The thing I loved about Enemies, episode eight of season one, is the thing that made it difficult to write about. It was calm and modest in its scope—just a day in the life of these excellent people working hard for their country. There were no planes shot down or bombs dropped, no scandal or behavior to hide or spin—just our gang doing the behind-the-scenes business of government. Its absence of drama made me miss how it felt when I didn't need to know how tariffs worked or attempt to understand the deepest roots of geopolitical tensions. I could just raise my kids and pursue my own selfish happiness, a little clueless but unburdened—ignorance being such wonderful bliss.
The other night, I was out celebrating my friend Samantha's birthday when I was lamenting all of this: how my boys would become men in the thick of this madness. A woman at the bar, beautiful with long grey hair and a bright, sexy vibe (her light would not be shrinking with age, thank you very much), she and I talked about our kids. She said that because they were born in this time, they will handle its complications—they were built for it.
I thought it was a sweet and optimistic take, maybe too simple, but what else do we have? I pushed aside the logic, attempting not to square that with other people's children around the world—their wounds, their griefs, their hungers—as I drank my Negroni and twirled my gold pinky ring. It would have to do for now.
I was going to London. I hadn't traveled alone in so long—since before I met my husband—that I needed my sister Meegan to remind me, “It's called a vacation, dummy.” I didn't want to go. I was seeped in anxiety and worry—the news, the phone, the daily onslaught that we can't live with but can't look away from. I felt crushingly indispensable at home—that if I left, bones would be broken, sunglasses would not be found. “That’s why you have to go, Janel.” So Meegan and I sat on FaceTime, my suitcase open on the bed, as she ordered me what to bring and what to leave.
“Do you WANT to look cute?" she asked, sipping her coffee on her couch. “Put that away then. That’s not cute in New York, so it's not cute in London.” I did as I was told, and I left the next day.
I thought about the episode on the plane, my writing. I wondered if any of it mattered—what I thought, what I remembered. I struggled to feel like these keepsakes were worth itemizing. Do the family photos, the first Halloween costumes, or baseball trophies matter when the house is engulfed in flames?
But I reasoned, as I watched the puffy blanket of sky stretch serenely below, that we had to care about something. That caring was our resistance. Our only way to assert our humanity. And the details—the greatness of everyday life—are the point. Changing the baby’s diapers, reading on the subway, making your dad a sandwich—all mundane but exquisite reminders of freedom and connection. What I wouldn't give today to make my dad a sandwich.
I loved the scene in the episode between Leo and Bartlet. Both of them with not much to do, late at night, neither wanting to go home. That kind of stillness in the air, the scene unhurried—that doesn't happen on TV anymore. If you added cigarettes, to me this scene mirrored their offscreen relationship—these two giants side by side, always there for each other.
“I'll be just in the next room,” Leo said to Bartlet. “If you need anything.”
I sat waiting to land, chatting with the sweet guy next to me. For some reason, on planes, I often end up sitting next to men young enough to be my kids and casually interview them about their lives. I wait until the end of the flight so they don't get scared that I am one of those people—a talker, an oversharer. This young man, with resting grin face and a low-key mullet, was going to London for business. He bragged about his mom being a documentary filmmaker and about his love of the saxophone.
His world was calmer to be sure—growing up even ten years earlier, what a difference a decade makes—but still, I hearted him because he was smart and seemed kind, and because he got through whatever his challenges were to make it onto this plane. I collect these people, these stories of decent young men’s success, no matter how incomplete the story presented to me, and tuck them into the running file of hope I keep for my boys.
After making my way to my sister Sherri’s village outside of London, she waved wildly as I stepped off the train. We met Sherri just before COVID when, through a series of swabbed cheeks, circuitous emails, and nervous phone calls, she discovered that the difficult man who raised her was not her father. She lucked out in that my generous, big-hearted, hilarious dad was.
When he died, she was left not only with three years of memories of him—conversations he loved because no one was rolling their eyes having heard that yarn a thousand times before—she was left with our giant family, filled with friendly loudmouths who liked her a whole lot too. Every time she talks about it, she cries.
My twin sister Carey and her friend Beeta joined us the next day. Beeta kept telling us the origin of her sweatshirt or sneakers since she had lost everything recently in the Altadena fire. Her whole extended family lived in Tehran, and we watched the gathering storm from our phones each night as she carefully made room for fun. I didn't know her well, but I worried about her. I knew how delicate all of our minds were now, how fragile we felt. But she was funny and easygoing, ordering her skinny margaritas, game to do anything. If she was suffering, it was quiet—an inside job.
We went to London and walked, with too many bags, into our smelly Airbnb.
“Oh my God,” we all said, covering our noses as we stepped out of the door.
“Dead body?” I suggested.
“No, it's more like strong paint,” Carey said.
“It’s too biological, like animal-y,” I replied.
“No,” Carey said decisively, shaking her head, unfazed. She is a nurse and knows her smells.
In the city, we walked thousands of steps and drank copious amounts of white wine. We ate and talked and bought things from the museum shops like any other tourists. I felt my anxiety calm. We were not special there, things were not overly eventful, we barely planned anything. And as a person who sometimes irons my t-shirts, having no itinerary is not my favorite thing.
But I managed to relax into the trip, avoiding my phone, pushing aside my worries of being gone from my family—the guilt moms feel when taking time for oneself—I could put in perspective from a distance. And how many times would I see my twin and Sherri again? We don't count; let none of us count, but the future is unknown.
My friend Brian sent me an email telling me he saw I was in London on Facebook. The girls and I had already been to Dublin by that point and now were back in my sister's village, ready to pack and make my way home. But Brian invited me to lunch and I couldn't resist—a last stop before back to my life. I have known him for thirty years, the friendship a total delight, as enduring as any I have had, and when he asks to see me, my answer is always yes.
“Welcome to my man cave,” he said as I walked in. He had books and glasses and empty mugs on every surface. He was nearly eighty and on a break from rehearsal for a play in Scotland. He showed a portrait of himself that someone had sent him. He has been an actor—the hardest working, the most willing to jump on a plane, a brilliant journeyman for decades—the man never stops.
“I have to get my glasses,” he said and puttered around looking for them and then his keys as I stood thinking about how much I loved him, how happy was to have made the effort and come.
“Here we go,” he said, putting on a tinted kind of Ray-Ban sunnies. He smiled and put his hand up pinching the frame of the glasses. “I just took your picture.”
“What the—?”
“These are Meta glasses. I can take videos, hear my phone calls coming in, get notifications.”
“God, how horrible.”
“It satisfies my love of gadgets. Shall we go?”
The biggest wallop of the episode—the episode I had watched twice to try to know what mattered to me—was at the end.
Josh says to Bartlet, “We talk about enemies more than we used to.”
“What?” Bartlet says, turning.
“We talk about enemies more than we used to. I just wanted to mention that.”
Bartlet, with that wonderful Martin empathy shining through, stood, his mind moving, registering this truth. But because he was a careful man, a thoughtful man, he would walk to the residence, turning in for the night and reflect on what Josh said. This would matter to him.
Maybe this ending, maybe so many of these moments I lived on the show and we all now cherish, are in fact only trinkets, souvenirs from a trip taken long ago.
But I think I’ll keep the snapshots and postcards and collect new ones, wildly filling up my phone with thousands of moments of my kids’ piano recitals and basketball games, of my handsome husband leaning against an old stucco wall in Brazil, of my sisters and friends drinking our skinny margaritas, leaning in for a selfie, enjoying life while it's still ours to live.
Wow, Janel -- what a richly evocative essay brimming with so much to savor that I read it twice, more slowly on the second pass.
It was abundantly clear since March (has it been only three months?) that you're an elegant, thoughtful writer, and now this shines as next-level. You share shiny trinkets that seem unconnected until we see the thread deftly woven from a 1999 series episode through memories of your dad, through the miracle of a surprise sister, through transatlantic travel, a timely mention of Tehran and a brave admission of ironing t-shirts (just sometimes, I get).
"What I wouldn't give today to make my dad a sandwich" hits hard . . . and ties the thread together masterfully. The seemingly mundane can also be exquisite because of connections -- yours with him and Sherri's too-short experience.
And as if all that weren't golden enough, we get your sun-splashed face and gems like "resting grin face" and "the running file of hope I keep for my boys." Brava again, JM.
This is lovely, and thoughtful. Thank you.