I wake up, push my blankets to the side and step onto the cold, wooden floor. I glance at the pile of cardboard boxes full of books and posters that I’ve neatly organized in one corner of the room. 

As I walk toward the door, I hear soft creeks in the wood. I could never hear this gentle of a sound early in the morning before. When we lived with him.

I walk into the living room, messy piles of boxes lie between me and the kitchen. I look to my left and see my mom sitting on the couch, drinking a cup of coffee from her teal mug. I hear a familiar noise coming from the TV. 

“Where you lead, I will follow,” quietly exits the speakers.

Is she watching what I think she is watching? I glance at the TV. 

It is.

“Are you watching ‘Gilmore Girls’?” I ask her

Why would she be watching a show about a mother and daughter with a great relationship when that is the opposite of her life?

“Yep, you are always watching it, so I figured I’d give it a try,” she replied.

I walk toward the kitchen and decide to just brush off that my mom was watching a show that I loved.  

Later that night, my mom made chicken legs and mashed potatoes for dinner. We fix our plates, and I head for the table.

“Do you want to watch ‘Gilmore Girls’ while we eat?” she asks

I hesitate. We always eat at the table and make polite small talk. That I’m used to. Eating dinner on TV trays on the couch together with a known topic of conversation I actually care about is uncharted territory. Maybe she’s trying to connect?

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to; it’s just an option.” 

“We can watch,” I reply. 

I take my plate, a paper napkin and a cup of water to the living room. My mom set up two TV trays, one by the recliner she is sitting in and one by the couch that I am supposed to sit in?

 I place my plate down on the TV tray, take a seat on the couch and carefully bite into my chicken leg while the familiar song plays in the background of a completely foreign situation. 

The next few nights, we do the same thing. Each time I relax a little more, easing my posture on my couch cushion. We watch season 1, and eventually 1 becomes 4. Months go by of watching “Gilmore Girls” on our TV trays. No forced small talk, just Rory and Lorelai, Taylor and Ms. Patty.  

“Are you team Dean or Jess?” I ask my mom.

“Jess. I wish he wasn’t such a bad boy, but Dean is so controlling and possessive that he definitely is not the right option,” she says.

We continue on like this, and eventually we start talking about our days before we fix our plates. Now, polite small talk has been replaced by stories of rude clients at work and an unexpected test I somehow aced. 

We reach season 6, and I ask her: “So mom, are you team Dean, Jess or Logan?”

“Logan. I think he treats her the best. Although I think older Jess is the best fit for Rory, he was just too late in getting his act together.” 

“I agree,” I say back, surprised to have the same view as my mom on something that means so much to me.

We eventually finished the series but restarted it immediately. We both didn’t want to lose that time, because it wasn’t just watching a show with dinner. It was my mom showing that she cared and valued my views and opinions for the first time in so long. 

My mom and I no longer need the show to connect because little did we know, every time we sat down with our dinner on those TV trays, we were watching lessons of how to become a closer mother and daughter pair. Sure, Lorelai and Rory have their problems and my mom and I talk about them at length, but they taught us how to talk. How to connect, after our ties had been severed by a man my mom no longer let hold the scissors so close to her and her daughters’ hearts. 

It’s never a requirement for me to sit on that couch with that TV tray, but most nights I still do. 

We’ve moved from the run-down duplex to a home we call our own. Our TV Trays came with us. When I don’t spend dinner in the living room with my mom, I spend it in my room with its poster-covered walls, a pile of dirty clothes in the corner,  shelves full of books, a mahogany vanilla scented candle lit on my bed-side table and my phone sitting next to me with a notification from my mom with a link to an AI cat video. We no longer need the scheduled time of our nightly episode to keep us connected. Now it’s long talks in the car, yelling at our cat to get off the counter for the 300th time and laughing over my brother’s inability to use just one cup. 

We can now connect through the small things because we took that leap to let the Gilmore Girls teach us the big thing.