This past year my children have been laughing at my new “soap addiction”. Everyday, I get home from yoga, shower and sit down with lunch and the newspaper. It just so happens this particular soap, The Young and The Restless, is on at just about that time.
I watched the very first episode with my mom when I was twelve. Everyday I’d get home from school to watch that show with her. I’d lay on the floor on a pillow and she’d be in her chair, as the characters, over the years, became actual “family members”. If you ever heard mom and I talk about them you’d swear we were talking about people we knew. In fact, my father often thought we were talking about real people and ask, “Who are you talking about?”
As the years went on, and I went away to college, got married and worked full time, I’d have to keep up with my “TV family” on school vacations. I’d often call mom in the middle of the show and ask “Who is that person? What happened to so and so? Who’d she marry?” My husband always thought we were talking about real people too, and laugh when I told him I was asking mom about the people on our “stories”, as both my mom and grandmother referred to our soaps.
Now my mom is gone, but the Y&R family still lives on in my livingroom everyday. There are days I have a question about a character, or a twist in the plot is about to happen, and I actually reach for the phone to text her. For the last year of her life we texted back and forth a lot during our “stories”.
So fear not, my dear children, your mother did not develop a soap opera addiction after retiring. For me, it’s just an hour a day I still feel connected with my mom, your Grandma. Many times I tell her, “Oh Ma, you should see what that Jill did now!” That, and it just happens to be on at a convenient time in my schedule, and …oh yes, who am I kidding? I’m just a bit hooked after following these people’s lives for 46 years.
And so, as another day goes by, it’s funny, the different ways people choose to remain in our lives even after they have passed on, and…I have written.
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