Oprah is leaving me. Even though I have been a fickle viewer, sometimes turning off the television in frustration about the commercial breaks or yet another visit from Julia Roberts’ teeth (who are so happy, by the way), I will really, strangely, miss her.
I vaguely remember when Oprah started her show. We had just moved from the city to a suburban farm town in south Jersey, into a one-floor house that rested on too much grass for natives of Philadelphia. Outside, the days always seemed overcast, the sounds of cars and trucks and neighbors sitting on porches noticeably absent. But Oprah was on, and I was dully aware of her voice and her audience’s occasional laughter as I read books or played with dolls in the living room, my mother moving from couch to phone to kitchen to start dinner.
For most of my life–okay, maybe all–I have been either a student or a teacher on a school schedule. So whether I actually watched Oprah in the afternoon, she was always an option, a stable, friendly, two-dimensional figure lurking in the background. I liked knowing Oprah was there at the end of the day holding a microphone in a studio audience, or giving humble moms cheap makeovers, or getting the dirt on a celebrity scandal. I don’t know how she did it, but that woman made me trust her.
My favorite memories of Oprah, though, are visiting my grandmother after a day of teaching in my first job after college graduation. Some days, usually cold ones, I’d leave the school particularly restless, imagining no better place to relax and spend the rest of the afternoon than my grandparents’ small condo, where my grandmother would immediately ask if I wanted something to eat or a cup of tea. Even if I wasn’t hungry, I’d say yes, because Herr’s potato chips and pretzels served on a paper plate are better in her house than anyone else’s. These were days before my kids were born, when I usually spent two or three hours alone before my husband got home, grading papers, reading, or visiting my grandparents, whose favorite show is The News. For me, though, their first (and favorite! grandchild), they’d turn on Oprah. My grandfather left the room so I could sit on his recliner, a crocheted afghan close by. I’d take my shoes off and tuck my feet under me, my grandmother’s cold glass of Crystal Light tea clinking with ice beside me on the end table, the condensation always dripping onto the coaster. A few yards away, in the kitchen, something was either on top of the stove or in it, and she’d get up during commercial breaks to stir or check as the house filled with the smell of steaming potatoes.
Oprah was an excuse for me and my grandmother to talk about family and culture and our lives–particularly hers, which I am always fascinated by. Where did she live when she was a little girl? Does she miss the city? What was my mother like when she was ten? My uncles? Did she ever feel overwhelmed by raising six kids? What was her mother like when she was young?
She used phrases like “in those days,” and “these days,” and when the show came back on, we’d comment on someone’s hair or a politician in the front row. And if she’s reading this now, she’ll surely correct my memory in some way, or tell me she’d rather not be a subject on my blog, or laugh that I’ve used enough past tense to make her sound like she’s dead when she’s very much alive, a 12-minute drive away, still planning matinees to see the movie Bridesmaids with her friend.
“Now, Miss Jana….”
So what am I going to do without Oprah, who saved me from watching local news at 4 pm. in my grandparents’ living room, and helped me get to know my grandmother a little better? Who, despite days of loneliness with a young baby who couldn’t yet talk, made me feel like I was part of a community of women, all rustling around their living rooms in the late afternoon, folding clothes and talking on the phone and sticking chicken in the oven, listening to the same calm, confident voice in the background?
What the hell is going to be on at 4 o’clock? And why doesn’t my cable package include the O Network?
It truly is, as Oprah says, the end of an era.
*This post was inspired by a Twitter conversation with Suzy Hayes, a writer who blogs at The Diary of a Lost Witch. Visit her site to read her memories of Oprah, and please comment on your own Oprah associations!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Ooooohhh! I love this memory. So much more comfortable and homey than mine. Thanks for this great idea!
Suzy Hayes recently posted..The Magic that Was
I love the details of your memories of your grandmother (tucking your feet under you on the recliner, the condensation on the iced tea glass).
Although I’ve never watched Oprah regularly, I’ll miss her too – and the way that she, as you so aptly put it, made me feel a part of some larger community of women tending to their babies, stirring the pots in their kitchen, and folding laundry.
Kristen @ Motherese recently posted..An Ode to my Mother
I, too, remember those bleary days of being a new mother and turning to Oprah to find the courage to face the pre-colic afternoon feeding (or at least a comforting voice to distract me). That feeding always signaled the beginning a a very hard few hours, and Oprah made it better. Easier. Bearable.
I love the vivid details of these memories Jana. I too was a fickle Oprah viewer. Her show finale, though, brought me to tears. Her truths resonated with me.
Rudri Bhatt Patel @ Being Rudri recently posted..When Doubt Whispers