Your Unemployed Daughter

photo credit: milena mihaylova

Confession: I watched Baby Boom again last night (for, like, the at least fifth time in my life, thank you Lifetime) and, um, I cried. Fortunately I still had tissues left.

Not because of the baby part, even though that baby is damn cute, and, remarkably, only cries like once in the whole movie … and even though the part at the end where she turns around and says “Mama!” is obviously voiced-over, it’s still touching in a cloying sort of way. Anyway, I’m not so middle-aged that I have to cry at that. Yet.

But I cried because J.C. Wiatt, played by Diane Keaton in one of her more twitchy constantly having-a-nervous-breakdown-when-I-stop-being-the-tiger-lady roles (and let’s ignore the anti-feminist subtext obviously present in this “feminist in an ’80s kind of way” movie), kinda sorta ends up having the type of life I might ultimately want.

And by that I mean, autonomous, running her own (successful) business, able to say “hellz no” to the nasty corporate entities that want to buy her out, living in a big, old, accidentally refurbished house, and, oh, yeah, making out with a sexy veterinarian in front of her baby-food-packed refrigerator.

Who among us who lives in the big (or little) city doesn’t have a secret (or public, seeing as how much of the New York that can afford it escapes to some country house or another most weekends of the year) yearning for that rustic home with the 62 acres and the orchard and the milking cows near the quaint little town with the plumber who speaks only in yups and nopes where everybody knows your name and no one locks their doors? Somewhere safe to rest your flannel-clad body, to churn your own butter, and to store away your more than 1,000 glass jars of homemade baby applesauce?

Or does this just mean I need a vacation? Or to lessen my Thera-Flu intake?

PS. The part where she struggles from her former office building with her ugly-ass framed print after she is basically made to quit is quite touching. And so socially relevant!

PPS. Nancy Meyers co-wrote the script. Flash forward 20 years to Something’s Got to Give and It’s Complicated. My, the houses (and foodstuffs) have improved.