My children had to drag me away from Mrs. Doubtfire and the closing credits while I, who barely cried privately, let alone publicly, sat there sobbing with my hands up to my face.
So it was with happy anticipation that I waited for Rosie O’Donnell’s A Family is a Family, especially knowing that, as with the end of Mrs. Doubtfire, we were going to hear that a family, boys and girls, is made up of all kinds of people.
On the one hand, I wasn’t disappointed –- seeing all those adorable children in their various familial relationships, expressing that a family might consist of two mommies, or two daddies, or a mommy and a daddy, or a daddy and a grandmum, and so on. I laughed and clapped my hands and delighted in all of their youthful wisdom and honesty, tapping my feet to the happy music being performed throughout the show.
On the other hand, when the program ended forty minutes later, I said to myself…wait a minute…where’s the other half? Where is the part that says that some families have trouble, and sometimes family members have to go away (and that sometimes they aren’t able to come back, and sometimes they do), and that just because we’re related to people, even if it’s not blood-related but just related, it doesn’t mean that we are always going to feel safe or happy.
Okay, maybe take out the safe part, because no one wants a five-year-old to watch a TV show that suggests she might not be safe.
But honest to God, if I had been that child, waiting for my mum to come home from god knows where, not knowing who my father was, wishing I had siblings to take care of me and who I could help take care of, I would have been in my own childlike (that is, semi-subconscious) way devastated by what I had just seen on TV.
I would have felt like an outcast, an oddball, a misfit, betrayed and alone and somehow responsible. I would have said to myself, they forgot the poor part; the hungry part; the lonely part; the hard part. I would have wondered how I could go and find one of these families and then wonder, if I couldn’t, did that mean I didn’t deserve to have one?
The only hint of difficulty I heard in the short documentary was from Rosie herself, who asked her six-year-old daughter why she, Rosie, had grown up without a mother. “Because you’re mother died,'” was the response, which isn’t exactly what I’d want a child to be hearing either.
I guess what I wish is that Rosie might have called her documentary something that had the word or implication or concept of ideal in it. This way, children might know what it was okay to aspire to, and not feel quite so panicked when they looked around them and saw that mum had gone off to the bingo hall, dad was wasted in the bathroom, and brother Bobby had just set fire to Aunt Mildred’s hair.
Oh my dear Katie. You know some parents, when they're angry, they get along much better when they don't live together. They don't fight all the time, and they can become better people, and much better mummies and daddies for you. And sometimes they get back together. And sometimes they don't dear. And if they don't, don't blame yourself. Just because they don't love each other anymore, doesn't mean that they don't love you. There are all sorts of different families, Katie. Some families have one mommy, some families have one daddy, or two families. And some children live with their uncle or aunt. Some live with their grandparents, and some children live with foster parents. And some live in separate homes, in separate neighbourhoods, in different areas of the country - and they may not see each other for days, or weeks, months...even years at a time. But if there's love, dear...those are the ties that bind, and you'll have a family in your heart, forever. All my love to you poppit, you're going to be all right... bye bye.
Mrs. Doubtfire.
