5/13/2014

a couple of days ago it was mother’s day.

my mom passed away in 1999. suddenly… from a cerebral stroke. she never knew what hit her. it’s been a long time. fifteen years, seems like fifty to me. it’s too bad she never got to meet my young indonesian wife when i got married for the first time at age 54. i wonder if they would have liked each other. my mom always wanted me to find… companionship. i’ve found it, i think. i hope she’d be happy for me.

but i’m not a father. my wife’s not a mother. we have no children together. most of our friends do. my sister does. mother’s day is for them. mother’s day is for mothers. mothers who are alive. not for me.

then again… mother’s day is also for… daughters. and for… sons. that’s me.

hmmm?

you know? i have this U.S. twenty dollar “liberty” gold coin. they don’t make ’em anymore. miss liberty’s been out of mint for quite some time. you know when this coin was minted? 1921. 93 years ago. the year my mother was born. it’s no coincidence i have it either. you see, my grandfather, murray, saved the coin. and passed it on to me. it’s from the day his daughter and eldest child, little rozzy rosenberg was born. may 13, 1921. the second year of “the roaring twenties”. the last year of woodrow wilson’s presidency. four years after the end of world war one. eight years before the great stock market crash of 1929. a decade before the punishing depression. long before fdr and hitler. stalin and churchill. before auschwitz and nuremburg. hiroshima and middle village, new yawk.

yep. middle village. queens county. one of the 5 great boroughs of the city of new yawk. where little rozzy rosenberg first grew up. from where she met her brooklyn-bred GI joe… my father. to where they returned after the great war. and had their first son in the summer of ’47. before they moved to levittown, long island, america’s foist suboib. during the time of good ol’ ike eisenhower. and before korea and rock ‘n roll. before civil rights and jfk’s assassination. when we still believed in our country. and things were so much simpler. before watergate and vietnam. before hippies and yuppies. before junk bonds and desert storm. before iraq and afghanistan. before obama and osama. before black and white. red and blue. before the decline of the american empire.

i remember may 13, 1991. we were all gathered in walnut creek. in the east bay of san francisco. northern california. to where joe and his roz re-located after 50 years of new yawk marriage. to be closer to their two kids. my sister, alee-son, who lived in oakland-berkeley. and me, numba one son, who resided in lala land. los angeleeez, calee-fonia. we were all there in walnut creek for rozzy’s 70th birthday pahty. gathered at “rossmoor”, their comfortable senior, i mean “adult”, community. gathered from all over the map. from all over her life. to help her celebrate. to light the candles. to count another 70 eventful, healthy and animated years. little did we know she’d only live another eight.

but i’m getting ahead of my story. back to 1921. sally yerman and murray rosenberg, both from good “white russian stock”, have just fled the coup. they call it “ukraine” these days. or “belarus”. kiev. minsk. and they’re still fighting over it. but back then, 1921, just after the russian revolution, it was the place for eastern european, for russian, jews, to emigrate from. to take the slow boat to… america… where the streets were supposedly paved with gold (coins?) and… endless… opportunity. when america was still the great melting pot, with no concrete and metal deterrents all along her generous borders. when hard-working and pie-in-the-sky immigrants poured in from all over the world… all to build a better and more be-yoo-ti-full life… for themselves… and their families.

and back, even a little further… 1919. sally and murray get married, open their first blue collar, neighborhood grocery store on riverdale avenue. in yiddish-speaking, immigrant brooklyn, another of the 5 great boroughs of the city of new yawk. the rosenbergs. they raise a family in between cans of tomato paste and kitchen cleanser. little rozzie grows up with her brother philly, followed by baby harvey, thirteen years later. everybody does the best they can. through tough times and soup lines. and buddy, can you spare a dime?

they always protected me from those hard times. didn’t talk much about ’em. by the time we moved from levittown to westbury, long island, we were already on our way. “my son, the doctuh.” that was the new dream.

all i knew was that rozzy was smart. did well in school. knew how to hitch a ride.

had a coupla girl friends named ruthie and ike. until one day… she met hard-working joey trules. through a mutual friend, a cavalier named “fast talking” eddie lewis. they musta had “some fun”. i heard about it. benny goodman, swing dancing, artie shaw, and even “old blue eyes” himself, frank sinatra. handsome joey trules, the gentleman caller, recently from richmond hill, nearby the middle village. all 140 pounds of him. can you imagine? what do you think it was like when your parents fell in love?

but then, before they knew it… pearl harbor exploded. and joey heeded a call from his uncle sam. he was in the army and going down to st. pete for air force training. C-52s. so… a quick ceremony, in a rabbi’s study, and there they were… hitched. rockin’ roz, a war bride. and her GI joe. ever think of your mom as a war bride?

i remember just one rockin’ roz story from the ww II days. new hubby joey was having all the GIs over for a big south florida shindig, and he’d proudly asked the little wife to cook up her best. problem was… young roz wasn’t quite as adept in the kitchen as she was in school. a fact she didn’t exactly like to reveal. any which ways, by the time all the GIs were sittin’ round the table, the plucked bird was ready to be served. that’s right, rockin’ roz had hand-plucked and magically-roasted a prime florida hen. then… she had served it up… with all the fixin’s. thing was… rockin’ roz… had forgotten… to take out… the gizzards. and all the fellas… bit into… chicken hearts… and chicken livers… and chicken brains. red giblets. blue faces. rockin’ roz’s greatest lifelong mortification

but… i guess they survived. even thrived. joe and roz trules. from queens to levittown for five years. to middle class westbury for twenty two more. with residential roz settling in to becoming your typical two car, two child, all purpose, suburban, non-soccer super…. mom. except… residential roz could never be… all that… typical. she was always doing her own thing. long before “doing your own thing” became all that typical. residential roz was always doing it. learning braille. studying guitar. going back to college. queens college, of course. getting her degree. teaching grade school. working for the county government. residential and respectable roz trules, social worker extraordinaire. heart as big as all of nassau county.

but, no. roz was never “typical”. never joined the hadassah. never went to the beach club and played mahjongg. nor bridge. nor golf. didn’t even like to go to jones friggin’ beach. what the hell was she doing on long island in the first place?

she always said she was never ready for the responsibility of having children. always felt like a child herself. she said she never knew “who she was” by the time she became a mom at age 26. she said she “needed more time”. didn’t want to be tied down to apron strings. to the baby bottle. to maybe… anything at all. so sometimes… she’d let me crawl around… outside my playpen… while she climbed… into it… just to… read a book. or do the bills. to have some private time. sounds pretty smart to me. and like i said, my mom was smart. i learned a lot of things from my mom.

she emphasized education, mom did. “go to school. get good grades. go to college. get good grades.” she loved “culture” too. museums. books. broadway shows: “oklahoma”, “my fair lady”, “bye bye birdie”, “oliver”. we saw all the musicals on “the great white way”. all the museums in midtown manhattan. i guess she taught me how to be a “culture vulture”, the name of the award i give out to freshmen at USC (the “university of spoiled children”. i mean, the university of southern california, my employer for the last 28 years.) but refined roz… she was always a woman of style… of culture… of substance… of dare i say… words. dad… he was the man with the hands, but mom… words. and stories! she loved to tell stories. and man, could she keep an audience in the palm of her hand forrrr-ever! maybe another trick i inherited from the ol’ gal.

anyway parental roz and her accommodating joe did raise two “interesting” kids. me and my kid sis, alee-son.

i’m the one who flew the coup. cut the difficult umbilical cord of the first born. maybe never really came back, after all. but my sis, alee-son, she made them happy. by getting married, giving them two wonderful granddaughters. moving around the corner from them in walnut creek. taking care of them as they aged….

long after they’d left the long island burbs and moved to the big apple. while most of their long island neighbors were sliding south to miami for their comfortable but hundred degree retirements, and their golden years, joe and rapidly-reforming roz found a pad on 80th street in midtown manhattan, between 2nd & 3rd avenues. as the two of them became two of the happiest and most civilized prisoners of the upper east side.

until jumpin’ joe retired in 1979. at age 62. threw in the towel from the lifelong “schmata” bidness. “garment business”, as the hoi poloi like to say. i threw him a little retirement pahty at my clown loft on 23rd and park avenue south. joe had already given us a coupla heart throbs with two, maybe three, heart attacks. it was time for him to learn how to – relax. travel around the world. enjoy life. with his wife. the one and only love of his life. until… even-more-rapidly-reforming roz… got… “the itch” again (after all, she was the one who got joe out of westbury) and in 1986… announced, or maybe cajoled, “time for us to move out west. start a new life. turn over a new leaf.” and so they did…

out to rossmoor. silver hair and golden years. new friends. new horizons. summer camp at age 70. a beautiful view. lots to do. pottery and swimming for joe. book clubs and yoga postures for retired roz. along the way: mexico. madrid. italy, france. portugal. yugoslavia. a rich life. a long way… from 1921.

i remember when roz and joe came down from rossmoor to visit me in santa monica when i had cancer in 1989. hodgkin’s disease. cancer of the lymphatic system. i had already received a couple of rounds of chemo therapy. i was bald and had lost maybe 40 pounds. i looked like a survivor from the aforementioned concentration camp. i didn’t want them to come, especially my mother. i knew how it would be. i would have to take care of them. i was sick; they were worried. there was nothing they could do for me and i needed my energy to take care of myself.

but naturally, they came anyway. and naturally, they had an impossible time disguising the terrible and fearful looks on their faces. “my son is going to die. my son is going to die.” twice. in 2 part, new york-california harmony. “no, i’m not, ma. the chemo is working. i’m feeling great. more alive than any time in my whole life. i feel so much love and appreciation… and blah blah blah… all the things that people going thru a life-threatening illness say.” my father squirmed and my mother came over and sat down next to me on my flowered, queen anne couch. she reached out and started to massage my shoulders. her touch was timid and…. afraid. way too light to feel good, or to be nurturing or effective. a little like a fragile, small bird scratching in the dry ground. but… i don’t remember my mother ever touching me before. my father, yes, he used to massage my lower back when i was grumpy or sad; but my mother… never.

she didn’t look at me, but i felt her trying to connect with me through her tentative touch. as if she were saying, “i’m sorry. what did i do wrong? why aren’t you happy? we did the best we could. i wasn’t ready. all we ever wanted from you was for you to… ‘be happy’. to find someone to share your life with. why were you so angry at us? why are you still so angry? what did i do wrong?” i felt all this and i didn’t have an answer for her. only that: “i needed to get away. to cut the umbilical cord. to find myself. to become an artist. i didn’t know how to say this to you, so i just… left. and i know you were hurt. and worried. i know that you’re still worried. but you didn’t do anything wrong. and i’m not angry anymore.”

i survived my ordeal with hodgkin’s. people tell me that i’m “a survivor”. i guess i am. and my relationship with my parents, with my mom, got better after that. in fact, i’d say it was better than ever. until one august, in 1999, after my trip to israel, i came up north to visit my parents, as i was doing maybe twice a year by then. i suggested that my mom take some chinese herbs because she wasn’t feeling well. reluctantly, she did, even though she was afraid to. but she did it because she trusted me. because i recommended them to her. that night she went to sleep and i slept on the floor in the den like i usually did, and… my mom never woke up. she had the cerebral stroke that night, and two weeks later we took her off life support. we sat there in the hospice and we watched… life slip away from her… one breath… at a… time. i’ve always wondered about the chinese herbs.

but roz finally did get to see her son at a college graduation before she died. it was also 1999. in the spring. just months before my last visit. you see, i never went to my actual college graduation in 1969. from SUNY at buffalo. i hated that place. and i hated myself. i was an awkward, late-blooming adolescent in search of something i didn’t even know the name of. instead of college graduation, which i consciously chose not to invite my parents to, i ran away across the canadian border. to toronto. with a casual girlfriend of my fraternity bro, mike colasimo. she was a virgin. and i was a virgin. and who needed a piece of paper with a useless college degree scrawled on it, bestowed by an unholy institution that none of us believed in anymore. it was the 60s, man. i was 21 fucking years old. i needed to get laid a lot more than i needed a college degree.

but in 1999, thirteen years after i had become a “professor of theatuh” at the great university of southern california, i made a film about my uncle harvey, my mother’s youngest brother, the black sheep of the family. it was called “the poet and the con” and my esteemed colleagues at the great university all ganged up on me to give me an award, a “faculty recognition award” for my film, and given only to four professors annually across the whole university. but more to the point, since my mother was featured prominently in the film (she should have been nominated for “best supporting actress in a documentary film”), my pushy professorial colleagues insisted that my parents, especially my mother, come down from the east bay… for the end of the year ceremony… which in fact… she… and they… did.

well, there i was… for the first and only time in my life… in a cap and gown… with a mortar board on my head… with a tassel hanging down from one side or the other. there i was… on the campus’ official graduation and great ceremonial stage, finally making my parents… and my mother… duly proud. there was more than enough pomp and circumstance. with brassy music and an appropriately, sung- in-latin chorus: “guade-amus ige-taur. u-vi-nay soooo-mooos”. i felt ridiculous. like a 1960s sell out. but i also felt…. dare i say it… damn good. because there was my mother, resplendent rozzy trules, with her lifelong partner, devoted joey trules… my parents… and there were tears… coming down… both of their cheeks… as my name was called…. and i walked slowly… down death row… to get my… award. my piece of paper… that my mom and dad… probably, especially my mom… always wanted me… to get.

we hugged afterwards. and all my colleagues… who had ganged up on me for the award… came over to introduce themselves to my parents… especially my mother. i smiled meekly… and gave them… especially my mother… her long overdue… due.

i’ve saved the twenty dollar gold piece in my drawer for a long time. 1921. i took it out today. may 13, 2014. my mother’s birthday. she would have been 93 years old today. i looked up… i don’t know to where… because actually, my mother is still always with me… inside me… in my heart.

and i said quietly, to myself… and to her:

“happy mother’s day, mom. sorry… i’m a little late.”

Travel the world with “e-travels with e. trules” blog

Become a Subscriber of his Santa Fe Substack.

Listen to his travel PODCAST

Or go to his HOMEPAGE

Eric Trules’ Twitter (X)  handle: @etrules