You Take Me Away...Like Sands Through the Hourglass....
A few days ago I made a shocking discovery: "Days of Our Lives" is still on the air.
For whatever reason, I had been living my life under the misunderstanding that ALL soaps, including DOOL, had gone off the air. This falsehood was remedied thanks to a friend we were staying with. Somehow it came up that Emily followed and recorded DOOL so we promptly viewed two recent episodes.
To put it simply, my mind was (and still is) blown. Why such a powerful reaction? Nostalgia, to be sure. I grew up watching DOOL and all the NBC soaps (and even a few from other channels) and my earliest memories include these "stories." And so many of these characters are STILL on the show!! Which is both wonderful and frightening. How does Marlena do it?
Of course anything nostalgia related is also deeply intertwined with memories of my mother. And Colleen loved her stories. When mom was dying, my sister Jenn read to her from Soap Opera Digest, because hearing about these familiar characters was distracting and comforting.
I have another mom memory that I've felt compelled to recount that isn't DOOL-related, but is soap related, so now seems a good opportunity. Disclaimer: the importance of this soap moment is not at all rational. But shortly before my mom died (and we had no idea she had cancer at the time) we watched an episode of "Another World" together in which my all-time favorite character, Frankie, got to have a "reunion" with the ghost of her dead son. I cried like a little girl (okay, I teared up a little, same thing for a young German), and my mom was very sweet but bemused ("um, you know this is just a soap opera Amy, right?"). Thinking back these many years on that moment of bonding over parent-child loss with my soon-to-be "ghost" mother, I've imbued that moment with great symbolic significance.
I've also thought about soaps a lot this year because one of my favorite actors from Another World, Charles Keating, died. Not only was CK an amazing heroic villain on Another World, I also got to see him perform live at the Guthrie a couple of times (including as Scrooge) and he was a tremendous actor. One time I tried to tell my mom that we were going to see Charles Keating, "Carl," at the Guthrie, and she translated that into Colleen-speak and told my sister that "Chad and Amy are going to see their friend Carl at the Guthrie." Ah, sometimes I wish I lived in my mom's world. I don't believe in an afterlife, but if I did, I would like to think that my mom is hanging out with my friend Carl.
For whatever reason, I had been living my life under the misunderstanding that ALL soaps, including DOOL, had gone off the air. This falsehood was remedied thanks to a friend we were staying with. Somehow it came up that Emily followed and recorded DOOL so we promptly viewed two recent episodes.
To put it simply, my mind was (and still is) blown. Why such a powerful reaction? Nostalgia, to be sure. I grew up watching DOOL and all the NBC soaps (and even a few from other channels) and my earliest memories include these "stories." And so many of these characters are STILL on the show!! Which is both wonderful and frightening. How does Marlena do it?
Of course anything nostalgia related is also deeply intertwined with memories of my mother. And Colleen loved her stories. When mom was dying, my sister Jenn read to her from Soap Opera Digest, because hearing about these familiar characters was distracting and comforting.
I have another mom memory that I've felt compelled to recount that isn't DOOL-related, but is soap related, so now seems a good opportunity. Disclaimer: the importance of this soap moment is not at all rational. But shortly before my mom died (and we had no idea she had cancer at the time) we watched an episode of "Another World" together in which my all-time favorite character, Frankie, got to have a "reunion" with the ghost of her dead son. I cried like a little girl (okay, I teared up a little, same thing for a young German), and my mom was very sweet but bemused ("um, you know this is just a soap opera Amy, right?"). Thinking back these many years on that moment of bonding over parent-child loss with my soon-to-be "ghost" mother, I've imbued that moment with great symbolic significance.
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| My friend Carl. Holy crap, this is some amazing hair. |
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