By Lauren Englet –
I remember the lilted, cheerful sounds of the chorus singing “Hallelujah” 3-times over, a Beetlejuice-style summoning of the Holy Spirit. I remember the hordes of students dressed in Mass attire, some striding through the sea of freshmen through seniors with ease, others falling towards the back. The creak of the bleachers as students settled into their seats; the eeeek of the coal-gray foldable chairs; the priest singing scripture over the crowd in an off-kilted tone; the silent procession of students going to accept the body of Christ while I, a non-Catholic, hugged my arms tightly to my chest, ready to receive a blessing from the same individuals that claimed my identity as a non-denominational Christian was, in their words, “Incomplete.”
I spent most of high school feeling the sharp piercing of that one singular word. Three syllables reflected in almost every aspect of my life from 15 to 18. To put it gently, Catholic high school was the equivalent of everyone being in on the punchline. At the same time, I remained clueless about the joke altogether.
Enter Greta Gerwig and her 2017 film Lady Bird. The movie is a homage to her hometown of Sacramento, California, featuring a star-studded cast and the illustration of her teen years at an all-girls Catholic high school. Showing Sacramento landmarks and the words of its hometown heroes (i.e., Joan Didion), Gerwig paints an illustrious picture of navigating the growing pains of adolescence, allowing those who also attended schools steeped in the Catholic tradition to say, “I am not the only one who has felt like I do not belong.”
Precocious, sassy, and albeit determined to escape the rigidity of Immaculate Heart High School (based on Gerwig’s alma mater, St. Francis), Lady Bird follows Christine McPherson (Lady Bird) in her senior year of high school, showing struggles in the realms of friendship, love, and sense of self. One of the opening scenes? Lady Bird, arms crossed over her chest just as I had done many times before, at Back-To-School Mass. “Nothing in the movie literally happened in my life, but it has a core of truth that resonates with what I know,” said Gerwig in 2018.
The film ends with a montage of the parallels between Lady Bird and her mother, driving on the same bridge through Sacramento. Now a familiar TikTok audio, the words, “Did you feel emotional the first time you drove in Sacramento?” strikes a chord for me even now.
The truth is, I was emotional the first time I rode shotgun over the same bridge in Sacramento the summer before my sophomore year of college when I saw the eggshell blue of the “Lady Bird House” and the rows of candy-colored flowers in the McKinley Rose Garden. I was emotional when that bridge was nothing more than a metaphysical concept to me at 15, 18, and now 21, symbolizing the transition into adulthood and finally growing up. In my eyes, you spend so much time resisting and stretching and screaming in protest just to view years in your life through the kaleidoscopic filter of nostalgia years down the road when your pain is no longer an open wound but a scar that glimmers in the light. I may never feel nostalgic about my time in Catholic school, but I will say that I would not be who I am today (nor nearly as funny) as I would’ve been without it.
While it may appear as a given after reading through this, I will always love Greta Gerwig. Her ability to encapsulate attempting to keep up in a place that does not accommodate you, the complexities of the individuals in your life, and how you have something to learn from one another, even in your differences, is an incredible gift. Lady Bird is a sticker on my powder blue Hydroflask, the film I gush over upon meeting someone from Sacramento. But also, the glimmering scar that says, “You got through this time in your life. Regardless of what anyone else says, you deserve to be here too.”
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