M*A*S*H
Tuesday, October 26th, 2004Heather, age 6, is on the floor scooting plastic horses around the living room.
“Do do-do do do do doo” she sings, then tilts her purple horse back onto its hind legs and whinnies in her well-practiced horse voice.
She sings again, the same thing, “Do do-do do do do doo,” and this time the tune is familiar, one I’ve heard before…somewhere. What is that song?
“Heather, what are you singing?” I ask.
“Huh?” she says, looking up from the horses she has lying on their sides on the floor.
“What song were you singing?”
“It’s the song from our favorite show,” she says, hopping to to the couch where I’m sitting, wrinkling her nose at me, and snatching the silver dollar from the couch cushion next to me. She gave the silver dollar to me a few minutes ago to look at.
“Sometimes I take a bath, and I hear the song from our favorite show.” She sings the tune once more. “I get out of the bath really really fast, and I dry myself off with a towel.” She jumps to her feet and dances around, pretending to dry herself off with an imaginary towel. “I put on my clothes, and I run to the TV.” She runs around the room and stops in front to the TV.
The TV is perched in a wooden armoire with two tall doors in front. Heather tugs at one of the doors with both hands until it opens. She reaches inside for something then peaks at me from behind the door, giggling, before running across the room and jumping on the couch next to me.
“See,” she says, “our favorite show.”
She’s holding a DVD case. The cover says, “M*A*S*H. Season Two Collector’s Edition.”
M*A*S*H is an old TV show. It ran from the early 70’s to the early 80’s in the U.S. The show was a comedy about the staff of an army hospital during the Korean War who found laughter to be the best medicine.
I remember watching re-runs of the show when I was a kid. The theme song plays in my head, the soundtrack to our conversation. (Listen to mash.mp3)
Heather pages through the booklet she has carefully removed from the inside cover of the DVD case. She giggles and points at a photo of a man wearing a pink dress and a towel around his head. “That crazy Klinger,” she says, “He thinks he’s a girl.”
Heather and her three older brothers and her mom and dad love M*A*S*H. It’s a family favorite. They got hooked after borrowing season one on DVD from friends. Now they own season two and three. Jesse, the oldest brother, says he’s seen part of season 6, the last series that’s been released on DVD to date. Jesse’s a family hero. He even rigged his mom’s mobile phone so that when she gets a call, the phone plays the M*A*S*H theme song as its ring tone.
As for me, I remember M*A*S*H was on everyday after The Simpsons for a few years during high school. I’d be sitting on the couch, and as soon as I would heard that song (Do do-do do do do doo) and would see the army helicopter flying across the TV screen, I’d scrounge around for the remote and change the channel to Seinfeld. I never cared much for M*A*S*H.
But tonight, I’m in the mood. It’s not the show I’m interested in. It’s everything that comes with watching the show in this house. I want to be a part of it all.
This week is my vacation. I came here to visit Heather and her family so I could get away, be a little selfish, do the things I want to do.
The funny thing is I’m finding that what I want is actually the opposite. What I’ve enjoyed most about this week is that I haven’t had to think about myself and what I want at all. I’ve been too busy letting the kids drag me around the house, doing kids stuff, getting all excited about putting stickers of football players in a collector’s book, watching The Little Mermaid and singing all the songs whether I know them or not, playing catch with the dogs in the yard, oohing and aahing over a random assortment of animal remains (including a glazed pile of elephant dung) and, of course, playing with fire.
I have no plans of starting a baby-sitting business or anything like that. Let’s make that clear. I don’t want any of you getting ideas.
It’s just nice being here and not having to think about myself all the time. I’m 25, no kids, living in the center of a major city, and my life is full of grocery-cart relationships. I walk down the aisle, I find the brand of cereal I like or the frozen pizza on-sale, and I throw it in the cart. I go to my favorite pub or to my writing group, I meet someone with similar interests, someone who reads the same books I do, so I get their email address, I throw them in the cart. My relationships are my choice. They’re good for me. My friends make sense.
Welcome to Kelly’s universe.
I just think it’s ironic that so many of us fight like pit-bulls to do life our way. We think happiness, enlightenment, nirvana, whatever you want to call it is a blank check with our name on it. Life is a target, and we’re the bull’s eye. But in the end, what we really need, is a vacation from ourselves. And maybe, just maybe, the best medicine is family, those clingy, high-maintenance, rag-tag people that won’t let us get away with being the poster child for Me magazine.
So I’ve decided not to take the bus to the beach today. I just don’t want to go. I know, I know, I’m on vacation.
But if it’s not to much to ask, I thought maybe when Heather gets out of the bath tub, we could call the boys down from the attic, get comfortable on the couch, and watch an episode of M*A*S*H.
