Days of Our Lives - by Elizabeth Allen

Do you watch soaps? Will you admit it? Perhaps you’re a GH (General Hospital) or OLTL (One Life to Live) devotee.

Me? It’s been DOOL since 1968 when Hope was just a baby, Alice Horton was still young and pretty and no one referred to Victor Kiriakis as Jennifer Aniston’s dad (not until one year later when she came along in 1969). Oh sure, there have been lapses—some lasting years—where I didn’t indulge my histrionic needs, but something always enticed me back to the world of affairs, hospital romances, mistaken identities, untimely albeit temporary deaths, switched babies, pregnancy after the first time, and the ever popular evil twin. I’ve laughed, cried, rooted for and bitched at the players over the years. I’ve gotten so involved with a plotline that I forced my baby to listen to my conjecture about how John and Marlena would get out of this mess and what had to happen next. To which my baby eagerly responded, “Hungee, mommy…”

I willingly acknowledge with the same humble conviction of a recovering alcoholic that when it comes to soaps, I am as emotionally available as they come. I know the acting is lousy; I know the writing is cheesy; I know the plotlines are beyond redundant; I know the overall focus is negative and I know they are designed to keep you coming back FOR-FREAKING-EVER like a slave to the nail salon for acrylic tips.

But I simply can’t help myself. What’s more? I don’t want to. This is my sinful pleasure; my addiction. DVR’s? They were invented for me.

I have engaged in debates—ad nauseum—with my husband about why I watch this soap daily and nothing I can say convinces him that it has any socially redeeming value. He says, “I just can’t understand why you want to watch so much negativity…why you watch something that makes you sad…”

“But it doesn’t!” I offer with a sincere competitive edge in my voice to make him understand. But then I stop. What’s the point of belaboring this? How can I possibly explain that I love to cry and not out of grief or pity? I will watch movies that while essentially sad or have sad elements, move me. Great love stories get me going. I cry when I am touched. I weep at devastating intensity. I tear up at well written happy endings. The following movies are on my top tear-jerker list and I will watch them more than once: Sophie’s Choice, Seven Pounds, The Pursuit of Happyness (yeah, I like Will Smith), City of Angels, Somewhere in Time, Finding Neverland, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Beautiful Mind…and so on.

So what’s any of this have to do with motherhood later? I don’t know. Perhaps had I not had so much child-free time on my hands, I wouldn’t have gotten sucked into this melodramatic habit? Nah. That’s not it. Like I said earlier, I got hooked when I was ten years old.

What’s your excuse? What jerks your tears?

Sticky Nest - by Elizabeth Allen

I see young mothers all around me doing everything from dropping off their 6 year-olds for the first day of kindergarten to quick hugs outside their 18 year-olds freshman college dorm. They do it fast too! Like ripping off a Band-Aid. They shed ne’er a tear before they’re on their way to lunch with the girls or meeting with the interior designer to overhaul junior’s room.

But watch an older mom take little Timmy to his first day of school. He’s chomping at the bit, pulling toward the Fisher-Price Tiny Tots Farm with all his weight and she’s weeping at an elevated level of histrionics like something out of Sophie’s Choice. And it doesn’t seem to get any easier from there. At least it hasn’t for me.

My daughter turned 16 this past July and I have a whole list of BFI’s—Brace For It.

• Driving: without me or her father, alone, fast, listening to and/or singing along with music on her ipod, with a friend who’s distracting her by talking instead of keeping her eyes on the road thus discouraging my daughter from talking back to her, at night, in the rain, when the sun is at that blinding level, even when it’s not, when there are other cars on the road, and why she’s been gone for more than ten minutes.

• Boyfriends: while I trust her judgment in whom she chooses to be with and while she is pretty sophisticated about boys in general, I just don’t think she’s really ready for what a 16 year old boy wants. No offense to my readers who are parents of teenage sons, but you know what I’m talking about. Regarding rules – we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. If we impose rigid guidelines, there will be rebellion to contend with and we run the risk of driving her away and then she’ll hop into that car ( SEE: first BFI) and elope with that boy in Georgia just to make a point. If we give her complete and unrestricted freedom, she’ll take it and I’ll still be nauseous until she gets home from her date. And then she’ll tell me nothing. Oy vay.

• College: Sure. I hear what you’re saying. “She’s 16! That’s two years away!” But to me it feels like tomorrow. Intellectually, I understand the concept that our children are only ours for a short time and we must let them go, but my gut and my heart march to a different drummer. Between you and me (and I swear I will NOT pressure her to do this!) I want her to go to a local college, live at home, finish her homework and invite me in to watch a tearjerker DVD at least twice a week, help me cook family meals (why not? She’ll get to eat for free as long as she stays home) and go shopping with me once in a while. And then, once she graduates, maybe look for a position in her chosen field within a 50-mile-radius of me. Oh, and there’s no hurry to move out.

See this momma bird kicking her chick out of the nest?

THAT ain't me.

I know, I know. I’ve seen emotionally crippled young adults whose parents kept them utterly dependent and once on their own, they were completely helpless. I knew a boy in college who had never set foot in a grocery store. The first time he went food shopping for his apartment, he looked for packages of bologna on the bread aisle because it was logical that sandwich stuffs should be there. I’m not saying my clingy tendencies are healthy or even justified. Just the emotional ramblings and apprehensions of one gal who waited so long to have her dream baby and doesn’t want to wake up too soon.

Don’t pinch me.