Tag: my mom

My parents and Star Trek

Back in 1986, I suggested that Mom and I see Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

leonardnimoyIn light of Leonard Nimoy’s death on February 27, a not-unexpected event which nevertheless saddened me greatly, a couple of family recollections.

When I was a teenager in Binghamton, NY, my father was a big fan of Star Trek, airing on NBC-TV in 1966-1969. He watched it every week, barring some meeting conflict. I’d wander into the living room, watch a scene or two, and walk away, bemused.

Dad seemed particularly fond of this part-human, part-Vulcan character named Mr. Spock, played by Nimoy, who, I gathered, had nothing to do with the famous pediatrician of the era, Dr. Benjamin Spock.

There WAS a show Dad and I tended to watch together, and it was the spy show Mission: Impossible, which ALSO started in 1966, on CBS-TV. Among the stars was Martin Landau as Rollin Hand as a master of magic and makeup.

When Landau decided to leave M:I in 1969, he was replaced by Leonard Nimoy, who played a very similar character named Paris. Apparently, Nimoy was up for the Rollin Hand part but opted to do the space opera instead.

It wasn’t until the original Star Trek was shown in reruns that I finally “got” it. I was primed to see the first Star Trek movie in 1979, which I found a little slow, but then I watched the second and third movies, in which (can this be a spoiler?), Spock apparently dies, and then survives.

My parents and baby sister Marcia moved to Charlotte, NC in 1974. One of the traditions I had with my mother, when I would visit her down there was for us to go watch a movie at the local cinema. We saw the original Rocky and Dreamgirls, for two, the latter with my sisters.

For some reason, back in 1986, I suggested that Mom and I see Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which, as it turned out, Nimoy directed and co-wrote. This was not my best idea because Mom had not seen either II or III. She DID seem to enjoy the story but was a bit confused by the back story, which I tried to explain as quickly as possible.

The only non-Star Trek movie I recall seeing Leonard Nimoy in was the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I did watch the original Three Men and a Baby (1987), which he directed. Of course, I remember hearing his distinctive speech in several voiceover gigs.

I’ve found a LOT of nifty Nimoy stories this weekend. I liked Live Long and Prosper: The Jewish Story Behind Spock that also shows up in his New York Times obit. Read also Mark Evanier and Jaquandor tell stories about Leonard Nimoy, and Chuck Miller shows some nifty videos.

This quote I found on Daily Kos is true: “We lost the man who played the first ‘cool’ science nerd… Maybe that’s why his death is having a bigger impact on many of us than we would have thought, until now.” As his last tweet read: “A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP.”

G is for the Greens

NO ONE left IBM in those days, and certainly not for some likely short-term government job.

rog.leg.meg.1962aprI grew up in Binghamton, which is in the Southern Tier section of New York State, not far from the Pennsylvania border. I had, and have, two sisters, Leslie Ellen Green, born about 16.5 months after my birth, and Marcia Elayne Green, born a little more than five years after me.

We grew up with our parents, Leslie Harold Green and Gertrude Elizabeth (nee Williams) Green, at 5 Gaines Street in the city’s First Ward. When I was born, my parents lived upstairs in the two-family dwelling, but soon my parents moved to the first floor, and my paternal grandparents, McKinley Green and Agatha (nee Walker) Green then lived upstairs.

The house was owned by my maternal grandmother, Gertrude (nee Yates) Williams, who lived a half dozen blocks away at 13 Maple Street with her baby sister Adenia (Deana) Yates. Our house was a small place, with a living room, two bedrooms, kitchen, and what was essentially a large hallway.
rog.leg.meg.1962

After Marcia was born, when the girls were destined to get the second bedroom, my father built a couple of walls in the hallway to create a very small bedroom for me. He painted the solar system on my ceiling.

Our mother worked at McLean’s department store downtown, first as an elevator operator, then later in the bookkeeping department. Although we were supposed to attend Oak Street Elementary School, since we went to Grandma Williams’ house for lunch, it was determined that we would instead go to Daniel Dickinson school instead. This, of course, had a profound effect on us in terms of who our childhood friends were, a surprising number of which we still are in touch with.
rog.leg.meg.1964
Our father had several jobs: truck driver, florist, painter (both artistic and sign painting). He had a job working at IBM for about six years. It was at night, and it wasn’t particularly intellectually stimulating, moving inventory on some conveyance.

When Dad quit his job to work for something called Opportunities for Broome, a project funded the US Office of Economic Opportunity, my ninth grade homework teacher, Mr. Joseph, told me that my father was crazy. NO ONE left IBM in those days, and certainly not for some likely short-term government job. Frankly, I thought it was a great decision, and time proved this to be correct.

Grandma Green died in 1964. She was one of my Sunday school teachers, and she taught me how to play the card game Canasta. I taught my Aunt Deana how to play canasta, and we also played 500 rummy and other card games; she died two years after Grandma Green. I played bid whist and pinochle with my parents.

Each of my parents was an only child. This meant that my sisters and I never had uncles, aunts, or first cousins. This makes our tribe rather small these days, with our parents deceased, and each of my sisters and I each having just one child, a daughter.

Mom, 40 years ago: taking care from far away

This is the fourth anniversary of my mom’s death today.

trudy.pearlsAfter my sister Leslie and I left my grandmother in Charlotte, NC with my parents and my sister Marcia in January 1975, I went back to Binghamton, NY, and stayed in my grandmother’s house. She had a coal stove, and I had SEEN her operate for years. But seeing and doing were two different things, and soon, the fire went out, and the pipes froze.

I was pretty depressed after the breakup of my marriage to the Okie, so I mostly watched television. I mean hours at a time. My grandma’s set got only one station, WNBF-TV, the CBS affiliate. So I watched the soap operas As the World Turns, The Edge of Night, Guiding Light, and Search for Tomorrow. Don’t remember watching any game shows except Match Game. Viewed the bulk of the CBS nighttime schedule, except perhaps the movies. And, heaven help me, I watched Hee Haw, which by that point was in first-run syndication. I told you I was depressed.

Usually on Thursday evenings, and occasionally other nights, I’d visit my friend Carol (not to be confused with my wife Carol), washed up, watched TV at HER house (The Waltons). The then-current travails of her life probably kept me sane.

Occasionally, I’d walk downtown to the library, if it wasn’t too cold. Don’t remember reading books, though I did read the newspaper. I DO remember listening to the LPs on the record player. One time I was playing the first side of the Beatles’ Abbey Road, and I cranked up the volume louder and louder. The song I Want You (She’s So Heavy) ends abruptly, which I knew from plenty of previous plays; at that moment, however, I thought briefly that I had died.

The electricity at my grandma’s house was spotty. I had a space heater that I could not run with the refrigerator, lest I blow the circuit. Didn’t matter; the house was so cold, I didn’t NEED the refrigerator. I DID need the space heater, though, and the colorful quilt that kept me from freezing.

One night in February, I woke up with a start. The quilt had caught fire, having fallen on the space heater. It generated an acrid stretch, which might have killed me, if the fire, which I was somehow able to smother, hadn’t.

A day or two later, I called my mom in North Carolina and told her this story. And she told me that she knew this had happened. She woke up from a dream, or a vision, and called me mentally to wake up, and I did. This is NOT the type of tale my mother generally told, so I believed her, believe her still.

This being the fourth anniversary of her death today, I want to say, “Thanks, Mom. I love you, too.”

2010: Mom’s last birthday

trudy.pearlsOne of the truisms of my birth family dynamic was that, as the youngest, “baby” sister Marcia was the only one to move to Charlotte, NC when my parents did in 1974. Leslie and I were both in college in upstate New York, me in New Paltz, Leslie in the hometown of Binghamton. And while both of us stayed in Charlotte briefly, me for four months in 1977, Leslie for a few months c. 1980 later, neither of us ever became Charlotteans.

Whereas Marcia stayed in Charlotte for most of her life, save for a few months here and there. I remember more than one conversation with Marcia suggesting that she needed to get out of town, or at least out of the parents’ house when she was in her early twenties. For a lot of reasons, it didn’t happen.

When my father died in 2000, it then became practical for Mom, and Marcia, and her then-preteen daughter Alex to continue to live together. This was actually a sweetheart deal for Leslie, by then in San Diego, and me, in Albany. The three of them were all caring for each other. Leslie and/or I could visit periodically, but the day-to-day concerns of our mom were not our problem, because she was being taken care of.

So, it was not until shortly before my mother died in February 2011 that I realized how difficult my mother had become. Mom was a genuinely sweet person – seriously, ask anyone who knew her – but she would hit and occasionally yell, not at people who were strangers, but towards her family, Marcia and Alex. Mom would hide the mail, which became such a problem Marcia had to get a post office box.

Every six months, Mom would receive some cognition test. Her results in June or July of 2010 were within the normal range, but the outcome for six months later was far less favorable. Again, I wasn’t aware of this.

In the end, Mom was clearly suffering some sort of dementia. Whether it was Alzheimer’s or something else I don’t know, and never will. And I suppose it doesn’t matter.

What DOES matter is that it was unfortunate that the bulk of the care for her fell on one person. I wish I had known sooner how difficult it had become.

Mother’s Day: no mother, again

There are days when everything is really going well. Then there are other days you wish you could call your mom on the phone.

trudy_at_churchHere are a couple more pictures of my mom, before she was my mom. I don’t know exactly when they were taken, if I saw them before, I don’t recall them. Funny how she has that head tilt in both, albeit in different directions. My sister Marcia is doing a yeoperson’s job of finding photos, scanning them, and putting them on Facebook.

I’m fairly sure I know where the first one was taken.

It looks like the front of Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church, 35 Sherman Place in downtown Binghamton, NY, where I would later be baptized, in August (?) of 1953.

The Sherman Street church, indeed, all of that street was razed in the late 1950s to build a playground right across from the Interracial Center at 45 Carroll Street, where my father spent a lot of time working on social justice issues.

The church congregation moved to 203 Oak Street, at the corner of Lydia Street, only two short blocks from my home at 5 Gaines Street.

Trudy_carDon’t know much about this clearly earlier picture, except that the man in the car is almost certainly her Uncle Ed Yates, her mother Gert’s brother.

The freaky weather in Albany last month (80F on one day, 27F and snow 36 hours later) reminded both of my sisters of something that happened to my mom one Mother’s Day, or perhaps before: she slipped on ice on the front porch of our house and ended up in the hospital for at least a week. I think it was 1966; the week before May 8, the low temperature was 31 to 33F, and down to 26F the night before in Binghamton, NY. Though it COULD have been 1967, when it was 33F to 35F the evenings of the week before May 14.

There are days when everything is really going well. Then there are other days you wish you could call your mom on the phone. I’ve had more than my share of the latter thus far in 2014.

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