automated voice saying, You have reached your destination. Please, no. But the voice didn’t relent and say, Recalculating. This was it. Hello, humiliation.

 

Back in the car with Evan, I’d known I had two stress-based options to respond to the breakup: fight or flight. I had enough self-dignity to sense that the first option was useless. Why up the humiliation? So flight then. Quite literally. I scrolled one-way options, all pricey given the short notice, some offering a quick turnaround. Yes, I thought. Just get me home. ASAP. Let me crawl into my own bed and fall apart. In a span of thirty-six hours, all of it centered on travel, this final episode would be over. Exhausting, to be sure, but I’d be exhausted under any scenario given the circumstances. 

 

But then I chose to delay my retreat by a day. Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I held out hope that Evan would come to his senses and text, “Where are you?” I’d respond: “I’m still here.” Geographically, metaphorically, desperately(?). 

 

It’s programmed in me to stick with things. Thick or thin…whatever that means. But what I actually told myself was that, while he’d ended us, Denver was just an innocent bystander. If I stayed and spent an extra day, maybe it wouldn’t be forevermore known to me as The City Where I Got Dumped. It felt kinder to myself if I stuck around and let the unfamiliar surroundings distract me. My bed at home would bring on full wallowing. Maybe a slow release—or, at least, a delayed release—of pain would be healthier. 

 

As I walked the streets of Denver, one of Evan’s misplaced criticisms kept popping in my head. “You’re only here for fun. You’re not here to help.” It was a gross diminishment of me and of us. Still I could hear him saying, “See? I told you so.” Crazy. He’d turfed me. He’d shut down any opportunity to prove myself. (Just the thought of having to prove myself two years into a relationship feels sad.) I did what I often do in my own city and in other places. I snapped photos. Specifically, I went on a mural hunt. It wasn’t so fun. Instead, it was forced distraction. More murals, Denver. Please.

 

The city came through. Thank you!

 

My return trip mirrored the one from forty-eight hours prior with the layover in Seattle being a little longer. Blessedly less stress about making the connection. First, I had to manage Denver’s airport which has always felt especially chaotic. I didn’t even try. I flagged down personnel for guidance and they were incredibly nice. Could they sense the old guy needed to be treated with kid gloves? Did they see the L on my forehead? 

 

When I boarded the plane, I glanced at the screen attached to the back of the seat in front of me. I rarely pay attention to in-flight programming. The little headphones don’t suit me. Even at full volume, I can’t hear a lot of the audio. Does it even count if I say I watched West Side Story on the plane when I can’t lipread?  

 

I don’t know if West Side Story was a choice. I didn’t scroll through the movie menu. Instead my eyes stared at the current slide—3 of 25—and I knew in an instant I had a way to sit through this flight without my mind obsessing on what the hell had happened to my relationship. Pass the distraction baton from Denver wall art to Mary Tyler Moore.

 

My Mary! In a true moment of need.

 

I can’t fully explain it, but no TV series has had a bigger impact on who I am than The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Sure, I adored St. Elsewhere, I longed for a house like Hope and Michael had on thirtysomething where friends always popped by—ditto an apartment complex like 28 Barbary Lane in any incarnation of Tales of the City—and I have often wavered on who best represents me on Sex in the City (mostly Miranda, but with moments of Carrie or Charlotte, never Samantha). But I connect with Mary Richards to the core, someone always trying to do the right thing while navigating wackiness all around her. In the pilot episode, Mary Richards is fresh off a breakup and has to make it on her own. (Suddenly, an extra connection.) The theme song’s nods to notions that “love is all around” and “you might just make it after all” always lift my spirits, offering hope and making me believe I’ll one day throw my hat in the air at a busy intersection as a gesture of celebrating success and a joie de vivre while the busy-ness of life surrounds me.

 

I’m not overstating this. I’ve read my hardcover copy of Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s engrossing Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted (Simon & Schuster, 2013) multiple times and it’s chalk full of Post-its marking various passages. During COVID, I conducted several online searches to finally acquire an MTM t-shirt. (There were copyright issues.) Throughout the series, she’s open to dating, but accepts being single, shrugging off bad dates. I often listen to the theme song (“Love Is All Around”) on YouTube for an instant pick-me-up and I still love to watch episodes on the internet. Most telling, however, is the fact that, in 2015, I planned a weeklong trip to Minneapolis, where the show was set, just to see the places Mary Richards was filmed in the opening and closing credits. (I wrote six blog posts about it, beginning here.)

 

I could elaborate but I think I’ve said too much already.

 

With the plane still sitting at the gate, I glanced up from the screen and saw a flight attendant approach, holding up those cheap headsets I didn’t think were still offered. My fastened seatbelt kept me from leaping into the aisle. I waited patiently and was rewarded with my swag item…way better then those miniature cookies or pretzels. 

 

Just as captivating as Laura Petrie
on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Immediately, I plugged in the earphones and began watching Being Mary Tyler Moore. There were interruptions, of course. The standard blah-blah-blah about my seat cushion as a floatation device—between Denver and Seattle?—and federal regulations prohibiting vaping and smoking. (A reminder that not everything was better about flying in the old days.) 

 

Back to Mary (and a fairly decent audio!).

 

Most of Mary Tyler Moore’s story was familiar to me. It made some of her personal statements in interviews stand out even more. Prior to being cast in Ordinary People (1980), her roles had been sunny and optimistic. Prior to my breakdown at forty-nine, I had clung to a similar façade in life. She described herself has having long been protective, reserved and afraid to show imperfection and one segment described her as a “self-styled workhouse.” I’d always related to the character, Mary Richards, but there was more to connect with regarding Mary Tyler Moore. I needed this. I needed to connect to someone, even a dead celebrity (and icon!).

 

The documentary lasted almost the entire flight. Sugar for my brain on any other occasion but true medicine on this day. Yes, sometimes a sugar pill is exactly what a wounded soul needs. Relief for two solid hours. 

 

   

 

CHASING MARY--And So It Begins

I suppose it began with “Sesame Street”. A crucial episode when M was the letter of the day. It helped me overcome a key sticking point in my learning. I could spout off the alphabet in a familiar singsong voice, but I’d thought the fast part in the middle, LMNOP, was the name of a single letter. Bert and Ernie et al. set me straight. That breakthrough proved huge. My phonetic awareness grew—m is for mom, m is for monkey.

What a cool letter!

And I became conscious of environmental print—my street name began with M and then there was the big yellow M for McDonald’s. But the fast food sign could not compete with the block, typeset capital M on the wall of a sitcom apartment set. M was for Mary. Was and is. Mary Richards, portrayed by MTM, Mary Tyler Moore.

There was always something about Mary. She visited my living room every Saturday night and, being as that was never a school night, I had the privilege of staying up “late” and seeing her navigate the newsroom and the homefront in a tiny apartment where everyone popped by. I got used to Mary’s place long before Jerry’s. Loopy people dropped in at will. She always had the time or was too polite to say otherwise. No wonder she remained single.

Even as an eight-year-old boy, I identified with Mary. She was my role model. Always gracious, always fighting to remain unflappable despite all that flapped around her. Mary taught me that the world was beyond my control. It was best to hold on to my convictions and greet the onslaught of oddities with a shrug and a smile.

Countless times growing up and throughout my adulthood, I’ve been deluged by other people’s problems. I am an established dumping ground. And as my own beloved Ted Baxters and Rhoda Morgenterns go on at length about a current conundrum, I find myself drifting off, if only for a moment, and saying, “Hello, Mary.”

And so it was only a matter of time before I set out to find Mary Richards. While my colleagues planned summer getaways in Italy and Nicaragua, I set my sights on Minneapolis.

I know I am no better than my eleventh grade classmate who showed up at school on a random, i.e., non-Halloween, day dressed as Darth Vader. Perhaps I am no further evolved than the four-year-old boy I recently saw in full Spiderman costume—just because—or all the little girls at Disneyworld in princess regalia. I do know Mary Richards is not real and she is certainly neither princess nor superhero; still, there is reality in her character due to the fine writing of the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” staff.

I also know that the show has, as one online source described it, only a “tenuous” connection with Minneapolis. The show was always shot in a studio in L.A. But the opening and closing credits of the show solidly placed it in Minnesota’s largest city. As Sonny Curtis sang “Who can turn the world on with her smile?” we saw Mary Richards driving to town, naïve yet filled with aw-shucks anticipation. We saw a balcony restaurant and the opening ended with that iconic scene surrounded by pedestrians as she tossed her hat in the air, a hurrah, a Let’s-make-a-go-of-this. Indeed the optimism evolved in the theme song, with a second season lyric change from “You might just make it” to “You’re gonna make it.” After all, this was Mary Richards. Human, not superhuman. Indefatigable despite mishaps, hard-knocks and humiliations. As far as I could see things, how could one not want to make a pilgrimage to a veritable City of Hope? Yes, Minneapolis.

I will admit to waffling. I’d planned on Minneapolis last summer after feasting on Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s delightful book Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, a behind-the-scenes confection about the show. Maybe “feasting” is the wrong word; I consumed the book in bite-size pieces, overjoyed with each passage, needing to set the reading aside to savor the anecdotes.

I doubted the trip. As I incurred too many expenses in the spring—a higher mortgage for a teensy Vancouver condo, car payments for a teensy new car (a Mini Cooper)—I knew the responsible thing to do would be to spend summer at home. What’s not to love about Vancouver in the summer?

But as soon as school let out, I felt restless. Minneapolis was personal business. It had been my destination since I was that eight-year-old, sitting on a sofa in the den of a brick house in Hamilton, Ontario.

I’d put off Mary long enough.