During my early teenage years, when I wasn’t busy wishing I was Olivia Newton-John, I was busy wishing I was Marcia Brady. How I longed for the perfect suburban home with the mod orange and avocado kitchen, sliding glass doors in the family room that opened to a perfectly shorn Astroturf lawn (on which rain never fell) and a far-out den where I could hang beaded curtains. Not to mention a frilly, pink bedroom and sisters to share it with.
   I envied not only Marcia’s blonde hair, parted down the middle and poker-straight, falling just above the bra line, but also her perfect little snub nose, at least until brother Peter severely dented it with an errant football. I too wanted to kiss Desi Arnaz Jr. and have Davy Jones perform at my prom. And how convenient would it have been to have a live-in maid to crack corny jokes every time things in the household got a little tense?
   But alas, it was not meant to be. And that’s just fine, considering that no one could compare to Marcia as played to perfection by Maureen McCormick. Not only is McCormick now middle-age, but she has just written the proverbial former-child-star book.
    Being a fan of all things Brady (especially Marcia), I couldn’t help but pick up a copy of McCormick’s book, “Here’s the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My Own Voice.” She shares how her on-the-set family, although not without its share of dysfunction, was so much saner than her real-life family. And that’s saying something when your television dad was portrayed by Robert Reed, a Shakespearean actor who had frustrations with the sitcom while also laboring to keep his homosexuality in the closet.
   Ironically, while countless young girls who grew up watching the Brady Bunch were wishing to be Marcia, Maureen McCormick was experiencing it firsthand, yet wishing the same thing — that she too could have a life as perfect as Marcia’s, where every problem is happily resolved within a 22-minute sitcom.
    In her book, McCormick details the typical behind-the-scenes shenanigans that we readers have come to expect from these autobiographical celebrity tomes. How she and Eve Plumb, who played Jan Brady, were actually close friends in real life and not insecure, jealous rivals. How kind Florence Henderson and Robert Reed were to the kids on the show. But there was that time when Henderson went on a real-life date with a lovelorn Barry Williams (he played her oldest stepson Greg) and kissed him goodnight.
   As it turns out, for all her brave, braces-faced smiles on the show, Maureen McCormick had a lot to cry about. Seems she lived with a nagging fear of someday being diagnosed with syphilis, the disease that caused the dementia and deaths of her grandmother and her mother. For years it had been a deep, dark family secret that understandably devastated her when finally brought to light.
   This familial revelation in turn caused her to wander down a path of destruction so severe that, by all accounts, she shouldn’t have lived long enough to tell about it. You name it: drugs, sex and, yes, even some rock ’n’ roll defined Maureen McCormick’s life for more years than she’d like to count. She credits her own family, her husband who has stood by her, her daughter and her faith for making her who she is now — a mature, responsible adult who is well on the road to recovery from a tormented and painful past.
It just goes to show that those family sitcoms aren’t always as idyllic as they seem. Marcia Brady always seemed to have it all. How nice that all these trials and tribulations later, Maureen McCormick can finally start to enjoy what that feels like.
Robyn McCloskey’s column appears each week in My Community Trend. She can be reached at crmccloskey@verizon.net.