Dear ABC, Marc Cherry and the Entire Cast & Crew of Desperate Housewives,

Today, on the eve of your series finale, I wanted to take a minute to send you a little love and appreciation for eight years of great entertainment. I seldom take the time to write letters of this sort. As a matter of fact, I’m fairly certain that the last piece of fan mail I put out there involved ordering something called a Shaun Cassidy Everything Kit. (It never came by the way … and I’m still waiting.)

When Desperate Housewives debuted in October 2004, I had two very young children. My son was four and my daughter was two and, like any mother with kids that age, I was a frazzled, sleepless woman with little time for herself. Actually, the only real me time I remember getting back then was from 8-9pm on Sunday nights when my husband took the kids off my hands completely enabling me, literally, to hole up in my bedroom and take in my weekly hour of what I always called my calorie-free chocolate. (It had all the guilty pleasure and indulgence of a nice Godiva bar but none of the dietary sabotage.)

My biggest mistake was encouraging my husband to watch the show with me at some point and letting him get sucked in as much as I was. Yes, that’s right. I just outed my husband as a big male Desperate Housewives fan, whether he likes it or not. So, from that point on, we taped the show and watched it after the kids went to bed. And it was a fun hour that we spent together each week keeping up with your motley crew of housewives, temptresses, murderesses and more.

Until August 2005.

We’re from New Orleans, Louisiana. And, like so many others all around us, we lost our home to Hurricane Katrina and wound up fleeing to my husband’s mother’s home about 80 miles away where our family of four lived for the next nine months with her as well as with my parents and my brother. (Talk about the Clampett family.)

It was at this point that I sucked my mother into the show. I can remember putting my kids to bed on Sunday nights in our temporary house and settling in with my mom on the sofa with a few glasses of wine to take in the new episode each week. In truth, it was one of the things I most looked forward to back in those dark days of not knowing what would happen next. Your storyline allowed me to escape my (fairly substantial at the time) worries and just get caught up in the characters every Sunday.

It became such a ‘my thing’ back then that it was the theme of my next birthday party. My kids were in charge and, since their parties always had themes (a la Dora the Explorer, Disney Princesses, etc.), they thought mine should reflect my favorite things. So, with the help of my mother, they wrote ABC on my behalf and received an autographed picture as well as some small pictures that they used to decorate my cake. We played ‘Pin the Ponytail on the Desperate Housewife’ and they even ordered me this shirt.

Yes, I still have it. But it says ‘I’m Desperate’ and it’s very tight so it’s been demoted to a night shirt.

Any chance of having the world know the real benign meaning of my shirt was lost in this tiny logo completely covered by my hair on the back.

Now nearly seven years after Katrina, my family is settled back in New Orleans in a new home that we’ve owned since 2007. My kids, who were potty training pre-schoolers when the show started, are now 9 and 12. We’re starting to look at high schools for my son. It’s amazing the time span that your show covered in the life of my family.

And I never missed an episode. I’ll be sorry to see you go. I don’t know what I’m going to do on Sunday nights. If I bring the wine and cheese, can I come over to your house?

Yours in eight years of appreciation,

Michele

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Happy Mother’s Day to all of you!

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