Through my growing-up years, the flicker shadows from the TV were a constant in our family room. We turned it on when we woke in the mornings, and Mom kept it on until well after we went to bed at night. The TV music and chatter and laughter and tears became the backdrop that took the place of other conversations we might have had.
On school nights, Mom sat on the sofa, and I sat on the linoleum floor in front of her, and we watched TV while she put curlers in my hair. I admired the long legs and synchronized moves of the June Taylor Dancers. I never missed a Miss America pageant. I watched Mary Tyler Moore be the wife of Dick Van Dyke and Lucille Ball be the wife of Desi Arnaz in reruns of I Love Lucy. These housewives spent their days doing funny things they had to hide from their husbands. They slept in twin beds. They had kids who were cute and mostly perfect, and being a mom looked perfect too.
Each week, Eva Gabor cried out her longing for Park Avenue on Green Acres, and Mom bopped me on the head with the tooth end of the rat-tail comb if I laughed too much and caused her to lose strands of my hair from her hold. The Green Acres wife didn’t have kids, and she seemed silly and vain, but she stayed loyal to her husband, who wanted to be a farmer.
Some women on TV didn’t have kids. On The Andy Griffith Show old Aunt Bee worried endlessly about her nephew Andy and his son Opie. Sometimes she got flustered, but she always had the best advice, the most comfort. Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke was strong and wise and a business owner who’d saved up her bartending wages and bought the Long Branch Saloon. Plus she loved the sheriff.
The hairstyles Mom created for me in front of the TV went from ringlets to loose curls to the shortest Twiggy cut. She stopped doing my hair in my middle-school years when I decided to grow it out long and straight. Then I spent time in front of the TV brushing my own hair and practicing braids.
The TV women changed like my hairstyles. Mary Tyler Moore got her own show. She went from being Dick Van Dyke’s anxious wife to a single woman, working in news. Lucille Ball went from being Desi’s wife to being a widow with kids who were so rarely on screen that it seemed like she didn’t have kids at all. Mostly she was Mr. Mooney’s secretary.
Carol Burnett had her own show and the men were funny sidekicks.
Sandy Duncan and Rhoda and Charlie’s Angels were headliners. These women lived another kind of life, a life of career and city. Even though they dated and longed for a man, even though their bosses were always men, these women didn’t have kids, and that looked like a fine life too.
Real-life men on TV did big things I thought I’d like to do too. The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau came on every Sunday night. I imagined myself in the gray ocean, brave against sharks and manta rays. I followed Mike Wallace and Harry Reasoner asking 60 Minutes of serious questions with concerned looks on their faces. On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, men boxed and raced and skied. I could be Mario Andretti, Jackie Stewart, Jean-Claude Killy. I could be brave. I could speak clear, sure words, ask questions, be smart, go fast.