It first struck me when my mother and I went to see “Mamma Mia” on Broadway with my mother just after I was married.
If you’ve never seen the musical, it follows the story of Sophie, a girl on the brink of marriage who suddenly finds herself longing to find her biological father before her impending nuptials.
Set to the songs of Swedish pop group Abba, the musical becomes a fun and heartfelt jaunt centering on Sophie’s mother, Donna, and each of the four men she had romantic encounters with around the time of her daughter’s conception.
The whole musical seems to be building up to a satisfying resolution of family bonding and marriage.
Instead, it ends on two very disappointing notes: Sophie never finds out who her dad is because it “doesn’t matter” anyway (that would take another blog post to unpack), and she cancels her wedding, telling her fiancé she thinks they should just travel the world instead of getting married.
Rather than a crescendo of snow-white tulle, flower petals, pealing bells, and all the rest for our young couple, we leave Sophie still fatherless and standing on the quicksand of continued cohabitation that is sure to end in heartbreak.
I remember thinking of how crushing it was to watch both main plot lines simply disintegrate, as if the playwright intentionally dreamed up an ending that would ruin the whole thing.
To be fair, Donna does marry one of her beaus, but that only serves to underscore the fact that she’s wasted a good chunk of her life resisting it — and perhaps Sophie has just set herself on the path to do the same.
Of course, I don’t expect every love story to end like “Cinderella” with songbirds carrying the bride’s veil as she runs headlong into forever with Prince Charming.
But how about just a little of the traditional happily ever after instead of another fractured fairy tale?
People have always been flawed, and marriage has always been difficult, but it feels like we are the first generation to fully give up on it.
We have become so cynical that we can’t bear even to hope for happiness and love. Not me.
It’s no secret that I gravitate to the works of yesteryear. I love movies, television shows, and music that lets me escape to a time when it was okay to dream of a happy ending.
If ever I’m in the mood for a quick hit of nostalgia and nuptials, I like to listen to the 1966 pop song “Bus Stop” by The Hollies.
It is the perfect three-minute love story resolved the way such things ought to be.
As the title suggests, a young man finds himself at a bus stop on a rainy day with a young woman, and the two share an umbrella.
Over the course of a summer, they fall in love through their ordinary encounters. The ending for them is a sweet lifelong commitment.
Take a look at some of the lyrics (emphasis is mine):
Every mornin’ I would see her waiting at the stop
Sometimes she’d shopped and she would show me what she bought
All the people stared as if we were both quite insane
Someday my name and hers are going to be the same
And later:
Nice to think that that umbrella
Led me to a vow
This pop song is no magnum opus, but the story’s heartfelt simplicity makes me picture them riding off on the bus as husband and wife (and definitely not in that sad way from “The Graduate”).
I know happy endings aren’t considered sophisticated nowadays, and I understand that some works of art are not meant to turn out that way for a reason.
However, the fact that we can’t have a sweet and wholesome resolution to a musical that centers around a wedding speaks volumes about how far we’ve fallen.
We are so broken — and people have so little faith in each other and in marriage — that the playwright thought this was a more reasonable ending.
But what’s the harm in pretending that sometimes it does end in happily ever after?
There’s no shortage of stories about heartbreak, disappointment, conflict, and despair, so there’s no danger in forgetting those things exist.
Why not let Sophie get married young and start an exciting new life with her husband?
Can we just agree that even though life doesn’t always work out the way we hope, there’s something beautiful about taking that leap of faith anyway?
As Abba imagined it, perhaps we’d do well to meet our “Waterloo” and surrender to the dream of a happily ever after in love.