Suzanne Allard Levingston is a writer living in Bethesda.
The night before I headed off to journalism grad school, I stayed up packing and waiting for my girl Mary on 1 a.m. reruns. Mary was Mary Richards, the television news producer played by Mary Tyler Moore in the 1970s comedy series that bore her name. Mary had dark hair, a toothy smile, an inclination toward earnest goofiness and giant hopes of winning in a male-dominated world — all traits I shared. Girls like me grew up on Mary, laughing with her and her brassy best friend, Rhoda, as they navigated their lives as single women with workmates who were also friends.
As I folded my hopes into my suitcase, the theme sang out, “You’re gonna make it after all,” and there, miraculously, appeared the final episode of the series. I hadn’t ordered this on Hulu. This was 1980, when Hulu sounded like something you did in a grass skirt. No, this was kismet — a cosmic fluke that Mary’s last show would rerun on my last night home. I took it as a sign. Had there been Twitter, I’d surely have tweeted that I was gonna make it after all, too.