It's seductive: this vision of mother as sexual being, mother as romantic, mother as beautiful, with the rest of her life ahead of her. It's seductive: this world where mother and daughter are best friends, where the child is grown while the mother is still young. Suddenly, I realize that "Gilmore Girls" is awakening dark longings no teenager could ever really know: the longing to be out of my parents' shadow, financially independent, the longing to love my job, stay close to my friends, retain my joie de vivre. It awakens the longing to, once again, be able to choose my mate, to believe that perfect, uncompromising love is out there. It awakens the potent desire to know that my daughter enjoys my company, and will, despite the years and power struggles between us, always understand.

But the fantasy really gets interesting when I pause at the fact that Lorelai got to raise her child alone.

This, like all porn, is politically incorrect and totally naive. Of course single, teenage motherhood is impossibly hard. Of course we should not glorify it; of course we should not long for it. But here is the deep, dark, shameful secret I -- over-privileged, "Gilmore Girls"-watching, future suburban mom -- keep: Sometimes I wish I could raise my child alone. I wish I didn't have to argue about the best sleep-training method or which school to send my daughter to. I wish I didn't have to have long discussions about what kind of toys she should play with and how to keep her from becoming spoiled. I wish I hadn't had to compromise on the nursery color or defend my decision to wean early. I wish I didn't have to pack my household up four times a year to visit relatives, when it is patently obvious that it would be so much easier for them to come here. Like some men sometimes long for big-boobed, fake-tanned women to lie on beaches and writhe around, I sometimes long to be in total charge, to make all the decisions, to have my child all to myself. Maybe I'm the only one.

But I don't think so. Lorelai, for all her surface gloss and patter, is a powerful talisman, as powerful as the lights on a slot machine. Despite our desire to revel in the show's wholesomeness, we mothers can't quite ignore the dark feelings she ignites within us. She is the anti-Donna Reed -- not the mother who's perfect in the way others want her to be, but the mother living the life all mothers secretly want to lead. And it makes "Gilmore Girls" an explicit turn-on: an hour in which happily married women can drool over the life of a good-looking, well-dressed, engagingly funny, totally independent, daughter's-best-friend, happily unmarried one.

We are now two weeks into Season 6. Rory is 20, has had sex with a boyfriend and a married man. She stole a yacht and got arrested. She has dropped out of Yale. Lorelai isn't speaking to her; she didn't even tell Rory when she and Luke got engaged. The show is, perhaps, a little bit less wholesome. But I'm still recommending it to parents; I even have a new gleam in my eye when I do.

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