{"id":1519,"date":"2008-05-29T01:08:07","date_gmt":"2008-05-29T01:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/29\/charmed-again-a\/"},"modified":"2016-05-12T09:13:42","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T16:13:42","slug":"charmed-again-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/29\/charmed-again-a\/","title":{"rendered":"CHARMED, AGAIN. AND PROBABLY NOT FOR THE LAST TIME"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Charmed_may_2008\"<\/a>NOTICE:\u00a0 YOU MAY NEED INSULIN TO READ THIS – IT IS REALLY SAPPY — CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED<\/p>\n

Right now, I’m crying.\u00a0 Not just teary, crying.\u00a0 Right now, the third time I’ve been to this moment.\u00a0 It’s so embarrassing that until I complete this post I don’t even know if I’ll ever let you see it.\u00a0 Why such emotion on a sunny day so close to my birthday?\u00a0 Over a television show?\u00a0 The final epsiode of one that went off the air in 2006.\u00a0 One that’s about witches<\/em><\/a>?<\/p>\n

If, like me, you never paid much attention to CHARMED, appearing on the now-defunct and youth-oriented WB – about three sisters who are witches and who have witchy powers including, when acting together with the “power of three”, to best Ultimate Evil (I know, I know), let me tell you a bit about them.\u00a0 I’ve written about them before – when I first found them<\/a> two years ago and again almost a year ago, after a wedding<\/a> whose ritual reminded me of theirs, even though in theirs families gather from across the divide between living and dead.\u00a0 As I wrote then:<\/p>\n

On my favorite guilty pleasure, Charmed<\/a>, rituals of birth and marriage are attended not only by those who share the lives and loves of the Halliwell sisters (yeah they’re witches and their story\u00a0spent 8 TV seasons enchanting us all) but also by those who came before.\u00a0They summon, “through space and time”\u00a0 all members of “the\u00a0Halliwell line.”\u00a0 Surrounded by these translucent figures of past
\ngenerations, today’s Halliwells celebrate marriages and new arrivals.\u00a0Those fully and those ephemerally present conclude together “blessed\u00a0be.”<\/p>\n

What does this have to do with Jewish weddings — or any\u00a0other terrestrial weddings for that matter?\u00a0 A lot.\u00a0 Eight years on\u00a0the air, the longest running show with female leads, it dealt often with travel\u00a0through time and space and dominions never imagined.\u00a0 But when really\u00a0important events arose, all the magic was supplanted by a single, simple spell\u00a0that basically –well — brought the family together.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I just looked the show up<\/a>\u00a0on Wikipedia and discovered that it went off the air on my 60th\u00a0birthday – having run from October 7, 1998 to May 21, 2006.\u00a0 My
\nhusband, when he’s in psychiatrist mode, talks about “anniversary\u00a0reactions” – when we experience deep feelings but can’t quite figure\u00a0out where they come from.\u00a0 Sometimes, they have to do with the\u00a0occurrence of anniversaries we haven’t even noticed have arrived.\u00a0 In this case, though, I\u00a0didn’t know the year the show ended, much less the date.\u00a0 In fact, I was\u00a0in Paris with my family to celebrate this 60th birthday landmark on that day and\u00a0didn’t even notice the demise of the long-running\u00a0 series.\u00a0 In fact,\u00a0I first discovered it, in re-runs, airing as I worked in my office.\u00a0 I used it to keep me company (believe it or not, it’s on f<\/em>our hours<\/em> a day<\/a> – two in the morning and two in the afternoon.)\u00a0 Didn’t know a thing about the show or its success.<\/p>\n

I got an earful from one of my sons when I asked though, who claimed that the show caused plenty of\u00a0 fights with his (then) girlfriend.\u00a0 Apparently, it was on at the same time as the Simpsons <\/a>and every week was a negotiation.<\/p>\n

But for me it’s somehow more than that.\u00a0 These three sisters, and their powers, are deeply moving.\u00a0 Their battles and solidarity, their humor and courage, their conviction that they could literally save the world from evil (p.s., they did) all resonated in a very weird way.\u00a0 Still do.<\/p>\n

Hence the tears.\u00a0 The final episode, as the post-show\u00a0future unfolds, feels like my own life.\u00a0 Endings.\u00a0 Loving\u00a0farewells.\u00a0 The (hopefully) gratification of recognizing a life at least\u00a0partially well-lived.\u00a0 The kids and their kids and an idyllic togetherness\u00a0among sisters and their husbands and their children and their destiny.\u00a0 A\u00a0lot to hope for and, I guess, as my own life moves forward, something to cry\u00a0about.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NOTICE:\u00a0 YOU MAY NEED INSULIN TO READ THIS – IT IS REALLY SAPPY — CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED Right now, I’m crying.\u00a0 Not just teary, crying.\u00a0 Right now, the third time I’ve been to this moment.\u00a0 It’s so embarrassing that until I complete this post I don’t even know if I’ll ever let you see it.\u00a0 … Continue reading CHARMED, AGAIN. AND PROBABLY NOT FOR THE LAST TIME<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,6,42,7,97,29],"tags":[626,192,1486,367,1484,3417,3414,266,361,262,193,277,261,1485,1483],"class_list":["post-1519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aging","category-culture","category-family","category-life","category-television","category-women","tag-age","tag-aging-2","tag-anniversaries","tag-birthdays","tag-charmed","tag-family","tag-life","tag-simpsons","tag-sisters","tag-television-2","tag-time","tag-time-passing","tag-tv","tag-wb","tag-witches"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-ov","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1519"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4441,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions\/4441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}