When I was in college, I would spend summers helping my grandma. She had Parkinson’s and everyday things were hard for her. I would drive her to the

Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter

submited by

Style Pass

2024-04-01 17:30:08

When I was in college, I would spend summers helping my grandma. She had Parkinson’s and everyday things were hard for her. I would drive her to the library and the supermarket and the hair salon, so she could maintain the Jackie O style she had adopted long before I was born.

Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

My grandma got hooked on soaps before television was invented. When Guiding Light debuted on the radio, she was a teenager. When it became a TV show, she was a 30-year-old mother of two. She watched it for the next five decades, aging with the characters.

My grandma lived through the Great Depression and World War II and the turmoil of the 1960s and the cruelty of the 1980s and the illusory reprieve of the 1990s and the terror of 9/11.

She died before the show was canceled in 2009. On some level, I’m glad she did not see the light go out: a loss that was part of the broader erosion of shared American pop culture.