Dedicated to Michael Cook. Get well soon Mike!! I have always admired your early and intense interest in Pittsburgh’s transportation system.
My favorite Pittsburgh bus? The 61B. After school, if I didn’t want to go straight home, I’d take the 61B from Squirrel Hill to Swissvale, after hanging out with my cousin Maxine Cohen Marcus, my boyfriend Sam, and other friends.
A Family Business/1
From the age of 2 to 5 Michael was in full time day care and I had a full time job. Peter had been laid off from the Franklin Mint and with his very generous severance package, decided to start his own sculptural and mold-making business. There was an old garage on our property that he turned into a work studio.
At 2 Michael was read for day care. He craved movement and stimulation. I still didn’t know how brilliant he was and how he needed to go out into the world. I hated the whole arrangement.
So there were these three years where I was sure that Michael would be scarred for life. He seemed OK; it was I that was in a terrible state. The famous T. Berry Brazelton’s book helped me through this. He said that very young children tolerate day care but is was the young parents who suffered.
The year that Michael turned five and was headed for kindergarten, the pressures on me loosened, and life became fun again.
“I’m Glad You’re Not One Of Those Silly Mothers.”
I had a model for being a mother; one of my mother’s sisters, my aunt, raised her two children in a realistic, no-nonsense way. She didn’t fuss over dumb stuff; however she was very much “there,” in their corners. She was tough but tender when it counted.
When I learned I was pregnant, Peter and I went for a walk in a nature preserve. It was on that walk that I told him how I wanted to be as a parent. I wanted to be somewhat like my aunt Maxine.
As early as three weeks old, Michael let me know who he was going to be. He never really slept well until he was in a crib in a room with the door closed. Not for us, all that clinging and the whole family in one bed. The other women I knew used to brag about those lovely times with their new babies. So of course I thought Michael would grow up to be a psychopath with no feelings. But something else stirred within. Wasn’t I like that, needing privacy, and wasn’t Peter?
This is hard to describe. Of course I held him, cuddled him. But sometimes when he’d be laying on his back in his crib, I placed my hand, gently but firmly, on his stomach. I knew that he liked that quiet touch.
When did Michael say those words to me, about not being a silly mother? When it was “picture day” at school and all the parents fussed over their children’s appearance. Usually I forgot it was picture day and in a photo from grade school Michael’s hair is sticking up and he’s wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt.
However, if I thought that Michael was being treated unfairly in school, I was in the principal’s or the school counselor’s office, demanding to be seen. I think, that when Michael graduated from high school, everybody in the Rose Tree Media school district breathed a sigh of relief. They didn’t have to deal with Mrs. Mastroianni any more!!!
lgmwriting 