Shout Outs to my Mother & Son

May 23, 2025

Hola, Amigos,

You may have noticed that I haven’t been publishing any new posts in this Substack Newsletter. It’s not that nothing is “new”; it’s just that what’s new is too difficult to write about at this very moment.

I’m going through some late-life, difficult and challenging changes that hopefully, I’ll be ready to write about soon. But not quite yet.….

In the meantime, just so as not to miss my self-imposed, every 2-week publishing schedule, I thought I’d post about both my mother and son - one a late, retrospective Mother’s Day gift for my deceased Mom, and the other, a shout out my son, Exsel, who graduated high school on Tuesday May 20.

Yes, that’s the ebullient boy, holding his newly-earned high school diploma in front of an audience of 500 on the downtown Santa Fe Convention Center stage.

Pretty amazing for a skinny 8-year-old immigrant from Indonesia who arrived in LA in 2015 without speaking a word of English.

But ten years is a lonnnnng time in a child’s world on his way to young adulthood.

Of course, my mother never met my son. As you’ll read below, she always wanted me to get married and become a father, but she died a full year before I even met my wife-to-be in the year 2000 on the streets of Kuta Beach in Bali, and 17 years before Exsel’s adoption.

She became a grandmother only posthumously, so to speak, but I know she was smiling inside my heart, where I still keep her alive.

So here’s the 2014 post to Rozzy, my one-of-a-kind Mom, again in my “lower case style” of the time:

“a few days after 5/13/2014, my mom’s birthday, always on the cusp of mother’s day

look here.

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. but you can see when this coin was minted - 1921. 93 years ago. the year my mother was born.

it’s no coincidence i have it. 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. three 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.

middle village, you say? yep, in the middle of queens county. one of the five 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 first suburb. 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 roz re-located after 50 years of marriage. to be closer to their two kids. my sister, alison, who lived in oakland-berkeley. and me, number one son, who resided in lala land. los angeleeez, calee-fonia.

we were all there in walnut creek for rozzy’s 70th birthday party. 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. where they’re still fighting.

but back then, 1921, just after the russian revolution, it was the place for eastern european and “russian” jews, to emigrate from. to take the slow boat to… america… where the streets were supposedly paved with gold, 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. when sally and murray get married, open their first blue-collar, neighborhood grocery store on riverdale avenue. in yiddish-speaking, immigrant brooklyn, another of the five 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 middle 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 them. or the holocaust. but by the time we move from levittown to westbury, long island, we’re already on our way... up.

my son, the doctuh.

that was the new dream.

with rozzy was doing the dreaming.

she was smart. did well in school. knew how to hitch a ride.

had a coupla girl friends named ruthie and ike. until one day… ruthie set her up with hard-working joey trules. through a mutual friend, a cavalier, fast-talking eddie lewis.

they musta had “some fun”. i heard about it. benny goodman, swing dancing, clarinet-playing artie shaw, and even “old blue eyes” himself, frank sinatra. handsome joey trules, the gentleman caller, from richmond hill, right near the middle village. all 140 pounds of him.

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. a sergeant-mechanic of 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.

i remember just one rockin’ roz story from the ww2 days. new hubby joey was having all the patriotic GIs over for a big south florida shindig, and he’d proudly asked the new 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.

as a result… by the time all the GIs were sitting around 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. but then, by the time she served it up… with all the fixin’s, it was awkwardly discovered that… 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 into 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 as a social worker. residential and respectable roz trules, heart as big as all of nassau county.

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.”

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 gave out to freshmen at USC, my employer for the last 24 years.

and refined? she was always a woman of style… of current fashion… of substance… and of 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 firstborn. maybe never really came back. but my sister, 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….

as first, they left the long island suburbs 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, roz and joe found a stylish apartment on 80th street, on the upper east side of manhattan, between 2nd & 3rd avenues.

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the next move was that “jumpin’ joe” retired in 1979. at age 62. threw in the towel from a lifelong career in the “schmata” business (NYC’s textile business). i threw him a little retirement party at my clown loft on 23rd on park avenue south. joe had already had 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, that is, roz got… “the urge for goin’” again in 1986… and announced, or maybe cajoled,

time for us to move out west. turn over a new leaf. start a new life near the kids.

and so they did…

…move 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 chemotherapy. 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 that i would have to take care of her. of them. i was sick; they were worried. there was nothing they could do for me, and i needed all 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.
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…

…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. because maybe, like people say, i’m “a survivor”.

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 returning from 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. she had an intense earache. reluctantly, she took the herbs, 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 a cerebral stroke in the middle of the night and never knew what hit her.

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. was it my fault she died?

it’s been a long time since she passed. fifteen years; seems like fifty. it’s too bad she never got to meet my young indonesian wife who i 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 think i did. i hope she’d be happy for me.

but still, i’m not a father. my wife’s not a mother. we have no children together. most of our friends do. my sister does.

but in 1999, thirteen years after i had become a “professor of theatuh” at the great university of southern california, i finished 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”. it took me seven years to make.

my esteemed colleagues at the great university all ganged up on me to give me an award, the “faculty recognition award” for my film, 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 professorial USC colleagues insisted that my parents, especially my mother, come down from the rossmoor… for the end of the year ceremony… which in fact… she… and they… did.

so 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… proud.

and there was my mother, resplendent rozzy trules, with her lifelong partner, devoted joey trules… my parents… with tears… flowing down… both of their cheeks… as my name was called…. and i walked slowly… to get my award. my piece of paper… that my mom and dad… probably, especially my mom… had 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 Mom.

i’ve saved the twenty-dollar gold coin in my drawer for a long time. 1921. i took it out today. a few days after may 13, 2014. my mother’s birthday. she would have been 93 years old today. i looked up to… i don’t know to where…

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

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

Shout Outs to my Mother & Son

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