Do certain TV shows stay with you forever because of what you were doing when you saw them? Lilian Darcy joins us on the blog today to tell some of her own captivating stories! Keep reading and comment for a chance to win a $10 Amazon gift card!
Thanks so much for having me on your blog, Julie!
First, a little bit about me for those who don’t know. I’ve written over eighty contemporary romances for Harlequin, Silhouette and Mills & Boon, and am now also writing women’s and mainstream bookclub fiction. I’m a five-time finalist in the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious Rita Award – thrilled to be a finalist again this year, in Best Short Contemporary Romance! – and have also written for Australian theater and television.
I have a husband, four kids, a cat, several chickens and two thoroughbred performance horses – although my daughter is under the impression that those are hers. I like hiking, winter sports, gardening and of course reading. Truth be told, I would like to have a less eventful life, but every time I attempt to scale down, something else shows up to fill the available space.
And now my little musing on…
LIFE’S MOST MEMORABLE TV.
Most of us vividly remember where we were when we heard that John Lennon had been gunned down on the steps of the Dakota building – or, if you prefer, when we heard that Justin Bieber had been arrested for speeding on an LA freeway – but for me there’s and even more vivid connection between certain periods in my life and the TV or videos or DVDs that I was watching then.
Here are some of my life events, and the TV that’s inextricably linked to them. I wonder if any of them resonate with you.
- The time I was apartment-sitting in a pre-war studio apartment on New York’s Upper West Side, and in the next apartment lived a concert violinist who practiced for nine hours a day, and I drowned it out with cable repeats of…
“The Brady Girls Get Married.”
- In labor with my second baby at around midnight on a Saturday night, and the TV in the hospital room was showing…
Well, it was until I lovingly and supportively suggested to my husband that this was the last show in the entire universe that a laboring woman would feel like watching.
- The time we were living in Ohio and my husband was working in New Yorkfor the summer, so I was on my own with a manic one-year-old in an un-air-conditioned house, and the highlight of my week was…
“Northern Exposure” on Tuesday nights.
- The winter that I was imprisoned in this same house for what felt like about eight months with a baby and a sniffly three-year-old and the three-year-old was totally in love with…
A children’s Christmas carol video (whose exact title I have suppressed, for the sake of my mental health) so we just watched it over and over again. I still can’t hear “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” without developing claustrophobia and flu-like symptoms.
- The two fall days when we left our kids with Grandma in New Jersey and booked ourselves into a Manhattan hotel for two nights of couple time, and the first evening we went out to dinner and had a great night, and then we woke up the next morning and it was September 11, 2001, and we spent that numb, terrible day like so many others in Manhattan, going to the nearest hospital to try to donate blood but nobody needed it, sitting silent on a bench in Central Park while the smoke billowed at the lower end of Fifth Avenue, and the sky to the north was perfectly clear and blue. We went to the Port Authority Bus Terminal to try to get back to New Jersey to be with our family, but couldn’t find a way out of the city, so we picked up take-out Chinese for dinner and ate it in our hotel room and watched…
“28 Days” with Sandra Bullock and Viggo Mortensen.
- Last summer when my mother-in-law came from New Jersey to visit (we live in Australia now) and forgot to bring her hearing-aid, and didn’t really *get* Australian TV, even when it had closed captions, so she and I binge-watched DVDs of…
“Modern Family”, which she hadn’t really *got* before, either, because she didn’t understand the relationships (I blame the hearing-aid batteries) but I freeze-framed it at that part in the beginning where they show each family together and explained it to her. “He’s the father of her and him, but he’s divorced from their mother, and she’s his second wife, and that’s her son from her first marriage…” After this, she loved it and we had some great laughs over it together.
- The three-day vacation in the mountains that my husband and I took just a few weeks ago, when we hiked miles during the day, and then watched the first two seasons of…
UK crime drama “Scott and Bailey” on DVD at night. (Oh, “Scott and Bailey.” I love thee beyond all reason. I cannot wait for Season Three.)
Now tell me some of yours. Did you watch “28 Days” that night?
And if you’re in the mood for binge-reading instead of binge-watching, try my romances from Harlequin Special Edition, or my mainstream bookclub fiction, and watch out for an exciting new women’s fiction series called Montana Born, featuring books by Jane Porter, Megan Crane, C J Carmichael and me, launching in November. Find me at www.liliandarcy.com, at www.backlistebooks.com on Twitter at @liliandarcy, and on Facebook.
Thanks to Lilian for sharing her most memorable movie moments! What are some of yours? Don’t forget to comment for a chance to win a $10 Amazon gift card!
[signoff]
haven’t seen any of those shows
Well, I don’t recommend all of them!
Most people seem to love Modern Family, though.
My boys loved Thomas The Tank Engine and I swear I have watched a thousand hours of Thomas. My fav narrator was Ringo Star. Can’t think of an event to tie it to except the first four years of the first four boys. Love the cover of Saving Gerda. xx Fi
Oh, yes, I so agree with you about Thomas the Tank. The theme music from that takes me right back to the toddler years, especially stuck inside in bad weather. You’re right, a thousand hours.
Thanks for saying you love the Saving Gerda cover! I love it, too!
I remember when a good friend of mine was in New york on Sept 11th, too — we (her friends) were all frantically emailing and phoning each other trying to work out what her exact plans for that day were.
And I remember when I was a little girl, sitting on my dad’s knee as we watched the Kennedy funeral. I was too small to really understand, but the weight of my parents emotion really affected me and I’ve never forgotten it.
Yes, Annie, sometimes the TV isn’t the background, it’s the thing you’re riveted to. This week it’s been that way, with what’s been happening in Boston. I wonder if in years to come people closely affected by the bombing will remember the things they turned to for time out this week.
My boys loved Pokemon when they were little. Only trouble was, we were living in Malaysia at the time and the characters all spoke in Chinese. Except for the Pokemon. They oohed, ahed, squealed, groaned, sighed and roared in a language known to us all. I still can’t watch the show without letting rip with a loud and enthusiastic ‘Pikaaaaaaaaachoooooo.’
Sounds as if a few of us have really strong memories of what we watched over and over when our kids were little. We had Pokemon, too, and Madeline, Babar, all sorts of things that still sound very familiar if I catch them on TV.
I remember watching the moon landing, Lilian. We had the day off school and it was very exciting, watching the grainy shadows emerging from the capsule, but after a few hours we of the short attention spans grew bored. I think the miracle was wasted on us, being so young. I guess you tend to take things much more for granted when you’re a child – you haven’t been waiting all your life for such a miracle. But after watching the Aussie movie, ‘The Dish’, about Australian tracking stations being the observatories that beamed the pictures to the rest of the world, I have a whole new appreciation for all the miracles that went into that landing and the telecast. Quite the achievement all around.
I remember the moon landing, too. We had school, but then went to friends’ houses who lived close to the school to watch it on TV. Yes, our school didn’t even have enough televisions in those days, just a couple so the whole school couldn’t watch at once.
I remember the moon landing, too — except we were at school. They herded us out into the quadrangle and we stood and watched a bunch of TVs they’d rigged up outside.
Loved that movie The Dish, Trish (hey you rhyme with it)
Standing outside at school to watch TV. That does sound so 1969!
I have really vivid memories of TV during 9/11–the entire world was glued to their televisions at that time, no matter where I went. Home, school, work…everybody wanted to know what was happening at every moment.
On the happier side of the spectrum, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood could be on all day and I would be happy. That show was my childhood.
We didn’t have Mr Rogers here in Australia, Julie – although we had Sesame Street – so I only got to know him through my own kids when we lived in the US, during their pre-school years.
We had the TV on all day during 9/11, too, but by the evening, we were feeling so drained, being almost on the spot, we took refuge in a movie. “28 Days” wasn’t exactly escapist, but it was very good.