Erica Kane is my guru

Back when we lived in Providence, R.I., one of the hottest story lines on "AMC" had to do with Bianca Montgomery, Erica's daughter by Travis (her fifth and sixth husband), who had come out as a lesbian. Bianca happened to be born on the same day as my oldest child -- I recall watching the episode from my hospital bed -- yet while my son was only 14, Bianca had already grown into a young adult who had sex with other women and traveled the world. Bianca and Erica were reconciled after years of being estranged, following a custody suit that Erica lost because it was disclosed that she'd committed adultery with Travis' brother, Jack.

A then single parent of three, working odd hours in a strange, new city and providing far less for my own three than I would have liked, I found it soothing that no matter how badly you bungled at child rearing, the bonds between a mother and her offspring held strong. If Erica could lose her daughter for a decade, then win her back after a few enlightened encounters, I could certainly make up for too many nights grading freshman comp exams.

A couple of years passed. My kids started staying up later and eventually discovered my long-kept secret, holding it over my head like some accidental murder I'd committed while tweaked out on meth. "If you don't let me go to the movie with Helen," my daughter would say, "I'm going to tell everyone about you and 'All My Children.'"

I'm ashamed to admit, sometimes this worked.

But then a funny thing happened: Writers I admired began to admit they were also rabid soap opera fans. The most well known probably is David Sedaris, who did a series of commentaries for National Public Radio on his love for "One Life to Live" that earned him an honorary dressing room on the set of the show. Today, soap fandom is viewed as trendy and eccentric among many authors, the equivalent of a famous chef's admitting to a love for Cheese Nips or Spam. Cultural critics even talk about the "Dickensian" quality of daytime television and how this appeals to literary types.

Does this make me feel better? Of course it does. I'll admit, I'd far rather have something in common with David Sedaris than a soap junkie who has nothing better to do in the middle of the day.

I suspect, however, that secret soap watching is a fetish shared by many professionals. According to the Nielsen stats, "All My Children" has 2.6 million regular viewers, yet only 817,000 of those are the targeted females between the ages of 18 and 49. Add to this a 68 percent increase in viewership as a result of TiVo, and it looks less and less like nursing home residents account for the other 1.7-plus mil.

In the July issue of Elle, writer Laurie Abraham confessed her addiction to "All My Children" -- which she watches each weekday when it airs, after a morning of work -- calling it her "amulet against failure" and "a cleansing sorbet for the brain." She also wrote that rugged male characters such as Zach, a just-this-side-of-the-law casino owner; Ryan, a clean-cut motorcycle-riding sportsman; and Aidan, an Irish-born detective who recently engineered a rescue mission in Sudan, were added to help cultivate a growing male audience. Most straight men don't talk about the soaps, but the evidence says they're watching.

A case in point: I published an essay last year that referred, in passing, to Erica Kane and received an "anonymous" e-mail from a middle-aged patent attorney identifying himself only as Jackson -- Erica's former brother-in-law and 10th husband, the one who resulted in her losing her custody suit -- and confessing that he locks his office door each day at noon so he can spend his lunch hour alone, sitting on his leather couch, watching. He was terrified someday his secretary would find out.

Life has been better, I wrote back, since I stopped hiding my habit.

I no longer fight the fact that this simple and totally free form of entertainment provides a hopeful, mystical counterpoint to everyday life. Take, for instance, that night I slipped down to the basement -- my son in jail -- to find Erica in her own prison, carrying on a conversation with a ladybug.

Now this may not sound like something a hardheaded sex goddess, former fashion mogul and modern-day talk show host would do. But it's a leap you have to make because it demonstrates another theme of "All My Children": the inherent value of every creature, large or small. It's rumored that Agnes Nixon created the show nearly 40 years ago as a spiritual alternative to other soaps, and that the title is a biblical reference, the children in question being God's. (Note: When I called Mike Cohen, the ABC/"AMC" media rep, to ask if the soap opera is based on Christian principles, I got the brushoff. "I wouldn't know anything about that," he said.)

I took a sloshy sort of solace from the conversation between Erica -- who'd been thrown in solitary for reasons I never learned -- and that insect she held in her hand. I don't remember much of it. But there was something about how everything happens for a reason and her jail stay had taught her something valuable about life.

Here's a woman who has been married and divorced nearly a dozen times, who has been abandoned by her father, raped by a family friend, bankrupted repeatedly and addicted to drugs. She found out her beloved daughter was a lesbian -- which, in one of "AMC's" putatively groundbreaking moments, she initially rejected then embraced -- and discovered the fetus she'd meant to abort actually was "salvaged" and carried to term in the body of another woman. (You doubt the show is Christian, Mr. Cohen?) The point seems to be that whatever happens, Erica Kane carries on.

This, to me, is the narrative's basic wisdom. I'm not usually fond of the issue-oriented story lines focusing on domestic violence, transgender issues, cochlear implants or autism. But occasionally "AMC" does manage to cut through the wealth and excess and drama, getting to something meaningful and universal that I believe adds to our world.

Take Stuart Chandler. An undiagnosed artistic cipher with little sense of the world, Stuart is his twin brother Adam's touchstone, conscience and heart. Both roles are played by David Canary. (Canary is, in my opinion, an actor of London stage quality. Just watch him in a scene where he is actually Adam pretending to be Stuart, juggling the features of both men and magically giving viewers complex, subtle character cues.) Adam and Stuart embody, in their entwined, mirror-image way, man's darkness and light. It's a worn device, granted, but in this case well used. And for years, I have watched their drama unfold: the intelligent yet ruthless Adam being held in check by his softer, slower brother, and Stuart's needs -- for money and life-skills counseling -- clearly overshadowed by his creativity and goodness and art.

This, I like to think, is what many "AMC" viewers are hanging onto: the value of a rumpled, white-haired man who stutters and paints, his Boo Radley brand of decency and the fact that there is a mythical town tucked in the mountains of Pennsylvania where he has carved out a place. Even the mighty Erica seeks out Stuart when she needs guidance. When she isn't consulting a ladybug, that is.

During the early morning following my son's arrest, I watched two and a half backlogged episodes, and this took me through almost until dawn. Then I fell asleep on the couch and rested peacefully until 7 a.m., when it was time to get up, call an attorney and resume the business of my own life, where I don't live in a castle or run a multimillion-dollar cosmetics company. But all my children are beautifully, painfully real.

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