Memories of Mom...

Memories of Mom: Boy was I mad. I couldn’t watch my cartoons for weeks as a mere lad of just 9 years old (when all we had at home as kids was the tv). I still remember whining about it and my Mom reassuring me calmly that I’ll live without them for a little while longer. She tuned in every day to those Nixon impeachment hearings while cracking open her poached egg on a little egg holder cup and sipping her coffee she made after her whistling pot of boiling water was ready for pouring. After all, she was sacrificing her “Days of Our Lives” soap operas so I’m sure I could make the sacrifice too. Right? She also reassured me, in subtle ways, that what I was watching on that television in 1973 was something important - something of historical significance - something that we should all understand - as if it would be relevant to us again one day. I could not have possibly understood what she was implying at that age but I “felt”, in my gut, that she was right and I needed to sit through some of it and watch the Watergate hearings with her. Looking back, watching those hearings with my mother, I realize how much it shaped me and my interests. In the years that would follow, I would be fascinated with politics, current events and non-fiction documentaries and readings; and of course PBS. She and I would have had a lot to talk about had she been around to watch the current impeachment hearings with me this past week. Just as then, I would have had a lot of questions for her and as always, she would answer them and tell me all about it. Everything my Mom did was for a purpose; slowly showing me the way to understanding the world around me and my place in it. So I guess the moral of the story is, if you have children 8+, don’t worry if you think they’ll be bored and uninterested in watching history unfortunately unfold again. Show you’re interested and subtly introduce it to them and answer their questions the best you can. They’ll thank you too one day in a Facebook post, and maybe even in person, many years later with gratitude for exposing them to how governments, the law and the world really works. Thanks Mom. 💕🙏 

Everyone’s talking about it...

Everyone’s talking about it. The coward tweeting it and his silent Party just hoping for it to go away so they don’t have to denounce it. Some are even talking about it yet haven’t even lived it - and pretend that we should all of a sudden do something about it when they’ve been benefiting from it their whole life. Pff. Man. Do they even know Racism? Can they put a picture in their mind to it? What does it look like? My bus was attacked by a mob of White men and White teenagers with BATS, CHAINS and ROCKS while I was coming home from school one day in the late ‘70s shouting out the “N” word “get out of our neighborhood...” at a crowded bus I was on of mostly young Black students from the nearby junior high school I attended in Brooklyn. Scary times... To this day I say a prayer of thanks for that bus driver who answered the cries of the kids on that bus and refused to stop at that bus stop; for if he did stop, I don’t know if I’d still be here to talk about it. The following year I was attacked by a group of Black teenagers punching me and beating me repeatedly with sticks, calling me “white boy” and throwing me to the floor of the bus for being the only white kid on that very same bus. So I did what every kid who went through these traumatic situations would do, right?.. I asked A LOT of questions about the society I lived in. I asked my mother why real estate agents would repeatedly knock on our door to ask if we wanted to sell our house and “move out” because “Blacks were moving in” and why we shouldn’t stay (which infuriated my mother as she slammed the door in their faces). I asked my White friends from elementary school why most of them didn’t come with me to my junior high school when they were zoned for it. I asked myself on my first job (with the Police Athletic League) why only a 10 minute drive away from my middle class neighborhood and home, were kids of color who were walking around with holes in their sneakers and t-shirts in the summer. I asked this guy who’s house I was visiting in Florida in the late 1980s as he pointed to his rifle collection and hand grenades in his dining room glass case why he was telling his 6 year old, “if you see a n**** walking down the street, you know what to do right?... I asked friends on my block as I was growing up to immerse me in Black culture, especially in the Arts, and to teach me how to play music with soul and feeling. By college I began to ask my White friends if they felt privileged living in a society that systematically kept people of color down and kept certain neighborhoods of color infested with drugs and poverty and why the schools they went to were so much better equipped to give them a great educational and social experience. Are we REALLY ready to “right the wrongs” of the past 3 centuries in America and truly make some of our darkest memories for those who lived it, and are currently living it, a thing of the past? Or are they trying to make us relive it and divide us further? Or maybe we’re just still...“talking about it”.  :) 

A Mother’s Day Tribute (Miss You Forever)

Mom. As you ascend to heaven, know this...From now on, every day will be Mother’s Day as your memory will live on in my thoughts of you while my heart will continue to reach out to you when I need your comfort and guidance.

But most of all, thank you for inspiring me to be who I am today and for your constant and unconditional love and support. Life was not always easy for you or our family but you proved to be more than a mother. You were my best friend and someone I could always talk to when I had a bad day and needed your guidance and wisdom. Here’s what I’m thankful for: Thanks for proving that being an only child to a physically challenged father struck with polio was absolutely nothing to be ashamed of and for showing all the boys on your block that you could play stickball and other sports better than them and even win trophies as an adult on the national stage in bowling. Thanks for being a beloved elementary school teacher who’s students adored you and in turn instilled in me a love for inspiring my students in the classroom. Thanks for being involved in my education, in the PTA, and helping me to study for every exam and working with me on every project for school; taking me to the library with you and teaching me research skills all the way through to college. Thank you for identifying my lack of self-confidence early on and working on that with me by enrolling me in camp and music lessons and little league baseball. Thank you for always saying how much you loved clothes-shopping for me and dressing your “handsome prince” because you said I looked good in everything you got me and making me feel good about myself. Thank you for planning an educational family trip across the nation every summer so my sister and I could visit places that made our text books literally come alive!  Mom, thanks for coming to every freakin’ concert and recital I was ever in from elementary school all the way to college so I could look out on the audience and see you and never feel nervous or alone. Thank you for encouraging me to finish college and to pursue my talents and dreams in the music industry. Thank you for being proud of everything I ever did. 

Even when you could no longer walk, thank you for calling me and caring about me from your bed when I was sick and making sure I went to the doctor and reminding me daily to get my flu shot. Thank you for those long talks and texts about The Mets, J.R.R. Tolkien movies, Joseph Campbell, what was going on in politics, and for telling me to turn on PBS for a fascinating program you knew I would really like and that we could talk about afterwards for hours (Ken Burns and Nova especially). Thanks for teaching me how to collect stamps, coins, different types of rocks and jazz albums. Thanks for teaching me about acceptance and tolerance and how to be colorblind. Thanks for showing me how important culture, history, and the Arts were and exposing me to museums, concerts and the ballet (the Nutcracker every year) and taking me to my first jazz concert as a teenager with 2 of my saxophone heroes battling it out on stage (Grover Washington Jr. and Sonny Rollins at Town Hall). Thank you for making every Hannukah and Passover the best and even when you didn’t have much money, you always managed to buy me something that would make my childhood fun and enriching. Thanks for those long talks about our family tree and sharing all your memories of your childhood with me (like going to Sweet 16 parties as a teenager and how funny it was that the same little known entertainer at the time was always hired, Tony Bennett). Thanks for supporting me through my divorce - immediately and unconditionally, when I needed your love and understanding the most, and for being so accepting of my new love and beautiful wife. Thanks for giving me a glimpse of what it must have been like for me as a kid by showing these past few years how proud of my nephew Angel and my stepson Lawrence you were and how happy it made you to learn of their successes and accomplishments. Thank you for being my best friend, my strength, my rock, and quite possibly being the best damn Mom ever! 

I love you and miss you. - Your loving son. 💕