On Experiencing Lady Bird Moments
Where Autonomy and Homesickness Coalesce
As I’ve grown up, I’ve found that my favorite pieces of media have a way of growing with me. It’s interesting to listen to Taylor Swift’s Fearless (2008) album and find myself relating to songs like “Fifteen” in ways I hadn’t when I was eight. Or watching classic movies from my childhood like Aquamarine (2006) and seeing how my affinity towards stories about girl friendships was first implanted. There are other pieces of media that I don’t necessarily grow with but grow into. Lady Bird (2017) is one of those.
I first watched the film Lady Bird (2017) when I was about seventeen or eighteen, towards the winter months of my high school years. While I initially found the movie entertaining upon its first watch - I’m a sucker for a coming-of-age story with a young girl lead - I didn’t think it was anything particularly special. There were other (more sanitized) protagonists in similar genres that I felt I connected with more, such as Mia Thermopolis in The Princess Diaries (2001) and Kat Stratford in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). I related to Mia and Kat, in part, because they seemed to rise above the phoniness of high school hierarchy and patriarchy-imposed teenage girl warfare while maintaining some composure. They simply rolled their eyes at the girls who worried too much about their hair and had their sights set on endeavors outside of the high school bubble, which I aligned with (internalized misogyny aside).
The protagonist of Lady Bird (2017), Christine “Lady Bird” McPhearson, holds a similar attitude as these characters: she’s generally unpopular and hateful towards her Catholic high school and cohorts and dreams of fleeing Sacramento for a liberal arts school on the east coast. I think that the relatability between Lady Bird and myself falters when it comes to the conflict she gets into with adults, namely her mother. Lady Bird’s mom, Marion, doesn’t believe that she’s capable of getting into a “good” college anywhere, let alone a prestigious one, and constantly stresses how ungrateful she is for what she has.
Lady Bird’s ongoing tension with Marion is the bedrock of the film’s plot, leading to countless hilarious and touching arguments between the two. Many of their fights bring out Lady Bird’s erratic nature. For example, in the middle of a longwinded speech from Marion about how Lady Bird will never amount to anything, Lady Bird jumps out of a moving car while her mother is still talking in the driver’s seat and breaks her arm.
This rebellious and outspoken side of Lady Bird is one I never related to as a teenager. I rarely displayed defiance toward adults, as I found myself relating more to them at times than I did to my teenage peers. I was more interested in what might exist outside of high school and wanted to get on the good side of grown-ups, show them that I was mature enough to eventually be a part of their world. I was the textbook image of an eldest daughter and sister: a self-disciplined perfectionist with a knack for rule-abiding and example-setting. I had no interest in falling out of line, even if it meant suppressing things I sought to express. Keeping the peace was always my top priority.
Considering that the conflict between Lady Bird and Marion is a driving force in this film, I assumed that it was meant to be most relatable to those that had similar tension with the maternal figures in their lives, which wasn’t really me. In addition, having grown up near a major metropolitan city, Lady Bird’s zeal for escaping the mundanity of her home wasn’t glaringly relatable to me at the time either. Henceforth, I put this film in a box in my mental attic, to keep in my arsenal, but not to return to any time soon, if ever.
This all changed in time when I crossed the threshold from childhood to adulthood, which for me was beginning college. Undergoing this transition reminds me of an iconic line from the Lorde song “Secrets From a Girl (Who’s Seen It All)”: “Couldn’t wait to turn fifteen, then you blink and it’s been ten years / Growing up a little at a time then all at once.” One day, I was a teenage high school student and the next, I was an eighteen-year-old. Mature in the eyes of all: men, the law, and my high school peers who begged me to buy them Juul pods.
In the final five minutes of Lady Bird, the protagonist realizes that she is suddenly not a child anymore. She wakes up hungover in New York City: her new home and a city that her mother hasn’t colored. It’s a place where she is free to beat to her own drum as she’s always wanted, without Marion’s incessant pessimism.
She’s gotten what she wants: admission to a prestigious east coast university far away from her mother. And yet, Lady Bird half-drunkenly stumbles out of an urgent care clinic after a night out and moseys to a Catholic church - a reminder of her old home in her new one. She marvels at the charming brownstones on her walk and listens with care to the hymns upon arriving at the place of worship, tears in her eyes. It’s clear to her that there is familiarity in the unfamiliar, and maybe even vice versa.
Upon exiting the church, Lady Bird phones home and leaves a message, preemptively asking her dad to pass the phone to her mom. She leaves this message for Marion:
“Hey, Mom, did you feel emotional the first time that you drove in Sacramento? I did and I wanted to tell you, but we weren’t really talking when it happened. All those bends I’ve known my whole life, and stores, and the whole thing. But I wanted to tell you I love you. Thank you, I’m...thank you.”
As Lady Bird leaves this message in the film, footage is overlaid of her mom driving around and admiring Sacramento. The film cuts to Lady Bird doing the same, drawing parallels between their experiences, as well as Lady Bird’s latest encounter with her new home in New York.
When describing my own high school and (more often) college experience, I’ve frequently analogized it to a Halloween haunted house. You enter the haunted house screaming with your arms flailing, trying to make it to the exit on the other side as quickly as possible. All you can think about, as you move through the structure, is how scared you are and how soon the experience will end. And then before you know it, you’ve made it to the other side. You were never in any real danger but, at last, you feel safe. You got through it a little at a time, then all at once, you were free.
Particularly towards the end of my college years, attending Zoom classes in my childhood bedroom, I finally shared Lady Bird’s desire for something new. Similar to her, I felt like I was in an uncomfortable quasi-adult state in my late adolescence; not quite a child and not quite an adult. Independent and ambitious but held back by the limitations of my current age and circumstances. I was eager for the scale to finally tip toward adulthood so I could feel like my life was really beginning. Moving forward.
And then suddenly my life did change. I relocated to a new city after college uncolored by those I had known from the previous chapter of my life. And like Lady Bird, I found the experience to be emotional and introspective. I was excited about my new adventure and felt immense homesickness all at once.
After a few months, after I had begun etching out my own map of my new city, I visited home for the holidays and found that the roads I had driven on and sidewalks I had toddled and ran across looked anew. I had a newfound appreciation for the familiar after diving into my fresh and exciting unfamiliar.
Brief moments like this - when I feel wholly aware of my long-desired adulthood and also grateful for where I’ve come from and the people who have touched me along the way - remind me of what Lady Bird experienced when she stumbled into that church in New York. In these “Lady Bird moments,” I understand the importance of timing and the common experience of growing up and desiring change.
Recently, my family visited me in New York for the first time. I showed them my apartment, with all the things I brought from home folded and arranged on the other side of the country. I showed them where I grocery shop. Where I like to get pastries and coffee and glasses of wine on the weekends. And when the trip came to a close, as I waved goodbye to them in their taxi and walked back to my apartment with the morning light falling on a quiet lower Manhattan morning, I thought about Lady Bird.
Like her, I was also emotional the first time I drove around my hometown. And I feel just as emotional walking around my new dwelling, as I’m sure I’ll feel when I walk around my child’s first new home.
No matter how alone we feel in our experience or how dreadful we feel that things will never change, the tides are bound to turn whether we’re ready for it or not. There are more similarities between us and our parents, friends, and neighbors than we tend to think. And whether we desire them to or not, our old experiences have a way of coloring our new ones. When we travel to a new home, we aren’t just taking ourselves and our material objects, but also the people and phenomena that have touched us along the way.
Fear can come with knowing that the only thing constant in life is change. But reassurance can come too. And excitement.
If you enjoyed this article I suggest checking out this essay by
on her personal relationship with Lady Bird (2017). Her essay is amazing and certainly inspired this one!
Your writing is so beautiful !! I definitely need to rewatch the film now.
I'm really enjoying your writing. Love the parallels you draw between yourself and the film here - and the differences. I haven't seen it but I might try to now! I really relate to the perfectionist, keeping the peace personality type you mentioned growing up with. Great piece :)