Being There

A few days ago, I got back from visiting family. It was a great visit, but a difficult one. It was my first time visiting since losing my mother. Life without my mother has been so hard, at times. I don't mean to get all dark - I'm actually very happy in my life, right now - but there are moments when I don't even know how I manage to get by in a world without my mother. She loomed large for me.

While visiting, I spent a lot of time with my nephews. Their parents are going through a pretty messy/nasty break-up. Their dad - a man I always loved as a brother - has decided that a break-up with his wife means a break-up with his children. The children he was always so close to. The children who he always said were his best friends. The youngest child - my beautiful, 6 yr old nephew - can't understand why his dad never calls, never picks him up for visits, anymore, and doesn't respond to the many phone messages he's left him. In his six year old mind, he's done something to cause this, and there really is no way to let him know that nothing that's happened is his fault.

There's no way to explain to a six year old that the father who was always such a great guy has recently turned into a self-centered asshole who is more interested in pissing off his ex-wife, than in loving his children.

Witnessing what this abandonment has done to this precious boy made me think about my own parents. I adored (still adore) my mother. She was my best friend. When I think about why losing her has had such a profound effect on me, the reason is ridiculously clear: I miss her because SHE WAS THERE. She was there for me. Always. Every day. She offered unconditional love and support. She never walked away. She always answered my calls. I knew, absolutely, that I could count on her. That's it, and that's everything. She was always there, and now, she isn't. Of course there's a huge, gaping hole. When I made mistakes, she was there. When I was obnoxious, she was there. When I needed bailing out of situations, she was there. When I did anything that warranted recognition, she was there. When I was sick, she was there. When I woke up in the morning and needed someone to talk to over a cup of coffee, she was there. When I said I was in love with a woman and was going to move to the other side of the planet to build a life with her, she was there.

I am not saying that we never argued, or that we never got on one another's nerves.

I'm not saying that my mother was a saint.

If anything, I'm saying that she was so very human.

What I'm saying is that she was there. She didn't walk away. She didn't turn her back on me, ever. She was always there, and I always knew she'd be there. I could count on her to be there for me. Because real parents don't leave. They just don't. I'm 45 years old and, if my mother were alive, today, she'd still be there for me. I was so blessed, for so long, that not having her makes me ache.

It's natural for a 45 year old to ache like this. A six year old isn't supposed to. A six year old shouldn't have to ask himself what he's done to make his father leave. A six year old shouldn't be having dreams about telling his dad not to cut into a friend's birthday cake, and then having his father walk away in anger over being denied a slice of cake.

You probably won't read this, but in the slim chance that you do: Be as mad at my sister as you like. Hate her, for all I care. Call her whatever names you like. But, be a man, when it comes to your kids. Be there, asshole.

© 2012 Lana M. Nieves

Limited Licensing: I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the Creative Commons Attribution license, granting distribution of my copyrighted work without making changes, with mandatory attribution to Lana M. Nieves and for non-commercial purposes only. - Lana M. Nieves 

The Moment

I am five years old, sitting on the floor in front of my grandmother's couch. My mother and grandmother sit on the couch. I lean back on my mother's legs. We are all engrossed in what we see on the television in front of us: on the night before Philip Brent is to ship off to fight in Vietnam, he and Tara Martin have snuck into a church.

They are young.
They are in love.
In the darkness of an empty church, they privately exchange vows.
There is no priest.
This is their secret.
We are the only witnesses.

This is the moment that sets the scene for years of heartbreak, drama, tragedy and action in Pine Valley. It is the moment that will impact so many characters in the years to come. It is the moment that, years later, when Philip returns from Vietnam and finds Tara married to Chuck Tyler, he will bring us back to. It is the moment I first feel the power of the genre known as soap opera and fall in love with a particular kind of storytelling - storytelling that is about people and their histories, their secrets, their demons. Storytelling that is about people at their best and people at their worst, and all the shades of gray in between.

On hearing about the cancellation of All My Children and One Life To Live, I knew I'd have to write about what will truly be the end of an era for me, but I didn't know where to start. While exchanging emails with a group of friends who love soaps every bit as much as I do, and reminiscing about our favorite moments, it hit me like gangbusters: Philip and Tara. The church. Their secret. It is the first real story line I remember.

In my real life, I'd hear my parents talk about Vietnam. Howard K. Smith and Harry Reasoner talked about it on the news every night. It was part of the background noise as we ate dinner. But it was just a word to me. I had no idea what this Vietnam everyone spoke about really was, except that it was bad, and everyone had an opinion about it. My grandfather and father disagreed about it. A lot. And here, in the middle of the day, were Philip and Tara - two young, attractive characters who seemed like real people to me - talking about a war. About what it means for a young man to go off to war without any certainty that he'll come home, again. It is not an exaggeration to say that I figured out what Vietnam was - not through my parents or the news reports we watched every day - but  by watching Philip and Tara's drama unfold. It was a war! People had strong feelings about it, in part, because young men were going away for years and years, even though they didn't want to. Some of them never got back home. Some of them left home without ever having lived. Some of them left families behind, and people they loved.

For every crazy, stupid story line this genre has tackled - demonic possession, human cloning, time travel, a gorilla escaping from Central Park Zoo - there are so many human stories that really have made a difference in the way a lot of people live their lives. When Guiding Light aired frank and open story lines about domestic violence and breast cancer viewers paid attention - DV hotlines rang off the hook and women started booking appointments for mammograms in record numbers. Another World talked openly about abortion for the first time on television. As The World Turns revealed that a popular character was gay. Guiding Light tackled spousal rape for the first time on television. The Young and the Restless bravely introduced a story line about venereal disease in the mid 70s. Ryan's Hope broke tradition by featuring a Jewish character in the previously all Christian/ mostly Protestant daytime arena. And All My Children incorporated the Vietnam War - in real time, no less - with the Philip and Tara story line. And maybe this story line helped people talk about the war, or see it in a different light. I know it explained a lot about the war to me, as young as I was. But more. It made me notice story-telling. It made me pay attention to why characters did and said what they did and said. It made me notice that nothing exists in a vacuum, and that every action is followed by a reaction - even though I didn't have that language - and that these things are important to keep in mind if you want to tell a story that people will believe and want to listen to. Mostly, it made me want to make up and tell those stories, myself.

It is no small thing for me to think of All My Children being pulled off the air. Even though Tara and Philip are long gone, Agnes Nixon is no longer at the helm, and I haven't been a regular viewer for some time, that show is a little piece of home for me. It represents time shared with people who were important to me (my mother and grandmother), and a very specific moment in time when a big part of the person I am today was born.

It's no accident that people refer to their favorite soaps as their "stories," because that's what the genre has always been about - stories. Agnes Nixon wrote a story about Philip and Tara. Richard Hatch and Karen Lynn Gorney brought that story to life. That story made me fall in love with stories.