I ADMIT IT. WHEN MY DAUGHTER WAS A BABY, AND I WAS home 24/7, I indulged. Indulged is the right word. This was pre-VCR or TiVo days. If you wanted to follow a soap opera, you had to be right there at a certain time every day. So, in addition to caring for an infant, I scheduled in my show. One of the plot lines involved the sweetheart of the show, Mary, who was as brave as she was good. Mary, unlike the many other characters, was unselfish and always did the right thing. Maybe I (and lots of other soap aficionados) enjoyed seeing the contrast between "good" Mary and "not so good" Erica.
Eventually I went back to work and had to ask others about what was going on with my soap family. But one year, I found myself enjoying glimpses of the show while working at a shelter for women and children. These were women who had fled domestic abuse, and many seemed traumatized by having been uprooted from their lives. What continuity the shelter was able to provide—cooking meals, caring for their children, and the familiarity of watching their favorite show—helped to comfort these women in the midst of great upheaval. And the show gave me an opportunity to bond with them as we followed the lives and times of our mutual friends and foes, the soap families.
As Christmas approached, I became especially sensitive to how important it was for these families to be in a supportive environment, in a place that celebrated all that was good about the holiday season. Unfortunately, the writers of our soap opera had decided this was the time to do away with the selfless Mary, and she met an untimely death. Every day, the shelter residents and I watched members of the cast reacting to this sudden loss, and every day I saw how this affected the families at the shelter. We cried and mourned as if our old friend Mary had really died. The holiday season went from hopeful to mopeful.
