>My Stars (Hollow)

I love the TV show, Gilmore Girls. It’s not so much for Lorelai and her daughter Rory, although they are wonderful in their roles, nor is for the clever, smart writing or the compelling storylines. I love Gilmore Girls
for Stars Hollow.

Stars Hollow is where most of the Gilmore Girls’ main characters live. It’s a marvelous New England village just a short bus ride away from New Haven, CT. The houses are charming. The village square is homey. The townspeople are quirky. Everything is within walking distance. Festivals are always being held and dance contests. Friends are constantly running into each other. Stars Hollow is like Mayberry, but still close enough to an urban area that its denizens aren’t a little bit scary, like they tend to be in “charming” rural towns here in the South.

I can tell I’m not alone in my wistful yearning for Stars Hollow. The Gilmore Girls’ creators seemed to prey on it, strategically placing hay bales, pumpkins and chrysanthemums on porches and sidewalks in the fall and a barbershop quartet in the village gazebo in the summer. It’s what most of us here in the suburbs really want, isn’t it?– A pretty little historical-looking community to call home, comfortably close enough to the big city that we can still have our career dreams, but far enough away that our kids can grow up in naive innocence. So how did so many of us end up in cookie cutter subdivisions, with neighbors who barely speak to one another and children who don’t even know the kids next door?

Anyway, I may not have Stars Hollow, but last night, I came damn close to achieving the Stars Hollow dream.

Our neighborhood park has been holding Friday night picnic concerts all summer long and last night, Hubs and I took the two smallest Ferriers and attended. I packed a picnic basket with homemade egg salad sandwiches, marinated mushrooms, Tuscan Three Cheese potato chips, orange cream sodas, and lemon bars for dessert. We settled down in the park on a blanket to listen to a Beatles tribute band, eat dinner, and let the kids play. It was a beautiful night, with a nice, cool breeze and brilliant orange clouds streaking across the twilit sky. Children ran about everywhere, chasing down bubbles blowing from an enormous bubble machine beside the stage, couples slow danced, old people smiled indulgently, and we had many nice conversations with people we knew.

I could almost imagine running into Lorelai Gilmore or Rory or Jess or Dean or Kirk or a dozen other characters from the show. And it hit me that every time we make a concerted family effort to attend a community picnic or a downtown library storytime or take a class at the zoo or pick up lunch at Bread and Company and eat at the botanical gardens, or have a cul-de-sac Halloween or Easter party, we’re creating a little bit of Stars Hollow for ourselves. Because while Nashville is big, it’s not that big; we run into people we know nearly everywhere we find ourselves. I may never achieve my dream of living in a town where I can walk everywhere I need to go, but I can enjoy all other things Stars Hollow, with a little bit of effort.

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.