“Sometimes the only thing we counted on when no one else was there”

Crying at the end of Fraggle Rock (1983) is one of my three earliest memories. I would watch in my parents bedroom. It was on at night. I loved feeling ensconced in the Fraggles’ world; I wanted to get lost in their winding caves. For an only child going to a school outside of the neighborhood, weekday afternoon friends were non-existent; The Fraggles are what felt real to me. At the end of every episode, I wouldn’t want to go to bed. I didn’t want to leave the Fraggles. I knew I would fall asleep contemplating the death of my parents. It was a long time from now, they would tell me. They were right. While the latter was always subsequent to the former, these events seemed unrelated. Maybe I didn’t understand the pacing and structure of proper story telling; that a television show had a beginning, middle, and end; that the escapism of fantasy isn’t meant to last.

As a child these events seemed unrelated but now they feel inseparable. Telling one story must involve telling the other.

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