Small Things: Thank You's by Teresa Leslie

It was a small moment, over so quickly that you might have missed it, but it was the sort of small moment that has made me a life-long GH fan. Stefan Cassadine, on trial for the murder of Katherine Bell (since revealed to be not quite dead after all, darn the luck), was in the hallway of the courthouse during a break in the proceedings. Laura had come to watch the trial, ostensibly to lend moral support to her son Nikolas, who was scheduled to testify that day. Alexis was telling Laura her presence was not good for Stefan's case, and asking her to leave. At the same time, standing nearby, a nervous Nikolas was comforted by Stefan, who embraced his "nephew" and assured him all would be well. Looking over Nik's shoulder, Stefan met Laura's eyes, and mouthed two simple words: "Thank you."

This small moment was moving in and of itself, given the complicated relationship of Laura, Nikolas, and Stefan. But it was given added weight, added interest, added emotional impact, by its conscious echoing of a scene from two summers ago, when Nikolas and Stefan were relatively new to GH. In that earlier scene, a tearful Laura was leaving her son Nikolas's hospital room, having told him that for everyone's sake, she could not be involved in his life. As she was leaving his room, in essence leaving him, she motioned for Stefan to embrace the weeping boy. Stefan did so, stiffly and awkwardly, and as he and Laura gazed at one another over Nikolas's shoulder, she smiled through her tears and mouthed, "Thank you."

When Stefan echoes those words two years later, in the courthouse scene, it is a wonderful reminder of how much has changed in the ensuing years. The original hug was performed at Laura's pleading, and was awkward at best. Stefan loved his son as much then as he does now, but was clueless as to how to express that affection. Now Stefan, still stiff but growing more comfortable with such gestures, needs no prompting to hug his "nephew," who has grown to expect such closeness and has reached out for Stefan's embrace in a way unimaginable when the pair first appeared in Port Charles.

These emotion-laden thank-you's are almost the leit-motif of the Stefan/Laura relationship. Usually, it is she who thanks him. In an early meeting in the park, Laura thanked Stefan for taking care of Nikolas and raising him in her absence. Later, in his car on the drive to 13 Keep Street, she thanked him for saving her mother's life, when he revealed that Lesley was still alive. This summer, during a visit to Wyndemere by Laura and Lulu, Stefan and Laura talked of Nikolas's childhood and he showed her a picture of Nikolas taken when the boy was Lulu's age. Later, as Laura started to leave, Stefan held out the photograph. "Perhaps you'd like this." Laura's face crumpled, and she whispered tearfully, "I'd love that. Thank you."

Having Stefan thank Laura in the courtroom, in a reversal of the usual roles, yet in a way that resonated with all the other thank you's that had passed between them, was an inspired move by Bob Guza. A frequent criticism of the current writing team at GH is that Guza and Co. are only interested in writing "huge" moments, that they move from climax to climax with little regard for the moments in between. I could not disagree more. It is often the small moments that reveal Guza's sense of GH history, and his attention to character development.

Laura and Stefan's complicated history as parents to Nikolas was encapsulated in two little words, in the midst of one small scene. Those two little words tapped into a wealth of shared experiences between Stefan and Laura; they also tapped into the shared memory of the audience. For that brilliant small moment, I can only say "Thank you, Bob Guza."