Urban familia
July 16, 2004
I've been watching the 5th season of the best show ever all day long. The best show ever, of course, being Sex and the City. I was a latecomer to the SatC craze. Sometime during the 5th season of the show, I discovered the 1st season thanks to the wonder that is Penn's Resnet (how I miss thee). Anyway, shortly after watching much of the 1st season on Resnet I brought home the next 3 seasons on DVD and completely overdosed on SatC, bringing Di with me. And a good time was had by...well, most.
In any case, the 5th season's not my favorite (I'd say the 4th, definitely), but it's all I have on me here. Watching it reminded me of my biggest reason for loving the show - the whole concept of "urban family" and the idea of having these good, great friends who love you like family, maybe more, because they love cause they want to and not because they have to.
And it all made me really miss MY urban family. The people who loved me and took care of me in my longish short time in Philly, and who, each in their own way, totally changed my world. I hope that we'll all grow old together. [Entry was interrupted due to internet glitch]. As cheesy as that sounds it's something I've always kind of hoped for. As a young kid I didn't have many friends. For a period we moved around, or I moved from school to school too often to really make any solid friends. (I know, sob, sob. Shut up). Anyway, when I moved to Kuwait there I found a group of friends who meant the world to me, but after college I realized that those friends were never as close to me, and don't know me as well as those I got to know in Philly. I haven't really figured it out yet. I love my friends in Kuwait. I'd trust them with anything, but somehow we always all seemed to be too self-conscious to share certain things. Then again, the experiences I had with college friends weren't as painful and life-changing as those I had with my high school friends. Sure, there were a lot of painful incidents, but not quite in the same way. I think because in collge I was becoming more of myself, and more comfortable with myself, and I had more control over what I was doing. Maybe that's the difference. But back to SatC, I've noticed that they almost never show real family. Does Carrie have sisters? Who knows! Was Samantha raised by a preacher? Probably! (I mean, it would explain a few things...)The important things is that they don't need that other kind of family when they have a just-as-good-if-not-in-some-ways-better kind of family. My favorite episodes are by far the ones where the girls all come together and are there for each other. I'm talking about Charlotte's Wedding, and Miranda's Wedding, and the episode where they go to L.A. and the one where they go to Atlantic City. Basically, the ones where one of them comes to term with some difficult issue or other, and which tend to end with pictures being taken of the four of them. Those episodes remind me of the good times I've had with all my urban family but especially of the great times I've had with Di and Yul, smoking and bitching about boys, girls, classes...you name it, back in Philly. Times we relived to some extent when I went to visit them in London, and on my last night there we downed a bottle of champagne (and some homemade cranberry vodka stuff), watched SatC, smoked, and bitched about boys, work, life, etc. I felt a lot of guilt for a long time about my own lack of openness with my real family, and my inability to communicate who I was to them. And about my almost total reliance on my friends for emotional support. The way I was raised your blood is your entire world, and thoughts to the contrary are in a sense a betrayal of all that. But some good friends helped me come to terms with that, as they came to terms with it themselves, in their own lives. What they've helped me to discover is this--while my family will always be my family, reminding me who I am and where I came from, my friends can be, and are, my slightly less dysfunctional, more fluid kinda family that I always want to see on the holidays. So, if any of my fabulous urban family really, really loves me, and wants to send me the 6th season of Sex and the City, I'll love you even more than I do now, if that's at all possible.