O, Gilmore Girls, How Do We Love Thee...

We interrupt our regularly scheduled American Idol coverage to bring you this announcement: Waaahhh! Gilmore Girls, the series, has ended. It hardly seems so.

Rather than recap the finale, I'll let Gilmore Girl Fanatic do that for you. But first, indulge me this sweet memory of our family's introduction to Lorelai & Rory, won't you?

See, it all started the first summer after GG's debut season. Hubs couldn't get away that year for a real vacation, so I cooked up a plan to rent a beach house in a nearby town for one balmy week. I figured he could work and the kids and I could play. That's fair, don't ya think? Turns out the house we rented was owned by someone in the TV biz. I know this because of all the Emmy screeners we found in his cabinet. Screeners are copies of shows--without commercials--that members of the academy view so they can vote for their fave. Anyway, this guy had a bunch of these screeners in his cabinet, so each night, as the waves danced outside our window, we curled up on the sofa and watched something new.

That's when we discovered our pals, Lorelai and Rory. It was magical. Hear the waves lapping? See the moon glowing? Stay with me here...

Over the years we've watched Rory grow up, become bff with former nemisis Paris, and even make a switcheroo and head to Yale instead of Harvard. We've seen Lorelai fall in and out of love (Max, some guy I can't remember, Chris and Luke), and we cheered when she and Sooki finally opened an Inn of their own.

There were bumps in the road, some things we didn't like nor agree with, but so it is in life. We offer perspective and grace, then move on. Am I sighing out loud yet?

Anyway, tonight was tougher than I thought. I've never cried over a TV series ending before, I mean, c'mon it's just a show! But in a way, this one represented more for me, somehow. I got caught up in the moment. It's as if I were transported back in time to that weeklong trip some six-ish years ago, to a lazy carefree week (okay, for everyone but hubs), when we discovered the bond between a hip mom and her precocious daughter.

As it happens, Pre-teen daughter and I lay shoulder to shoulder last night on the couch, sniffling throughout the final episode, and I realized: this summer she'll become Teen Girl. Next she'll be off to high school, then college, then, like Rory, out of the nest and into adulthood.

Man, I'm gonna miss that show.