Stranger Things took me on an adventure with my children back to my childhood and then broke my heart in the best way with a beautiful, flawed goodbye. The tender years of my kids aligned with the children on the show. We faced changing friendships, first loves, and grief with the show’s characters, 1980s old style…no mobile phones and devices, no socials, and a worldview limited to a D&D campaign.
While the plot was sometimes messy and the connections were dizzying, the show never failed as a time machine and stayed true to the characters even in the darkest, most confusing moments. My kids and I had our favorites, with Derek as a late entry pulling on our heartstrings and inspiring humor in what had been a humorless year IRL. My kids grew up on this show, and I was okay with that. Fortitude and heroics in the service of friendship and love are life’s greatest lessons. Loyalty is another one. You don’t leave your people behind, and mothers are bad a$$es when pushed to their limits. I grew with the show, too.
It was the right time for the story to end, but with it, so did the portal it provided to my youth and that of my kids. And this is where I find myself heartbroken. Writers of shows and books get to create portals to other places, times, and lives. This is a power. I am grateful to the Duffer brothers for allowing me to share this story and my childhood with my kids. Maybe I have the power, too, to preserve memories of that time, or maybe I can make new worlds and portals equally compelling. It’s the end of this story, but there are always stories to tell that shift perceptions, make you fall in love (or hate) with characters, and potentially change your life. Stranger Things was never perfect, but it was powerful in all the right ways. It’s never goodbye when characters and stories find their way into your heart.
Kelly Rogers 