Month: April 2016

Michael Stands Up For His Racial Heritage and Humanity As Well

Some of my stories about Michael are not pretty. In fact, for 11 years he had few pleasant stories to bring home with him. He was seeing what people are capable of doing to each other when they lose their homes, sometimes their children, through the forces of nature.

Everybody remembers Hurricane Katrina. Michael went south to act as a medic–he had his EMT license at the time–with the Red Cross. Red Cross volunteers are allowed to stay for three weeks maximum before they must leave a disaster scene.

I was happy about this, as any parent will understand. Three weeks dealing with the situation in the south was quite enough, thank you very much!

Michael was given a tent, a table, penicillin, and very basic medical supplies, such as thread to sew up wounds. It was a bit  like “MASH,” except that Michael had a lot less to work with than those medical TV heroes. He was paired up with an African-American nurse from Chicago who came to volunteer.

One day a man stumbled into the tent; he was a southern man, half out of his senses, disoriented. This does not make up for what follows.

He had a huge gash across his chest and was bleeding heavily. The nurse approached him. This wounded man recoiled and said that “no n****r woman is gonna touch me!”

Michael took the man by his collar, practically lifted him off his feet, then pushed him up against the table. He said: “Would a Jew be OK with you? Now. You are going to let this lady sew up your wound or you can bleed to death for all I care.” The hurt man quietly allowed the nurse to clean and then sew up the chest wound.

Did we cry upon hearing this? Oh yes. Were we miserable about this state of affairs? Yes to that also. Were we proud of our son? All I can say is that I felt my grandfather somewhere, crying along with us, proud that his great-grandson was not afraid to stand up for all Jews and all people.

 

 

Again, I can’t remember if I published this or not. Enjoy.

 

Agnes of God

A Memoir

by

Leslie Golding Mastroianni

The first time my son Michael and I looked at each other in the recovery room of our community hospital, we recognized each other. I knew him and he knew me.  In that second a compact was put in place; we are on the same side and we are in this together.

All my friends were having babies at the same time, and they told glorious stories about the whole family cuddling and sleeping together in one bed. My son could not get a really whole night of sleep until he was put to bed in a crib, in his own room, with the door closed. A part of me felt jarred by this, and the thought crossed my mind—what if there’s something wrong with him? He isn’t like all these other babies.  But I had to admit that I, along with my husband, require some solitude to function well, and Michael was like us. Already, at two weeks old, I could see this; I was comforted by my new baby. He knew what he wanted.

But of course I worried when my son continued to enjoy solitude during his childhood. What mother doesn’t? I had this debate going on in my head—on one side were all the artists and musicians and geniuses who said that needing and loving solitude is the hallmark of remarkable and successful people—on the other side were my mother, my uncle who is a psychiatrist, my friends whose small children enjoyed play groups. The inner debate got noisy at times, but I did eventually find a “moderator” who didn’t allow this ephemeral debate to get out of hand—it was Fred Rogers. Mister Rogers. His book on child-rearing contained peaceful ideas and gentle reminders to respect one’s own mothering style and to respect our children’s individual needs as well.

One day after Michael entered high school, he was walking down a corridor past the school auditorium and he heard kids’ voices inside. It was the school theatre group, getting ready to rehearse.  Until then Michael was a quiet boy, needing a lot of solitude as he did as a baby, and he didn’t like groups. As he told me later, “There was some kind of energy going on in there that sounded like people were cooperating and having fun.”

He wasn’t interested in acting, but found that he liked the backstage part of putting on a play, learning how to do the lighting, finding props, helping with prompting and last minute emergencies backstage during performances.  He liked the tension of getting to “opening night” and the release of energy that came when the play ended and the audience clapped and there was a cast party afterwards.  It is the “natural high” that is the dream stuff of all parents. When he was 16 he began volunteering at a community theatre called Barnstormers.

Michael didn’t drive then, so my husband and I took turns driving him to the Barnstormer theatre for rehearsals and picking him up. The drive to Barnstormers was long and awkward—we returned home after taking him, but it seemed that only a short time would pass and it was time to go and get him. (I would like to add here that I never minded driving my son anywhere. Sometimes talking in the car brought about the most fertile conversations.) There wasn’t anything to do near the theatre—no library, no shopping—so it was a long, boring wait if we didn’t want to take the return journey. Once, I decided to wait nearby. I knew from Michael that the Barnstormers next performance would be the play Agnes of God.

It was absolutely against my code of honor as a mother to sneak into the theatre, conceal myself, and spy on my son.  However, my curiosity goaded me on and I quietly entered and hid in the dark foyer that led to the main part of the theatre. I could see and hear everything, and nobody could see me.  My guilt was heavy in going against my ideals as a mother, but at the same time I felt compelled to do this. I wanted to see what my son was doing and how he was acting when I wasn’t there.

It was brought home to me that these people—the actors, stage manager, director—were adults. All of them had day jobs, and participated in Barnstormers out of love for the theatre; it wasn’t a play done under the auspices of teachers and the high school. The actors were rehearsing different scenes and at first I couldn’t see Michael, but I heard him. He was up in the rafters where the light controls were. Once in a while somebody would call up to him, making a joke or a wise-crack, and he would answer humorously, urbanely. Everybody would laugh, and that laughter told me everything. Michael was not tolerated as a “kid who wants to help;” he was accepted into the adult world of Barnstormers.

Then rehearsal of another scene commenced and the lighting, fixed on one individual earlier, expanded into pastel colors that called attention to the profile of one actor, the face of another. Agnes of God is a serious, questioning play and Michael’s lighting brought that out. It was a tender, respectful, knowledgeable means of revealing the emotional quality of each scene. It was expert, and I realized that there was nobody helping Michael; no teacher was overseeing his work. It was all his own—he designed it and executed it. I stood in that dark foyer, overwhelmed, filled with respect for what my son knew how to do. Just as he told me he liked being alone when he was two weeks old, he was telling me now that he could stand with the adults.

It’s always a jolt when a mother observes her son for the first time as an adult, doing an adult’s job.  Mothers can’t be prepared for it, but they both pray for it and resist it.

We went to Barnstormers to see Agnes of God. The audience clapped when it was over, and I cried.