Well, seems like moving my mother has taken a somewhat difficult turn. It seems her health is failing rapidly, she has had 2 heart attacks last year and diabetes and kidney failure and walked away from that.
But now, anemia has snuck in and she is losing blood and they really can't find out where it's going, although a tumor is possible. Regardless, the weakness caused by the loss of oxygen and blood makes it difficult for her to do anything. She's 87, still has a sister in Michigan who's 96 but I fear she won't last as long.
It's not really unexpected though. I'm here in the town I was born in a hundred years ago, it seems, a different life in a little village of 550 residents, and far away from Hollywood. My first experience with movies was when my mom and dad (he passed away in 2000) took me to see Disney's Living Desert movie.
And once the screen revealed a giant rattlesnake I screamed like hell. So much that mom took me up to the projectionist, Leonard Kominski, who kept me through the rest of the movie. I watched the projector humming and clicking as film ran thru it and was totally fascinated.
And that's where it all began.
From the age of 8 or so I would see every movie that came to the little town, and if it were adult, I would sit by the exit door at the back of the theater and listen to the sound of people talking.
And I knew that someday I would be in Hollywood.
We moved to Windsor and Detroit in the 60's and I went from a town of 550 to nearly 5 million and soaked it up like a sponge. I could actually buy a copy of Variety at a Detroit newsstand and even though I didn't quite understand it, I knew it was about the movies.
And now I'm back at the beginning again, the old theater is still there, and shows 2 movies a week. But this time, I'm not here to celebrate but to compromise in that life isn't beginning, rather it's ending for my mother who reminded me the other day about that night I got scared.
And somehow, it was comforting, and now it is my turn to comfort her.
I'll be posting more later.
