Do you remember when soap operas 1) existed and 2) were called “stories”? My mom had quite a few “stories” she watched every afternoon. When I was in my 20s I watched As The World Turns, one of mom’s favorites, every night, recording it on my VCR (oy!) to watch at night when I got home from work. My husband even got into it when we met. He won me a big stuffed snake at a carnival back then and we named it “Gavin” after one of the show’s characters.
The cast of ATWT had a softball team that would travel around the New York and New Jersey area, playing other daytime drama teams for charity. One extremely hot summer day in 1991, Mister Rain, my mom and I drove two hours to attend one of these games. It was a long, sweaty, fantastic day and my mom had the time of her life, meeting actors she had watched five days a week for three and a half decades. In the photo below, my mom meets actor Larry Bryggman, who portrayed Dr. John Dixon on ATWT for 35 years.
Last week my husband and I went to see Alan Cumming perform not far from where that baseball game had occurred all those years ago. We left our home in late afternoon so that we could have dinner near the theater before the show, not arriving back to our house until after 11 pm.
As we were driving home Mister Rain and I talked about that day 33 years ago. He said, “Can you believe we were so adventurous back then, traveling 100 miles away with your mom in the heat and humidity?” I laughed, considering this. “You know, we really aren’t that different than those two crazy kids,” I finally replied. “We are still game for just about anything, anywhere, any time. I’d say we’ve still got it.”
The next morning, I was awake but still in bed, doing things on my iPad. My husband rolled over to face me. “Why do I feel like a truck hit me?,” he asked. I was thinking the same thing.
Yes, we can still go the distance, but the impact the day after is when the miles of our lives takes a toll.
#sisterrain #alittlesightalotofheart #legallyblindwriter #writer #writersofinstagram #humaninterest #life #lifeisgood #lifestories #marriage #astheworldturns #alancumming #astheyearsturn
