My mother loved soap operas, emphasis on
love. When they played on the radio we learned not to disturb her. They were only 15 minutes each so except for the time my brother almost cut his thumb off with the garden clippers, emergencies waited.
When they transitioned to television she fixed our lunch during commercials and left us kids to eat on our own. It was the most exasperating thirty minutes of my day. My brothers quietly tormented me knowing I didn't dare yell and risk interrupting her show.
The televised version was live and increased to 30 minutes. It meant giving up another hour of her day, but she made it work. She organized house cleaning around their time slots. She folded clothes, darned socks and ironed while watching. When uninteresting story lines were featured she wrote letters, paid bills and went to the bathroom.
When they expanded to an hour she fumed and fussed and then chose two. She dipped in and out of the others and switched favorites when another became more intriguing.
My mother was a friendly loner. She talked easily to strangers in grocery stores and restaurants and doctor offices. During church social hour I found her through the forest of legs by her loud voice and laughter. But she rarely chatted on the phone and never invited neighbors in for coffee like housewives on television. She didn't have "girl-friends".
Her best friend was my father and he didn't talk much. He came home and read the paper while she told him about her day. He responded with grunts and she gave up or stomped off. Sometimes she exploded. Her reaction seemed unpredictable, but now I think it was PMS.
Our family ate together almost every night but the only talk was about passing butter. We finished and vacated the kitchen within five minutes. When older I discovered some families lingered at the dinner table and conversed. I suggested we try that and Dad quoted my grandfather, "The sheep who bleats misses a mouthful." It's a Scottish thing. In the evening we watched TV, got snacks during commercials and were shushed during the shows.
Until I got my license, Mom drove me back and forth to high school and performed a non-stop monologue. Like my father, I gave an occasional “um hum”. But mentally I insulted her with the “diarrhea of the mouth” diagnosis my band conductor used for chatty students. In my fantasy her doctor prescribed a pill that made her say funny, witty things instead of milk prices and Sunday's dinner possibilities.
The only thing my mother talked about that got my attention was other people. She was a gossip. It was learned behavior. The little town she grew up in was notorious for it. In high school she worked part time at the telephone switch board and said operators listened in on phone conversations. Within minutes the town gossips were informed and within the hour everyone knew about the latest cheating husband or church choir ruckus. She claimed to hate it. My mother wasn’t a liar, so maybe she did the same way a drug addict hates drugs.
After puberty she decided I was old enough to hear about suspected affairs, what she saw the neighbors do and not do, and how awful it was to listen to my grandmother and Aunt Thelma gossip about everyone. And then she’d tell me what they said. As far as I know, she didn’t talk to my brothers or Dad about these things. This was "girl talk". And I was her only daughter.
Talking about other people who seemed to have a worse life than we did was satisfying. I don’t like admitting that. We dissected their behavior, analyzed motives, and predicted outcomes. After taking Psychology 101 I had book knowledge that confirmed what my mother already knew.
As fun as gossip was I didn’t like the way it felt later. When I saw people I talked about it bothered me. I felt like I betrayed them because I had.
In the campus book store I found a poster for my dorm room wall: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”It was a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt. I wanted to have great mind. Or at least average.
It was easy to talk about ideas with my college friends. Ideas were our playthings. We had all night bull sessions while listening to Moody Blues. We reconstructed society and imagined we knew more than any previous generation. We missed the irony that our heroes were from previous generations. We marveled at Gandhi, and King. Were awed and excited by Malcolm, and illuminated our conversations with quotes from Nietzsche and Gibran. We read Hermann Hess and longed to search for Nirvana like Siddhartha. Then I had to go home.
My mother had been waiting to fill me in on the latest divorces and affairs and family spats. I tried to not respond. But habit patterns were hard to break. I returned to school feeling tainted and small brained. I was a hypocrite and I hated hypocrites.
Then it got worse. I became a Bahá’i. My parents were sure this was some kind of a cult. I assured them we didn’t shave our heads or sell flowers in airports. There were no mass marriages or gurus or spaceships coming to save us. But there was something that had to change and I wasn’t sure how to do it. Gossip
Bahá'is avoid gossip because it hurts people, it isn’t constructive, it keeps you from focusing on your own faults, it destroys friendships and makes people feel unwelcome and unloved. That may be a teaching of all faiths. It probably is. I just never experienced being with people who practiced it.
My mother was already hurt I had left the church. I didn’t know how to make this change and not offend her so I did nothing. I listened to her gossip and eventually joined in. Afterward I felt sick.
I came home for the summer and one afternoon sat and watched “One Life to Live”. I asked questions about the characters. She filled me in on years of twists and turns and betrayals and losses. She did the same for “As the World Turns”. We watched them together all summer. We analyzed characters, diagnosed personality disorders, questioned motives and speculated on what would happen next. My father overheard and asked who in the hell we were talking about. He didn't appreciate our laughing at his curiosity.
“All My Children” debuted that year. We both hated Erica Cane more than what was reasonable. I'm glad we never saw the actress in real life. We might have screamed and spit at her.
I went back to school and Mom wrote update letters or called. "You won't believe what that scamp did this time." Soaps helped us when it was impossible to talk without arguing. Apologies were awkward. We could ease into speaking again by denouncing evil Erika. At times conflicts we watched mirrored our own. We suggested solutions they should try and then tried them ourselves.
This went on for years until it had to stop. I was married with little kids. Sesame Street and Mr. Rodgers took claim of our one television set and VCRs were beyond our budget. By then, without making it a big deal, mom knew I didn’t gossip about real people. For awhile she kept me up on stories and when I came to visit grandpa played with the kids and we sneak-watched the woman we loved hating. Gradually we talked about other things. Like how amazing her grandchildren were. And milk prices.
The last few years of mom's life she stopped watching the Soaps. She said they were now disgusting. She never gave details so I'm guessing it was the sex or the alien abductions.
I have one daughter. We talk about ideas, books, events, and her kids. But there are times we need to ridicule something. We watch Lifetime movies and make fun of predictable endings, sappy story lines and bad acting. I try not to think about the script writers and actors we are trashing and want to think they wouldn’t take offense. They must know how bad it is.
Some nights my granddaughter sleepily stumbles out of her bed. She joins us on the couch and laughs when we do. This gossip compromise may become my legacy. Damn.
Words © by Sharon Nesbit-Davis,2011, All rights reserved
