A Martinez

The Power of Love

Soap Opera People, 1987

...is all around A Martinez these days and he's a master at giving and taking it both on Santa Barbara and off!

    "I feel it's a real sweet time in my life and it makes it easier to absorb the extra stress, because there is a lot of stress involved in raising a baby.  Because I love him too!  I love it that we have a wonderful relationship.  I mean, I come home exhausted to the bone and he smiles at me and all that goes out the window."  A pauses and says quietly, with feeling, "The power of that love!"

    Chatting with A on the telephone is not quite as satisfactory as facing him in person, but after you talk for a while it almost seems as if he is there in the room with you.

    "Watching the baby develop must be a joy," I suggested.

    "Yes, it is exciting; it's also very, very demanding.  Yeah and that's the part everyone tells you about.  They don't tell you about the joyous part, but it is.  One of the nicest things about it is watching Leslie and Cody together, the way they interact, a profound bond that they have," he told me.

    "That's very nice, because I've read or heard that there could be a little jealousy on the part of a father.  Does it change your relationship?"

    "Oh, it's changed our relationship a lot.  I think it's quite possibly because my own life is so full now.  I've really been in a more fulfilled condition these days.  I don't really have the kind of needs that a lot of men do probably when they're struggling, or aren't sure of themselves."

    Recently baby Cody gave his parents a scare by coming down with something finally diagnosed as Roseola, then following that up with a bee sting on the base of his spine and a few days after that a strep throat.  However, even though he only weighs about 23 pounds, Cody finally shook off all those things and according to his dad, he got his sense of humor back.   "He's cool now."

    "He has a group of babies he visits.  They grew out of the club Leslie was going to when she was training to have the baby, classes with would be mothers.  All the ladies had their babies close together and they have a group now that meets once a week.  It's real nice and gives them a chance to see each other.  It's not like it's every day.   But anything that one of the kids has is passed around.

    "He loves it though and it's great to see the interaction.  He loves it, you can see it.  It energizes him, animates him and stuff."

    "I can just see them all sitting around looking at one another," I mused.

    "Yes," A said laughing.  "And all the things they do!  They're already jockeying for positions socially.  He's got a beef going with one little kid over this one little girl.  They're only one year old and already they are making games.  It's unbelievable.  You wonder how much of it is instinctive."

    "So how have things been going for you on the show?" I asked.

    "Well, I had a real peak a few months ago when my character thought Eden was dead.  I got to do a lot of extremely intense stuff.  I really got out there emotionally." 

    "Does that affect you at home?"

    "Well, I used it as an excuse to do some writing so I wasn't getting a lot of sleep and I lost weight and was feeling kind of bad at that time."

    "Actually, it was a real high time.  My wife was helping me and it was really a happy time.   In fact, now the hardest thing about it was getting over it.  It took me a while to get my strength back and get back to a more normal flow of the characters after having been given a chance to go far out with him."

    "Have there been any other changes now that you are a father?"

    "Well, I feel myself that I've become much more assertive in my life.  I've always been a person who had gone with the flow, but I find myself being a little more, oh, I don't know, I'm not as interested in the bigger picture.  I think more about my family now.

    "I'm a lot more careful about how I spend my time.  It's interesting because I really feel it has kind of hardened me.  No big deal, but it makes you think a little bit more about yourself as a provider and protector," he told me.

    In fact, after much study of the field and the companies, A has just taken out his first insurance policy for his family.  He finds himself doing things like that.

    Leslie did go back to work for a time because she thought she should keep a hand in.  However, she found it encroached more and more, at the wrong times, with raising her baby and she quit.

    "Now she's concentrating on being a mother, which she loves.  I mean, she TRULY, I don't say it lightly when I say she loves it.  She truly loves the process.  I told you it's wonderful seeing them together."

    He laughed and added, "I'm going to try not to let my hopes and dreams dictate to him.  I'm going to try to be open and listen to what he wants.  I do find myself falling prey to all those classical first time father shticks, you know.  You know, buy him a baseball bat and take him to a game so you can explain what it means to throw a curve ball to him."

    We both laughed and I reminded him that when I talked to him last he practically bought the house they live in because while he and Leslie looked around, the father of the house went out back and was playing catch with his son.  A told me he could just see that happening to him.

    "That's exactly right," A said laughing.  "Now, the little boy showed up and I'm thinking that early indications are that he digs doing the kind of things I liked doing as a kid.  You know you never can be sure.  He might not give a damn.  You might have a kid who likes bugs and doesn't care about baseball."

    "Then you'll just have to like bugs," I told him.

    A agreed.   "Cody loves it when I spend time looking at the things he's interested in.   He shifts into a much more connected mode with me if I come down to his level and he's playing with a new toy and I check it out with him.  He really likes to show me what he's learning about his new stuff even if he can't say words yet.  I can tell he takes a great deal of joy in that."

    Like most young children Cody loves the telephone he has.  So when the Martinez family travels, the first thing A does in a hotel room is unplug the phone and give it to him because he and Leslie know they'll have a half hour to themselves without worrying about Cody.

    "Well, I'm going to do a lot about you being a family man but let's get a little excitement here," I said as A laughed.  "Let's get a little sex in here," I added.  "What's the most important thing in marriage holding two people together?"

   
    "I think you've got to keep talking and listening."

    "Do you get any time for yourselves?  I mean there was life before baby and there will be life when he grows up."

    "It is different.  I mean we definitely have to work at it to just be ourselves.  But the thing that surprised us is that we don't have as big an appetite for that as we had expected we would.

    "I think that's the fear that young couples have that the baby is going to interrupt our intimacy, but we've found that we enjoy having him with us...I mean almost all the time.  There does come a time and then we park him with reliable people.  But except on rare occasions, there has never come a time when we feel he is an imposition.  That's the thing that surprises us.  We thought we'd have to guard our privacy.  It's an interesting trade off, you find that what you get from the presence of the new being is so utterly wonderful, that the things you have to give up to support him and nurture him seem to be devalued."

    A said they are all going to Hawaii and they are taking his mother and sister in case anything happens to Leslie and himself while snorkeling, which they love to do.  They know Cody will be in loving hands while they are off exploring the depths.

    "Is there anything else new in your life?"

    "Well, I'm going to try to make a film within the next couple of years with Marcy Walker.  I think it would be wonderful.  The wonderful thing is after being on the show for three years, Marcy and I are getting along better than ever.  It's just the best we've ever been and we've really, really grown steadily closer.  It makes this job, which would otherwise be becoming a bit difficult, wonderful.  Yes, I'm lucky in that."

    "There have been a lot of upheavals on the show in recent years having it work the way you want it to and with people you love to work with," I put in.

    "Yes, Marcy's such a rock.  It's just, when one of us is down, the other one always picks up the load.  It's just been an extraordinary friendship," A told me.

    We talked for a bit about movies and getting out to do things.  A said he loves seeing Meryl Streep and thinks she is America's leading actress.  He's interested in seeing La Bamba because among other things, ten years ago he had first rights with some people who wanted him to play Ritchie Valens in a film when they were trying to get it together.  But it's hard to fit everything in these days.

    "You know, doing a soap and nobody can understand, it's not that I want to give up paying attention to what's going on in movies, or connecting or keeping my business relationships up.   But by the time I do my job here and my role as husband and father, there literally is nothing left over.  And that's fine with me because this is the best time in my life personally and I'm happy.

    "But sometimes friends say they haven't seen me, or I haven't called, or I never can go when they call and only if you worked in a soap can you understand that there is practically no time, or little time left over and you just don't have the energy to do it.  I have to be very careful what I agree to do or I wouldn't be able to do the things I have to and want to do."

    So if you haven't heard from A lately, it's because he's deep in the arms of love, both personally and professionally, where any right minded man would want to be...and A is loving it!

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