Alexandra Kloster, Pass the Hot Dish

“Good morning, dear.” Fifty-four years ago, Helen Wagner, as Nancy Hughes, delivered the first words spoken on “As the World Turns.” It was a tame start to a daytime soap opera that would eventually provide such gems as: “Don’t blame me because your son took a liking to the vodka and stowed away on your boyfriend’s plane!” or “She died falling up the stairs.” And who can forget the old standby, “I’m your mother!” and maybe the most popular, “Who’s the father?”

My favorite is, “Hello, Barbara.” Not too interesting out of context, but when villain James Stenbeck says it to his wife in his menacing way every time he returns from the dead, it becomes a classic.

Like so many women of my generation and before, I was plopped down in front of the soaps as a tot while life with my grandmother, mother, and sisters went on around me and life on “Guiding Light” and “As the World Turns” went on around them. Proctor & Gamble may have been selling soap to my mom, but it was the melodrama and fantasy that sold me.

My willingness to suspend disbelief for just about anything grew along with my love for the genre. Send a 10-year-old to boarding school and have him return a year later as an adult with a law degree? Sure, why not? It took only slightly longer to become a doctor because they had to know enough to say, “It’s really too soon to tell.” People died and came back, sometimes with new faces and/or amnesia. Who cared as long as the story was good?

Sometimes my enthusiasm for the “anything is possible” world of the soaps would pop up in real life. My husband, Graham, first realized I saw life through a slightly wider, soapier lens, when he told me he had a twin brother.

“Are you sure you don’t mean clone? That happens. Or maybe you’re twins with two different fathers. That happens too.”

“Where does this happen?

“Have you had this brother from the get go, or did someone spirit him away to Europe when he was minutes old? Then 30 years later you’re in a Caracas airport and he’s like, ‘Hey, you look just like me!’”

“I thought my cloned brother from another father was in Europe. Why are we in South America now?

“That’s not the point. How much do you know about this character?”

“Everything.”

“So he’s not the evil twin? Maybe you’re the evil twin.”

“I’m not the evil twin.”

“Well, keep an eye on him. I’ve seen these situations go south real fast.”

It was that kind of lunacy that amused me, but it the sacred time set aside every day with my family that kept me watching year after year. My first and last memories of my grandmother, Gertie, are inextricably linked to “our stories.” We watched together until someone suggested it might be a good idea for me to go to school.

For years I’d race home every day and ask, “What happened on ‘World Turns,’ Gertie?” She’d shake her tiny fist and say, “Ohhh, that John Dixon is at it again!” Then she’d explain it all to me during “Guiding Light,” but only during the commercials.

One day, when I was in high school, I came home and Gertie wasn’t there; neither were my parents. There was just a note on the kitchen counter. My sister, Susie, and I sat down to watch “Guiding Light” and for once didn’t laugh and talk and tease. My dad came home about halfway through the show and said, “Gertie’s gone.” And we left the TV on while we cried.

Some of the same actors from Gertie’s time are still on; even that John Dixon has returned. I watch every day to get a little of that feeling back, when we were all together and entire hours were devoted to drinking tea in cups with saucers and standing over pots of homemade soups just talking about something as simple as a story with no end. I think a lot of people watch for that reason.

“Guiding Light” did end last September after 72 years, and today “As the World Turns” airs its final episode.

I’m betting it will not be outrageous or scandalous. It will be about families, real and fictional. Even though Helen Wagner, who stayed with the show until her passing on May 1, cannot speak the final words as planned, the story will return to the simplicity of “Good morning, dear.” There will be warmth, friendship, memories, and genuine affection, on both sides of the screen. I know I won’t be the only one to turn off the TV and say goodbye to her grandmother one last time.

St. Paul resident Alexandra Kloster appears on two Fridays a month. She may be reached at alikloster@yahoo.com and her blog is Radishes at Dawn at alexandrakloster.com.