To New Heights

It's not every day you see your ex-husband on the big screen. And it's not every day you make a scene in front of hundreds of tourists at Chicago's Willis Tower. I did both in the same day. 

Michael with a larger-than-life image of 

alter ego, Morgan, his role in Special Unit. 
Photo courtesy Michael Aronin.

My ex-husband, Michael, father of my teenagers, Sydney and Jon, is a professional stand-up comic. As the result of a birth accident, Michael has cerebral palsy which affects his speech, gait and motor skills. Despite the obstacles, by age seven he was using humor to engineer bridges between his world and the world of the so-called mainstream, charming everyone he encountered. After building hundreds of bridges to thousands of people, he was ready to perform stand-up for the first time when his junior high school held a talent show. 

When Michael grew up, he became a stand-up comic for real, appearing in clubs all over the east coast, including the famous Caroline's in New York. Over time he was traveling farther and branching into motivational speaking. We were even on the Howard Stern Show. Michael was a scheduled guest; I was dragged in from the green room. 

As for me - I grew up loving movies. Comedies, horror films, silent films, early sound, German expressionist horror films, B-flicks, it didn't matter; I was crazy about them. I've loved Cinerama, cinema verité, film noir, shorts, and documentaries. My fondest dream at age 10 was to be a film historian. From my early teens into my late fifties, I never missed an Oscars telecast, and the only reason I finally did was because of a power outage. In high school I participated in something called the Youth Film Forum, and in college I majored in theater thinking I might eventually transfer to the California Institute of the Arts to study filmmaking. The cherry on top would be getting to act in a film.  

I spent two summers in L.A. working for Forrest J (no period) Ackerman, editor of the magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland. Forry always insisted that it was he who coined the term sci fi, and I never had reason to doubt him. Writer, Harlan Ellison so hated the term that he is said to have described it as "the sound of two crickets screwing."

Because of Ackerman, I met Darlyne O'Brien, widow of Willis O'Brien, who gave the world the original “King Kong” and the process of stop motion animation. I rented a room from her one summer. Through Darlyne I met Ray Harryhausen and was a weekend guest in the home he shared with his wife, Diana. I was their dinner guest one evening and Diana’s shopping companion one afternoon. At Darlyne’s, I got to hold the Oscar Willis O'Brien won for “Mighty Joe Young.” Darlyne kept it dressed in a matador outfit and stashed in a safe. 

I say all that to say this: If God were to choose between Michael and me which of us should be in a movie, I think it should be me. So, anyhow . . . Michael was starring in a movie. 

It all started sometime around 2,002 when he opened for comedian Christopher Titus and they became friends. One day, Titus had an epiphany and started work on a script about a crooked Van Nuys cop who cheeses off the mayor. As payback, he is ordered to train a squad of police cadets with disabilities. The only reason these cadets were hired was to appease them after they sued the police department for discriminatory hiring practices. The script is very pro-disability community, and the cadets prove themselves more capable than the police or City Hall expect. Michael was one of the first people Titus thought of when dreaming up the plot and cast. The title of the script: Special Unit. 

A few weeks ago, Michael and I were on the phone making plans for the kids and me to join him and his wife, Mia in Chicago where Special Unit was featured in a film festival. 

“You know,” I said, “I’m the one with the life-long dream of being in a movie. I’m the one who studied film history. I’m the one who studied acting. I’m the one who rubbed elbows in Hollywood.”

“Well, baby,” said the bridge-builder, “there’s always porn, so chin up. And down. And up.”

“Mi-chael . . . “

“And down.”

A few days later, Michael called and said that while we were in Chicago, we should take the kids to Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower. At 110 stories, Willis Tower is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. It has an area called the Skydeck with two things called the Ledges. The Ledges are glass boxes extending about four feet from one side of the building. For the price of a ticket, visitors can step onto a Ledge where they have just three glass walls and a glass floor between them and a messy landing in eternity. 

Michael emailed me a link to pictures of the Ledges with a note saying, “You and Mia can play rock, paper, scissors to decide which one of you gets to cut the glass out from under me. Choose wisely.”

I wrote back, “If Mia and I play rock, paper, scissors to see who gets to cut the glass out from under you, there is no need for a wise decision, dumb-dumb. That's why you play rock, paper, scissors, so no one has to make a decision.” Michael called me later to tell me that was “just mean.”

The following Friday the kids and I packed the car and headed to Chicago. When we arrived, Michael, who had insisted on paying for the hotel, had the five of us booked into two adjoining rooms. That evening we all had dinner together, and Michael gave each of the kids and me an engraved thank you gift for coming. We talked about going to Willis Tower the next day. 

“You pay for the Uber going out, and I’ll pay for the Uber coming back,” Michael proposed.  He calculated that there would be plenty of time when we returned from the Tower to get ready for the film festival where my college friend, Marc would meet us with his family. The plan had a faint Rube Goldberg tinge to it, but Michael was confident it would all work out. 

The next morning, Mia called us into their room. Michael was lying on the bed and had thrown his back out while putting on his socks. I looked at the cloth culprits covering his feet. They were orange, teal, and white-striped and looked like they'd been made for either a child with big feet or a clown with small ones. Paradoxically for the socks, it had turned out both ways.  

Michael was rejecting Mia's advice that he not go to Willis Tower while Michael insisted that with a cane and/or wheelchair, he'd be fine. When it became clear that even sitting up caused searing pain, he agreed to stay put and rest. I would take the kids to Willis Tower. 

"Maybe we can all go to the tower tomorrow," I suggested, but Michael said their flight was at 5 a.m. 

"Well, maybe I should still take the kids tomorrow. What if we get tied up downtown and can't get back in time for the movie?"

"It's not even noon," said the sage. "You have plenty of time." 

The kids and I Ubered to Willis Tower and walked past a line of people stringing out of the building, down the sidewalk and around the corner. We wondered what that was all about. Then we strolled into the lobby where a severe-looking man in a dark blazer stopped us.

"If you're here for the Skydeck, the line is over there." 

It was the same line we'd passed, and passed, and passed coming in.

"And it's an approximate two hour wait from here," he continued, helpfully.

Standing in line, I tried to calculate whether we should stay or call another Uber and head back, but the thought of spending that much money without getting to do anything was more than I could stand so we stayed put. 

The line jumped forward every 10 minutes or so, and eventually we passed through a security check. Later we came to an open space with a green-screen and a floor mat in front of it. Standing between us and that open space was another stern-looking man in a dark blazer, this one ushering people to the green-screen. About 20 feet in front of the green-screen was a plucky-looking woman with a camera. Her job: merrily photograph your party so that before you exit, someone else could sell you a fake picture of yourselves standing on one of the Ledges. Why people would buy such a picture after taking real pictures of themselves on the Ledges was beyond me. Sydney found the whole set-up anxiety-provoking and wanted no part of it. 

"No problem," I said. "I'll just tell them no."

When it was our turn to step in front of the green-screen, I told the usher that we didn't want our picture taken and would just mosey on through. He seemed very serious about his work and a little menacing when it came to carrying it out.  

Usher: "Ma'am, please move with your party onto the mat."

Me: "As I said, we don't want to, but thanks. We'll just pass through, and that will speed things up a little."

Usher: "But we do it for everybody."

Me: "But my daughter's uncomfortable with it."

Usher: "But we do it for everybody."

Me: "But my daughter's uncomfortable with it."

Usher: "But we do it for everybody."

Me: "But my DAUGHTER'S UNCOMFORTABLE with it."

It occurred to me that this was hardly speeding things up, and I was surprised nobody behind us had yelled at us. It seemed wiser to just get onto the mat and get it over with. 

"Okay, come on, kids," I said, stepping onto the mat. "Let's get our pictures taken." Then I turned my back to the camera. 

The photographer, no longer smiling, threw up her hands and yelled at the usher, "Oh, they can just go!" 

It took Syd at least five minutes to coax her face out from behind her hands. She said she couldn't believe I'd done that. Jon, on the other hand, was in awe of his mother. I explained to Syd that I'd done it for her because they were making her uncomfortable.

"Well, I'm more uncomfortable now!" she moaned. 

An hour later we stepped onto one of the Ledges. I wasn't sure until the last second that I'd  do it, but as a friend who'd survived it said, you are so high up that the height almost becomes abstract and not as frightening. That's how I experienced it too. But it was a little unnerving that cars appeared to be a quarter the size of my pinkie fingernail. 

When we got back to street level there was no time to stop at the hotel and freshen up, so we Ubered straight to the movie theater. We all converged on the theater lobby within minutes of one another and sat together in two rows. It was a little weird seeing Michael's dimpled face on a movie screen, and I smiled thinking how far he had come since his first performance in junior high. Then I thought of all the actors and filmmakers I know of who started in stand-up: Woody Allen, Robin Williams, Lily Tomlin, Jim Carrey, Whoopi Goldberg; the list goes on.

And I had to admit that while I had the love, Michael had the passion, and while I had the knowledge, Michael had the talent. So if God had to choose between Michael and me which of us should be in a movie, I knew then it should be Michael. 

Waiting For the Bus

It was at a party for her daughter's eighth birthday, in the midst of a whole lot of hoopla, that we had this conversation, the other mommy and I. As parents tend to do when en masse, we talked about our children - their quirks, their cleverness, the lengths to which our love for them had driven us. We each had a boy and a girl, but in my case, the girl was older, and in her case, the boy was, by just a few years.

Image: Teece Aronin

Our daughters were classmates at school, and that was how the other mommy and I first met. She was flamboyant and loud, but in good ways - extroverted, I should have said. She was tall and sexy and could make smoking look almost as glamorous as people thought it was back in the fifties. She could also drink like a fish but didn't seem to lose control from it. I could never imagine her sick on booze, cooling her face on the bathroom tiles like a lot of people do when they've drunk too much. She seemed to take everything in stride, made everything she did look easy. And she was a loving mother, a hands-on mother, the kind of mother who makes mud pies with her kids.

Since children's parties and parent-teacher conferences were our usual conversation venues, we didn't talk often, but I enjoyed her when we did. One time she listed for me all the reasons she'd preferred to work outside the home even when her kids were babies. She said the same thing as a lot of women who work, when financially they can afford to stay home; that the adult interaction made her a better parent. Then she jokingly confessed the "real reason" and laid it smack on her daughter's playhouse doorstep: "That kid always talked way - too - damned - much."

But that was a different time and not the conversation I'd started to tell you about. This other conversation, as I said, took place on the occasion of her daughter's eighth birthday. But we weren't talking about her daughter; we were talking about her son. We were at her home, a comfortable townhouse she shared with her family. Being at her place always cheered me up because it was cluttered and chaotic even when she entertained, and she made no apologies for it. It cheered me up because when I entertained, I either compulsively bulldozed the clutter out or compulsively apologized for it to my guests. How could I get as comfortable in my skin as she was in hers, I wondered.

Anyway, there we were, the other mommy and I, grazing from the veggie plate, when she told me that when she was a girl, she used to make fun of the "short bus," the smaller buses used to transport kids with special needs to and from school.

So this is how the kids who teased, the kids who bullied might turn out, I mused. I had never met an adult with the guts to admit to that kind of behavior, but this one had, and she'd grown up to be . . . well . . . good, in a lot of ways. I don't know if she made fun of the kids themselves, the kids with special needs, I mean, or if she just joked about the bus itself, telling her friends they belonged on one and that kind of thing. I suppose it doesn't matter now.

For the life of me, I can't remember how we got onto the topic of her son's first day of kindergarten or what possessed her to tell me something so personal, but she did. She said that she stood at the curb with him, waiting for the bus, and the picture of them was so clear in my head, her standing there with him, her son, born with Down syndrome.

And she said that what looped through her mind over and over were the words: "Please God, don't let it be a short bus. Please God, don't let it be a short bus. Please God, don't let it be a short bus."

I don't remember if it turned out to be a short bus or not, but maybe that doesn't matter now either.

A Perfectly Beautiful Son

Mother's Day will be here soon, so I thought I'd reach way down deep in the memory drawer and pull something out that I wrote years ago and haven't looked at in a while.

A picture of me with my own son

A woman once told me about the day when her son, born with cerebral palsy, came into the house upset because some neighborhood kids had been bullying him. She stood with him in front of the full-length mirror she kept in her bedroom and said, "Look at yourself. That's your body and it's beautiful." 

After she told me that story, I wrote this poem for her. I'm sharing it here for all the mothers of children with disabilities. Your children are amazing, and they have made you more amazing too and probably stronger than you ever thought you could be. Happy Almost Mother's Day to all of you.

A Perfectly Beautiful Son

"I'm crippled and useless; the kids say I am."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son."

"Mommy, how can you say that when you know how I look?"

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. You look like your father. You're lucky, my pet. He's handsome and strong. Can't you see? You belong. Be proud, my beautiful son."

"My feet drag on the ground; I fall down all the time."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. And when you fall down, you get right back up. You've never stayed down and I know you won't now. Get up, my beautiful son."

"My hands always shake; I spill everything."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. And when your hands shake, I will hold them in mine. It will steady us both; not just you but me, too. Hold tight, my beautiful son."

"My speech comes out funny; people can't understand."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. And when I hear you speak, I hear magical sounds. The words are so clear and their meanings so dear. Speak out, my beautiful son."

"People think that I'm weak, just because I'm so small."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. And your heart's grown so strong, how could you be weak? To me you're so mighty, sometimes I can't speak. Stand tall, my beautiful son."

"The kids have been saying I'll wind up alone."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. You have so much to give and a great life to live. And when the day comes that a girl sees this too, I'll love her so much - but not like I love you. But I'll love her to pieces, and I'll shout to the world, 'My son's found his true love! What a perfectly beautiful girl!"

Angel in a Helmet

One morning, I lost my Mother of the Year Award twice in 15 minutes.  

I was attempting to get my seven-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter off to school. My daughter was on a course of oral steroids for treatment of a run-in with poison oak. I, in my finite wisdom, defied the clock and decided she should take the pills right then before we left, even though we were extremely tight on time. She sat at the kitchen table, her face swollen and blotchy, crying because she didn't want to go to school looking like she'd just gone nine rounds with a boxing kangaroo. 

               
She put one of the pills into her mouth, but because of the sobbing, was unable to get it down. Cleverly, I used child psychology to help her swallow the pill: "Swallow - the - pill - now - please." We Mother of the Year Award winners always say please to reinforce good manners in our kids. What a surprise when she cried harder. By the time we left the house, water and pills had dribbled down her front, into her lap, and onto the carpet, upsetting us both even more. 

               
After we got in the car, my son told me his lunch money was in the house, even though I had expressly instructed him to put it in his backpack. "Oh, this is just great!" I said, stomping up the walk to unlock the front door for him. 

               
A few minutes later, both kids had been safely deposited at school, and as I decompressed, I began a post-mortem of the morning. I decided that even though I was clearly wrong, I wasn’t going to be too hard on myself since 99.9% of the time I am patient with my kids. I was also under a lot of stress that day. 

I decided that the first thing I was going to do when I picked the kids up later would be to apologize for acting like a “big, dumb jerk,” which is how I would refer to myself in hopes of making them smile. Then, I remembered a child to whom I had apologized many years before.

                
During high school, I volunteered every afternoon at a learning center for people with disabilities. There was one little boy, Vincent, who lit up every time I walked into his classroom and would rush to me for a hug. 

I wish you could picture him as clearly as I can: four years-old, Black, slight build, and an ever-present helmet to protect his head during seizures. He had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen - huge, round eyes with long, curling eyelashes, and he was completely nonverbal. I was crazy about this child, and if he thought I was the highlight of his day, I knew he was the highlight of mine.

               
One winter day, it was time to go home, so I started helping Vincent with his coat. Gently, I placed his little fist against the opening at the top of the sleeve and guided it in. About halfway through the sleeve, his fist stopped. I assumed he'd purposely grabbed onto the lining.

               
“Vincent, you have to put your coat on; this isn’t time to play,” I said. I pushed down on the little fist again, but it went nowhere.

“Vincent, this is not funny,” I said peering straight into the bon-bon eyes. Those eyes would have no effect on me, no sir. He looked back at me with a placid little smile that I mistook for defiance. “You have to put your coat on now, or you’ll miss the bus. Now, please stop fighting me.”

               
When I failed for the umpteenth time to push his hand through the sleeve, I reached up through the cuff to grasp his hand and pull it through. What I pulled through were his hat and mittens. He had been unable to push his fist through the sleeve and unable to tell me so.

               
Shamefully, my eyes darted toward a teacher who was calmly and successfully helping another child into his coat. I was glad she didn’t seem to have noticed. Then she smiled and said, “Don’t you just hate it when you do something stupid like that?”

              
I admitted that yes, I did hate it when I did something stupid like that. Then I looked at Vincent who was still gazing at me. His expression was the same as before, but this time I saw it for what it really was: patience - patience for the “big, dumb jerk” determined to shove his fist through his hat. I knelt in front of him, put my hand over my heart, and peered into his face.

               
“Vincent, I am sorry. What I did was wrong. I apologize.”

               
Staring into those eyes, I wondered if he understood. Then he grinned, spread his arms like the wings of an angel, and executed a graceful freefall into my hands. What resulted was one of the best hugs I have ever gotten or ever given, and it taught me this lesson: Never hesitate to apologize to a child when you are in the wrong. When I picked up my kids that afternoon, I told them how sorry I was for the way I'd behaved, and they graciously accepted my apology. 

              
I have thought of Vincent many times since those long-ago days at the school. And no doubt, I will think of him many more. When I apologized to him, he assured me without a word, that finally, I had stumbled into doing the right thing. And no doubt, if he’s even still alive, he suspects nothing of what he did for me that day.