Donna Reed

I've said it before....but I just love Donna Reed. Growing up in the late '80's at the dawn of Nick-at-Nite I was subjected to a LOT of old sitcoms. We watched Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Andy Griffith, The Anne Southerland Show, Mr. Ed, Patty Duke, Dobie Gillis, and My Three Sons. I love all of those shows, but Donna Reed was BY FAR my favorite.

It used to come on every night at 7:00pm. My mom worked at an accounting firm and got home around 5:30 every night. She used to fix dinner still dressed in her heels and we'd usually eat around 6:30. I always knew it was dinner when Wheel of Fortune was coming on, and dinner was over when it was going off.

I remember, my sister and I would hurry through the dinner clean-up routine so we could get in our pj's and grab our blanket and get on the couch by 7:00pm sharp to watch our favorite show. My mom was thrilled that we enjoyed watching shows from her youth and it was so nice to watch it together.

I loved watching the light and happy episodes about first dances, remodeling the kitchen, a camping trip gone wrong, birthday mishaps, etc. It was all so innocent and comforting and I always dreamed of being Mary Stone. I wanted to look like her, talk like her, act like her...and more importantly, I wanted to be in the 1950's. I wanted to be a teenager during a time when girls didn't call boys, families spent most of their time together, and TV wasn't the most important thing in the world.

Sadly, Nick-at-Nite stopped showing reruns of my favorite shows and I went years without seeing any episodes. Luckily, a couple of years ago, they started releasing seasons of the show and I now have the first three seasons on DVD. It was like discovering the show all over again, I barely remember any of the episodes!

Now that I have them, I watch them daily. After I drop off the boys at school, I come home and turn it one and do my housework. Watching Donna makes me feel very domestic, so I tend to get more done when she's in the background. The boys have even taking a liking to the show and I catch them laying around watching it from time to time. I know I don't have any daughters to pass on my love of homemaking to, but at least my boys have an appreciate for my love of life in the 1950's.