I always send flowers to my grandmother on special occasions, like Mothers Day, which she thoroughly enjoys. We have this ritual where I usually will call a few days after she has received her gift.

So this Monday I called my grandmother, but I had some disturbing news to share with her, and I was not sure how she would take it. I called and we exchanged the usual pleasantries. She thanked me over and over again for the flowers. I asked about the rest of the family, listened to updates on her doctor visits and recent ailments.

I had prolonged the inevitable long enough. I tentatively broached the subject but again I was concerned about how she would take the news.

“Mommo,” I finally said. “Have you heard that they will be cancelling one of your stories?”

I could hear her tense up immediately.

“Which one they say they gone cut” she responded in a hushed tone.

I took a deep breath and said, “They are going to cancel All My Children.”

I waited nervously for what seemed like agonizing minutes for her to respond. I knew I should have had 911 on the other line.

To put this into perspective, we must take a trip back in time. Picture it, summer vacation in the 70,s and we are at my grandparents’ farm in Alto, TX.

My grandfather worked for the railroad, so he was usually up and gone every morning before we got up, and my grandmother would sometimes have to go downtown and “clean.” This was code for working for the “white folks.”…. smile.

But before she left she would fix an old-school country breakfast. No croissants or quiche, here people; I am talking grits, eggs, thick sliced bacon, skillet biscuits and homemade preserves. We had an older cousin, Alzeta, who stayed with us until my grandmother returned.

My grandmother would return just in time for her stories. She had very specific rules during story time. We had to be quiet, except for comments directed towards the characters. She would not answer the phone and we had to multi-task, like folding clothes or shelling peas.

My grandmother was often joined by her story buddies -- cousin Lucille and cousin Etherine. We all have those weird family relations of cousins who are as old as our grandparents. I loved our cousin Etherine especially because she was the most animated and carried on a running monologue of commentary with enough expletives to shame a sailor….lol.

I remember cousin Etherine, who lived across the road, arriving to my grandmothers in a serious state of agitation. My grandmother at first thought she was talking about a family member but soon realized she was talking about All My Children. She was cursing out someone named Billy Clyde and how he was up to no good trying to, in her words, “make that girl a streetwalker.”

We were not sure what a streetwalker was but it must have been bad. This was just the start of my grandmother’s long and lasting relationship with a place called Pine Valley and all its residents. She had seen great joy and some troubled times, but All My Children had been a consistent force in her life.

Back to my phone call. “Momo, are you OK? I did not know if you knew already.”

Momo: Did they say when they gone stop running the show?

Me: I think sometime in September.

I tried to lighten the mood: “Momo, remember how worked up cousin Etherine used to get over the stories?”

She laughed and said yeah: “Etherine would scare me sometimes talking about them folks like they was real.”

“I had to wean myself off them stories a bit,” she shared. “I’d find myself laying in bed worrying about some foolishness they had done and said, ‘Lord, I got to let some of this go,’” she laughed.

I felt a little better as she seemed to be processing the reality that her longtime relationship with All My Children was coming to an end.

“Well, I just thought you should know, Momo, about your stories, and I love you and will check in later,” I concluded.

Mission accomplished, news delivered. But just when I was feeling she would be OK, she replied before she hung up, “I love you, too. Lord, what’s gone happen to Erica now?”

***
Professor Locs, aka Charles Easley, is an educator who explores race, class, gender, sexuality, media and popular culture with humor and insight. Click here to read his blog.
 

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