Lady Bird, Sacramento, and Me
(Yes, with plot spoilers)
If you follow my writing, you know that growing up in Sacramento has had a huge impact on my life even 40 years after leaving. I was born and raised there. Came of age there. And moved away for good when I was 28. I left to attend Notre Dame, earn my doctorate, and never lived in my hometown for any length of time again. My parents are buried there as are both sets of my grandparents. My last sibling still living in our hometown plans to move to Oregon soon. But my roots are deep there.
I have often said that the best time to live in Sacramento was prior to 1968, a watershed year that shifted my city out of the realm of a small town and threw it into the sphere of a metropolitan area. More freeways. More people. More crime and grime.
Lady Bird taps into the ethos of Sacramento quite well. It resonated with me on two levels. A Catholic school boy (Christian Brothers, Class of ’68), I felt I knew much of Lady Bird’s angst about growing up Catholic. I didn’t have a relationship with my parents like her stormy one with her mother, but I grew up with much unsaid that should have been said.
And the Catholicism of that era was a Post-Vatican II mishmash of old-style sexual fear and damnation plus forward-thinking social justice ministry. I remember being told once by a priest, told seriously, of going to hell for masturbating. I learned later in college psychology class that this was a normal part of growing up. Somehow, too, the social justice message got the damnation taint, so that having a good career and money was somehow wrong. A god with that much eagerness to punish and condemn never squared in me with the notion of a loving God.
But it was more than that. Lady Bird is at a Catholic girl’s high school based on the school Greta Gerwig, the screenwriter/director, attended. I taught at that school (St. Francis Girls’ High School in real life) before moving away. I didn’t teach Gerwig who came well after my time, but I taught many of the types she depicted. The bright Lady Bird/Christine, who didn’t apply herself because of her internal struggles to come to know herself. To accept herself. Like many of my then-students, she decides being a “good Catholic girl” was fruitless, so she tries to badass herself in with the badass crowd. Quick to find hypocrisy and falseness in others, she fails to check her own drift into lying and hypocrisy as she drops close friends and then engages in meaningless, shallow relationships. It’s an accurate picture. Christine’s life and choices aren’t pretty at times, but they are nuanced and masterfully depicted.
Her one authentic boyfriend betrays her because of his own lack of trust and honesty. Her badass boyfriend betrays her by being exactly what he is: rich and spoiled, spouting slogans about money and wealth he doesn’t believe or follow, living selfishly with no regard for her or anyone else’s feelings. The poser is consistent in that. He doesn’t give a rip about anyone but himself.
Through it all, Lady Bird grows up. Painfully, but up.
And part of that is moving away from home. Taking that gigantic first flight from the nest alone. And finally, in her new life at college in New York City, it dawns on her. What friends have been saying, although boring, is absolutely true—that her mother does have a big heart and does love her. That her mother is nonjudgmental and kind. Christine’s anger at herself blinded her. And all that anger, aimed at her mother, caused the mother/daughter relationship to bite and snarl. Finally, as the thankless Christine flourishes because of all her mother’s sacrifices, the light goes on.
They are apart now, physically on two different coasts, but closer. And yet, as is the case for everyone, it is not distance that separates them, but silence. Christine calls her mother to admit she loves her big-hearted mom but hadn’t known how much she was loved by her mother until now.
When I left Sacramento in 1978, I was older. I’d pass through many of Christine’s stages. And frankly, some of those of her second, poser boyfriend’s stages. My father was dying. He’d been given 3 to 5 years, and the sands were running out, but he wouldn’t hear of me delaying my life and dreams. Off I went. He died 16 months later, his end coming much sooner than anyone expected.
But, for many complicated reasons, a silence existed between us. We never talked of his terminal condition, although once when I was teaching at “Christine’s school,” my dad was hospitalized, near death. The doctors told my mother and me to call those who might like to say goodbye. He was that close to the end, but then he pulled through.
Yet even after that, the silence remained. When I tried to speak of it, he said, “Do you think I’m going to die?” He sounded so like his resilient Sicilian mother who had the luxury of outliving him by 20 years. She lived to be 96.
I often wished my dad, mom, and I had sat down and talked about his approaching end. It would have helped much more than we will ever know. Silence of this type is never helpful. It fosters resentments and regrets, even now.
In the final scene when Christine breaks her silence to her mother on the phone, she does so by remembering Sacramento. My father and I never broke that silence. But the movie depicts a heart-warming and sincere admission of love by a now-enlightened daughter for her mother.
Part of this is Christine acknowledging how much she really loved growing up where she did, that she really loved Sacramento. The city has its own charm. Its own spots of meaning and uniqueness. As I watched the film, I loved seeing sights I know so well. Club Raven, a neighborhood bar my uncle and cousin owned until several years ago. Tower Bridge used in the background. Tower Theatre, only blocks from where I grew up. The film brought back memories of my Land Park neighborhood with its zoo and park and Vic’s Ice Cream tucked right in our midst. Yes, Sacramento has much to remember fondly and to love.
I’m sure, this is what led me to set many Earth-side scenes of The Marsco Saga in Sacramento rather than in some invented city. I know the city and its moods. I can put characters there—even in a future and dystopian Sac City, as I call it—and imagine what the environs would be like. How they would influence the scene. It made writing the work more personal to me. Sacramento State University is in the first three Marsco books. I earned my MA there. The state capitol building and its park, places I often walked, are also in the Marsco world. And, of course, I have a few scenes at Frank Fat’s. If you know anything about the politics of California and its backroom deals, this makes sense.
Gerwig and I, each in our own way, wrote love stories to Sacramento. Hometowns should evoke that kind of affection. Our mutual town was a good place to grow up, to spread my professional wings as a teacher, and to visit often. Even if I never return, now that my family has moved away, it’s in my bones and lives on. I will always hold it in my warmest memories.
(Yes, with plot spoilers)
If you follow my writing, you know that growing up in Sacramento has had a huge impact on my life even 40 years after leaving. I was born and raised there. Came of age there. And moved away for good when I was 28. I left to attend Notre Dame, earn my doctorate, and never lived in my hometown for any length of time again. My parents are buried there as are both sets of my grandparents. My last sibling still living in our hometown plans to move to Oregon soon. But my roots are deep there.
I have often said that the best time to live in Sacramento was prior to 1968, a watershed year that shifted my city out of the realm of a small town and threw it into the sphere of a metropolitan area. More freeways. More people. More crime and grime.
Lady Bird taps into the ethos of Sacramento quite well. It resonated with me on two levels. A Catholic school boy (Christian Brothers, Class of ’68), I felt I knew much of Lady Bird’s angst about growing up Catholic. I didn’t have a relationship with my parents like her stormy one with her mother, but I grew up with much unsaid that should have been said.
And the Catholicism of that era was a Post-Vatican II mishmash of old-style sexual fear and damnation plus forward-thinking social justice ministry. I remember being told once by a priest, told seriously, of going to hell for masturbating. I learned later in college psychology class that this was a normal part of growing up. Somehow, too, the social justice message got the damnation taint, so that having a good career and money was somehow wrong. A god with that much eagerness to punish and condemn never squared in me with the notion of a loving God.
But it was more than that. Lady Bird is at a Catholic girl’s high school based on the school Greta Gerwig, the screenwriter/director, attended. I taught at that school (St. Francis Girls’ High School in real life) before moving away. I didn’t teach Gerwig who came well after my time, but I taught many of the types she depicted. The bright Lady Bird/Christine, who didn’t apply herself because of her internal struggles to come to know herself. To accept herself. Like many of my then-students, she decides being a “good Catholic girl” was fruitless, so she tries to badass herself in with the badass crowd. Quick to find hypocrisy and falseness in others, she fails to check her own drift into lying and hypocrisy as she drops close friends and then engages in meaningless, shallow relationships. It’s an accurate picture. Christine’s life and choices aren’t pretty at times, but they are nuanced and masterfully depicted.
Her one authentic boyfriend betrays her because of his own lack of trust and honesty. Her badass boyfriend betrays her by being exactly what he is: rich and spoiled, spouting slogans about money and wealth he doesn’t believe or follow, living selfishly with no regard for her or anyone else’s feelings. The poser is consistent in that. He doesn’t give a rip about anyone but himself.
Through it all, Lady Bird grows up. Painfully, but up.
And part of that is moving away from home. Taking that gigantic first flight from the nest alone. And finally, in her new life at college in New York City, it dawns on her. What friends have been saying, although boring, is absolutely true—that her mother does have a big heart and does love her. That her mother is nonjudgmental and kind. Christine’s anger at herself blinded her. And all that anger, aimed at her mother, caused the mother/daughter relationship to bite and snarl. Finally, as the thankless Christine flourishes because of all her mother’s sacrifices, the light goes on.
They are apart now, physically on two different coasts, but closer. And yet, as is the case for everyone, it is not distance that separates them, but silence. Christine calls her mother to admit she loves her big-hearted mom but hadn’t known how much she was loved by her mother until now.
When I left Sacramento in 1978, I was older. I’d pass through many of Christine’s stages. And frankly, some of those of her second, poser boyfriend’s stages. My father was dying. He’d been given 3 to 5 years, and the sands were running out, but he wouldn’t hear of me delaying my life and dreams. Off I went. He died 16 months later, his end coming much sooner than anyone expected.
But, for many complicated reasons, a silence existed between us. We never talked of his terminal condition, although once when I was teaching at “Christine’s school,” my dad was hospitalized, near death. The doctors told my mother and me to call those who might like to say goodbye. He was that close to the end, but then he pulled through.
Yet even after that, the silence remained. When I tried to speak of it, he said, “Do you think I’m going to die?” He sounded so like his resilient Sicilian mother who had the luxury of outliving him by 20 years. She lived to be 96.
I often wished my dad, mom, and I had sat down and talked about his approaching end. It would have helped much more than we will ever know. Silence of this type is never helpful. It fosters resentments and regrets, even now.
In the final scene when Christine breaks her silence to her mother on the phone, she does so by remembering Sacramento. My father and I never broke that silence. But the movie depicts a heart-warming and sincere admission of love by a now-enlightened daughter for her mother.
Part of this is Christine acknowledging how much she really loved growing up where she did, that she really loved Sacramento. The city has its own charm. Its own spots of meaning and uniqueness. As I watched the film, I loved seeing sights I know so well. Club Raven, a neighborhood bar my uncle and cousin owned until several years ago. Tower Bridge used in the background. Tower Theatre, only blocks from where I grew up. The film brought back memories of my Land Park neighborhood with its zoo and park and Vic’s Ice Cream tucked right in our midst. Yes, Sacramento has much to remember fondly and to love.
I’m sure, this is what led me to set many Earth-side scenes of The Marsco Saga in Sacramento rather than in some invented city. I know the city and its moods. I can put characters there—even in a future and dystopian Sac City, as I call it—and imagine what the environs would be like. How they would influence the scene. It made writing the work more personal to me. Sacramento State University is in the first three Marsco books. I earned my MA there. The state capitol building and its park, places I often walked, are also in the Marsco world. And, of course, I have a few scenes at Frank Fat’s. If you know anything about the politics of California and its backroom deals, this makes sense.
Gerwig and I, each in our own way, wrote love stories to Sacramento. Hometowns should evoke that kind of affection. Our mutual town was a good place to grow up, to spread my professional wings as a teacher, and to visit often. Even if I never return, now that my family has moved away, it’s in my bones and lives on. I will always hold it in my warmest memories.
Jim selling a copy of Marsco Triumphant to Mary Pass at Tower Cafe in Land Park. Mary is a longtime friend and avid reader of The Marsco Saga. August 2016.
House in Land Park where I grew up. Much changed and updated. There's a pool in the backyard now. We had an apricot tree, rose bushes, lawn and a shady patio. Fond memories of this house.
Jim at the main branch of Sacramento County Library downtown near the Capitol the day I gave them copies for The Marsco Dissident and Marsco Triumphant for the special collection of works about Sacramento in "The Sacramento Room." Doctor Who tie-in that day a plus.
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