Bringing Mom Home: Throwback 1983

When I was going through my Mom’s possessions, after she had moved to assisted living, I found a whole box of cassette tapes of her and her mother and sisters. Instead of, or in addition to, letters, my mother’s family sent one another long, rambling tapes. How can you just toss your grandmother’s voice? I took them home and eventually had them digitized.One afternoon as I baked bread, I listened to a tape of my mother from 1983. She told of bowling, running errands, couponing, my father’s upcoming motorcycle race, her interactions with the neighbor’s five-year-old son, and her wish to hear from me more often. She held forth on recent happenings in their shared soap operas.My mother’s family took care to keep up with “their” soaps, and made comments to one another on the characters and plots. I have always regarded soap operas as a silly waste of time, but now I can see also how this type of sharing might have been a way of connecting far-flung sisters and daughters. In the same way I like to watch a movie with friends and discuss it afterward.I don’t think any of them took the TV shows seriously. They were mere entertainment, a springboard, occasionally mockable. Real life was prosaic, comprised of errands and sales and interactions with friends and neighbors. Nobody expected to be or do anything remarkable or above average. They talked about soap operas, prices, the weather, their husbands and children. They always knew who they were talking to, and they knew they would be listened to.When taping her family, Mom never had to wonder if what she was saying would be interesting enough, or if she were going on too long. She was sharing quotidien activities just as if they were together baking or quilting or cleaning, as if there were hours to exhaust each subject before taking up a fresh one. To my mind, which is endlessly hustled from article to sign to clickbait to text, that sort of luxurious use of time seems languidly hedonistic.