Rue-la-la

Dear Blanche,

I wish I had met you. Whenever I saw you with Dorothy, Sofia, and Rose, I thought how much fun it would have been to pal around with you.

You were so smart, quick and clever. I also think you were a lot more practical than you would have us believe. I know how hard it was for you to accept your brother’s homosexuality, for instance, but your devotion to him outweighed your discomfort with his lifestyle. And I’m pretty sure you put up with Sofia’s sarcasm about your sex-ploits and Rose’s hair-brained ideas because you loved them so much. Please say hello to Dorothy and her mom when you see them. Although you weren’t friends, it felt like you were.

I was sad to hear about the death of actress Rue McClanahan at 76. “The Golden Girls” was one of my all-time favorite shows and I can watch reruns over and over. Rue majored in drama at the University of Oklahoma, married six times and had one son. Her autobiography was titled: “My First Five Husbands…and the Ones Who Got Away.” Her obit in the New York Times quoted from an interview she did with the paper in 1995: “The Golden Girls was special because for allowing its women to be funny and one-sided, not stock figures, recognizing that when people mature, they add layers. They don’t turn into other creatures. The truth is, we all still have our child, our adolescent and our young woman living in all of us.” What a wonderful, insightful statement.

My son shares a birthday with Rue, February 21. He adores her, too.