Today is my husband’s birthday. Mine was last month. No big deal any more. We’re both so easy to gift that it can,  at times, be difficult. You see, we’ve reached that age and place in life where we have everything we need and most of the things, within financial reason, we want. So a small token of appreciation usually suffices when it comes to birthdays,  and Mother’s and Father’s Day, and all those other gifting days.

For my husband this year it was a small devil’s food with dark chocolate frosting cake with a chocolate covered strawberry on top- he’s a choco-holic- and a gift card. He was good to go. Said he’d use the gift card to get his golf club grips redone, then he made himself a cup of coffee to go with the hunk of cake he lopped off, and down the to man cave he went to settle in for the evening.

Mission accomplished. Another birthday successfully penciled into the books.

But it got me thinking. What did Jennifer get Jonathan for his birthdays? After all, the man was millionaire several times over, well-traveled, and seemed to have every man-toy on the books, not to mention the woman of his dreams for his wife.

We know he had a tendency to get Jennifer things he sort of wanted for himself when her birthday rolled around- a pool table, season athletic tickets, a vintage car, but I don’t recall his birthday ever being mentioned or things she might have gotten him other than that watch he thought she’d stolen, but she hadn’t. And that fur coat she pretended she bought for him in place of the vintage car he wound up almost getting them killed over.

Cutest lines ever when he takes her up on the coat and tries it on, saying it needs to be let out a little in the shoulders:

“Jonthan, you’re doing it to me again!”

Him, eyes squinched, nose krinkled, filthy leering grin, “You know something; that’s all I ever think about.”

That was back in the day, and I was so shocked at the writers getting that exchange past the censors. But I was delighted to my polished toes that they did. I so loved the Harts.

But back to what I was saying.

What might Jennifer have gotten her husband for his birthday? Funny how that never came up in the series. He bought or comissioned lots of things for various occasions for her, but it was rarely the other way around. I figure since they didn’t have children and there wasn’t much else besides their work that kept them from moving like they wanted to, maybe she whisked him away for a relaxing, isolated, lusty weekend at their cabin. Or perhaps a few peaceful, sunny days at their auberge in the Napa Valley. Or maybe she held a small dinner/ poker party for him at the house with a few of their closer friends. Jonathan didn’t seem like the kind of guy who wanted a lot of fanfare directed toward him, so whatever it was, it was probably something low key and personal.

But again, I ask, other than the obvious, what to give a man like Jonathan Hart for his birthday, a guy who has everything?

Any ideas?

When I left my native Michigan to come to Georgia with my husband’s job transfer, the people at my job gave me a going-away party. One of my co-workers, who over the years became a good friend, toasted me. She told a story about how she couldn’t have made it without my help in those first months in our building. She was a veteran teacher, older and more experienced than I at the time, but she was coming from years of teaching elementary school in elementary settings to teaching seventh grade at our urban middle school. It wasn’t the easiest transition to make, for even the most capable teacher.

At the time, I had only been doing what I thought I was supposed to do to help someone new be more comfortable in an unfamiliar setting. However, it was revealed at that party that I had actually thrown a life raft to someone who felt she was drowning. In all our time working together, she never gave me the impression she had been so overwhelmed or that I had done anything extraordinary to help her.

That toast happened nearly fifteen years ago, but it was a definite “ah-hah” moment that remains with me. I was good and grown at that time, so I’d heard it said more than once that you never know who has their eye on you. What my friend said that night made it crystal clear to me not only do people watch, but they sometimes take their strength and their inspiration from you even you aren’t aware of how much, or even how, your smallest actions can affect others. That toast made me more aware of the need do my best by others when I can, but more importantly to do no harm when I can’t add to a situation or I don’t feel like being nice or helpful.

As today is Ms. Stefanie Powers birthday, I would like to first wish her a very happy one and to wish her many more to come. Next I would like to thank her for being such a positive influence on my personal and my writing life when I’m sure she has no idea she has had that impact on little old me. Meeting her in person has been scratched off my bucket list. I’ll never forget that hug that before that evening at the Fox in Detroit I never in life dreamed I’d get.

There is nothing I love more than a woman who knows who she is, who pursues her own interests, and who does something about those things that concern her in the world- not just throw money at or  use her celebrity to draw publicity to them. And who doesn’t need a man to define the course of her life. Like her I believe it’s nice and fulfilling to have that right life partner, but female or male, it’s best to know and be yourself first.

It’s important to give the world the best you have in whatever form you wish to give it and to be genuine in the effort, even if the genuine effort is to take nothing away from a situation in which you choose not to contribute. You never know who, next to you, or miles or time periods or lifestyles away is watching, taking their example and inspiration from you.

Well, done, Ms. Powers. I am grateful for your example. Enjoy your day.

(Forgive me, I know it’s out of sequence and thus, quite tacky, but I had to put this post back in. I really liked it. Happy Friday!)

10/5/2014    Getting Started….

Like J.J. in her Journal:Part One, I don’t really know what I’ll be putting here, but we’ll play it by ear. I’m for anything that keeps me writing when I feel like doing anything except write, which happens a lot lately. Distractions are everywhere; procrastination at an all time high. Mind going in a million directions, hand accomplishing little.

For today, though, I’ll talk about my love for Hart to Hart and how J.J. Hart came into existence.

It’s probably evident from my stories that I loved the show, Hart to Hart, especially the lead characters. In fact, I have been a fan since the promos first aired for the original episodes. When it was announced that Wagner and Powers would be playing as husband and wife, somehow I knew it would be a winning combination. It might have been that single episode of “It Takes a Thief,” where Powers played the guest role of Mona that had me so sure of the pairing. The chemistry between those two actors, even that far back was absolutely convincing.

Powers has always fascinated me as an actor, although many of her pre-H2H roles failed to showcase her real range and abilities. I always felt because she had brains and purposely avoided ‘going Hollywood”, choosing instead to pursue her personal interests and maintain her privacy, she wasn’t given the opportunities afforded to others who were more willing fit the bill 24-7 or play along to gain favor.

Wagner I never really followed as an actor, per se. Rather, I more enjoyed the characters he played, particularly in both Thief and Switch. It didn’t hurt that he was terribly handsome, the epitome of suave and debonair, and could fill out a tux better than most. In addition, I was impressed at so often reading what a nice guy he was considered to be by his peers despite his celebrity status and being twice married to a long-time movie star.

For five years, I tuned in faithfully to the show, loving the Harts and their mature, mutually respectful, and childless relationship. I envied how they could pack a bag and travel at the drop of a hat without the worry of arranging for babysitters, or strapping in car seats or what bill they wouldn’t be able to pay when they got back from the most recent lavish cruise, New York shopping spree, or South American adventure.

To say the least about it, I was devastated when the show was so abruptly canceled and replaced with “Jessie”, which I REFUSED to watch out of bitter spite brought on by my loyalty to the Harts. When Jessie failed to thrive, nobody could have been more delighted than I was; no offense to Ms. Lindsay Wagner, I had nothing against her personally, I actually enjoyed her work in general, but Jessie was not Hart to Hart.

But then came the movies, and I was excited to see what the Harts had been up to while they were gone from my TV screen.

The first one, Hart to Hart Returns, was pretty good. A couple others were okay, but for the most part I found the movies disappointing. Despite the passage of time, in which so much could have happened or developed with them, the Harts hadn’t really evolved. They were in the same place emotionally, which was fine, but not much else was different, not even the kinds of things they were involved in. Most of story lines in the movies were extended, slightly adjusted rehashes of story lines from the episodes. Secrets of the Hart, Crimes of the Hart, and the one with Elliot Manning, Harts in High Season, had potential, but by time their end credits rolled, the story lines in each had flattened and then petered out in a less than satisfying manner. There were two that didn’t ring true at all, Old Friends and the one shot in Germany, To Death Us Do Hart, which I believe was the last one. By that time, it was painfully obvious the thrill was gone. I found myself wishing so badly that the writers had “asked somebody” before they put those tired, and sometimes silly, ideas into play.

Somehow the powers- that-be never seemed to get it, either in the TV series or the movies, that most of us tuned in for the relationship and interaction between the principal characters more than we did the so-called mystery aspect.

Around the time the series was cancelled, one of the last ideas being floated was for the Harts to have a late-in-life pregnancy. I wasn’t crazy about the idea at the time; I couldn’t see them with a baby since part of their magic was how unencumbered they were. I was especially against the idea since the plot called for Jennifer being hit by a car and losing the baby. That would have been too much reality for a one hour episode and for the escapism the show itself offered. I was; however, intrigued by thoughts of what their kid would have been like.

Once the movies did air, and we were presented with the plots as written, I thought how nice it would have been for the Harts to have had a child during their hiatus, and through the magic of television, said child had grown into a teenager by the time the movies rolled out. Intelligent, curious, and adventuresome like the parents, a child would have given the Harts another focus, a different spin without them losing their own investigative tendencies or their loving relationship. It also would have afforded the writers some fresh material to develop, and the viewers another dynamic to their favorite couple.

Those thoughts stayed in my mind until one day, on a random H2H Google search, I ran up on Nolene’s Hart to Hart Fan Site, where I found Susan’s Fan Fiction Archive. That was my introduction to fan fiction, and needless to say, I was hooked! I had no idea people wrote stories that extended the lives of their favorite fictional characters, and I can’t describe how delighted I was to find a treasure trove of stories about the Harts.

Shortly after having discovered the site I went to every free moment I had, my family flew to Vegas for a family reunion. I printed out a few of the stories to read or reread on the the flight as laptops and WiFi weren’t the available options then as they are today. On the way back from Vegas, in a tablet I had purchased for that purpose, I hand-scripted the first draft of Queen of Harts, featuring J.J. Hart, the late-in-life daughter of Jonathan and Jennifer Hart, and I began to do with the Harts the things I wished the writers had done for those movies.

As a teenager, I loved writing, and I wrote stories all the time. I entered college with the goal of becoming a journalist, but my experiences there revealed I needed to pursue something a little more solid and secure, and do the writing thing on the side. Beginning a career in teaching, then marriage and children moved writing to the back shelf of my life until I began writing about J.J. Hart. That’s when I rediscovered how much I enjoyed the act of moving what was going on in my mind to paper.

Publishing my first story on Susan’s site was the first piece of writing I ever offered for anonymous general public perusal. It was scary, but the feedback was pretty positive, and I was encouraged by it to continue. A couple of stories later, I realized I needed more control over posting and revision, so I took a class and learned to build a simple website where I could post my own stories how and when I wanted and be able to make changes I needed to make when I needed to make them, thus J.J.’s Room. I had no idea at that time how much this site would grow and how many stories I would wind up writing, but I’m happy and proud that it did.

J.J. has opened worlds to me that I might never have experienced, and I have met people I might never have come into contact with had I not written the stories. In fact, my first trip to Europe was a direct result of the writing. I met and got a hug from Ms. Powers as an direct result of my love for H2H and indirectly because of these stories. It has been a lot of fun, and a great source of mental exercise for me, although as the plots grow more complicated and J.J. is getting older and more complex a character, it’s not as easy to quickly crank out the stories as it used to be. I feel I do a better job now than I used to do, but the process is a lot more involved, and thus, a whole lot slower.

As I struggled to build this new website and reformat the stories to reload them, I noticed how much my writing has changed since the beginning, and to be truthful about it, I’m shamed by the mistakes I made when I didn’t know any better. I will certainly be getting a some writing exercise, doing the editing and rewriting that needs to be done, but I guess that’s a good thing. It can fill those dry moments I get as I work my with the current story. But I guess that’s what growth is all about making mistakes, learning from them, making the appropriate changes, and evolving.

And doing the best you can with what you have for the benefit of yourself and, hopefully, others.

I wonder if the writers of H2H realize the one thing they did do extraordinarily well was create a show that brought people together from all around the world. Over thirty years later, the original viewers and some born after the last episode aired are still in love with the characters and the relationship they created for them.

At least that’s how it is for me ….