See You Next Tuesday: Vol. I, No. Two
After a quarter-century of chasing the Big Life, do I know how to slow down?
There’s a great moment in the final episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel that I think about often. Probably too often.
Midge, our aspiring comedienne, has struggled for years to make it big. She has the goods. She knows it. Her manager knows it. Everyone who sees her perform knows it. But the pieces never fall into place.
Here, in this final scene, she can snatch her dream from the jaws of defeat if she’s willing to take an enormous risk. Because, as Midge explains, she wants a Big Life, and she feels no need to apologize for refusing to spend her days in the motherhood-housewife-good girl-trap that the 1960s’ patriarchy built for women.
I was the girl who wanted the Big Life. I wanted to be where the action was, where the fight was. A life of quiet did not appeal. In some ways, it still doesn’t. But many Big Lives are location driven.
If you want to be an actress, it’s New York or L.A. If you want to be a pro-golfer, you better find some sunshine. And if you want to conquer government and politics, as I did and do, you need to live in a capital city, strutting through the marble halls.
I, however, mostly live in Spokane. My husband’s career has deemed it so. But maybe being on the bench isn’t a bad thing, at least for now.