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| The Diary of Rosewood: The Agony and The Ecstasy Shortly after my Senior year at Aspen High School and my third year of living in one place, which was a record for me up till then, my mother asked me to do something horrible. She had just found out that her mother died. This was a woman I hardly knew and that my mother had sworn wasn’t her relative the one time I did see her and she told me she was my grandmother. I remember liking this woman and I had a very pleasant memory of spending a holiday with her and her husband and feeling very much at home here. Grandmother’s house always smelled of oranges and flowers. I remember she had a most beautiful garden and she took me with her one time to a garden show. I loved the colors and the smell. I remember she took me with her one time shopping and taught me that it was very important to always check the eggs before you buy them to make certain that none were broken. I impressed more than one woman with this knowledge as a young man. I always felt love from this woman. Grandfather was a little different. He was not quite as approachable, but I still felt close to him. But I was never given much of an opportunity to get to know them. This was several years before and I had completely forgotten about them. Now my mother was asking me to leave the school I loved to go with her to Maryland to bury this woman I barely knew. She promised it wouldn’t be more than a month away and so very reluctantly I agreed. I made all the necessary preparation at school and once again was on a road trip across country with Mother and Walter. The funeral was open casket. This was the first time I had seen a dead person up close and it was very strange. I had this irrational desire to try to wake her up. After the funeral, my grandfather came up to me and talked with me. He said that he had tried several times to get me mother to let he and grandmother raise me. He wanted me to know my Jewish roots and provide for me financially. All I had to do was agree now to leave my mother and come live with him. I said no. I later learned that he had apparently managed to keep the inheritance that Grandmother had set aside for me to go to college and would not release any money to my mother. Because of this, they couldn’t afford to travel back to Colorado and I was now stuck in Maryland as well. I was devastated, but I moved in with my Aunt and Uncle who I had met a few times before and enrolled at the local high school to finish my senior year. Compared to a graduating class of 30 at Aspen High School, Woodlawn Senior High in Woodlawn, Maryland had over a thousand in their senior class. Life was very different here. Still I managed to make the most of it. I eventually got my own apartment since there were too many rules at my Uncle’s place and a job at a catering service to pay the bills. I refused to live on welfare as my parents had grown accustomed to doing. So once again, I was working my way through high school. I enjoyed the variety of classes here and managed to even take a Latin class again for a brief time. I also took a psychology class and was very close to seeing this as a career goal. During Spring Break and for a few months afterwards, the High School psychology teacher arranged for an internship at Rosewood Mental Hospital. I was accepted and it was a wonderful experience for me. I mostly remember feelings of apprehension at the outset of my volunteer work. Twelve of us had volunteered to do the work but only five actually showed up for our first weekend and by the end of the internship only three of us survived. The first day we were taken on a tour of the complex that included the wards of the most severely handicapped and deformed. This was something out of a horror movie. I vividly recall the smells. Smells that seemed somehow unearthly and different from anything I had experienced or wanted to experience. Smells that seemed to speak of pain and agony. Smell that were laden with oppression and filled the halls with a weightiness that seemed to drain the life out of you. The sights seemed to fit the smells. There were children as well as infants with many kinds of deformities and unusual expressions that made this place feel very alien. My initial reaction was one of repulsion. I didn’t want to be stained by these misfits of the pure race to which I belonged. Then all of a sudden, something very unusual happened. One of these “misfits,” a young child, came running up to me, put her arms around my legs, and hugged me tight. I felt as though love were being pulled from me. Then I felt her love pouring back into me. I saw her not as a misshapen freak, but as a little child who needed to have and give love. Still the overwhelming emotion in this place was loneliness and depression that was thick enough to feel – thick enough to smell. I knew that as much as I might want to I could not love well enough to make a real difference here. In sadness and frustration I moved on with the tour. I was told that they later decided not to take interns on that same tour again. I understood, but I was saddened for those there. Finally, we arrived at the ward where we would intern. These were far less severely challenged or handicapped. Indeed I would later learn that some were here simply because their parents had no place else to put them. There was a time of testing and proving before these would give their trust. Some never would. But gradually, slowly, painfully acceptance did blossom forth where only a bud had appeared before. I was privileged to be given their trust and because we were shorthanded, I was the only one who was actually allowed to take my group on a field trip. Both the staff and the kids trusted me enough to know that I could do it. I was honored. Many of the children opened up to me and told me of their families. Some were comfortable enough with me to even laugh at me. I came there at Easter dressed up as the Easter Bunny and had so much fun that one of the children with whom I worked came up to me and said, “You know, you belong here more than I do.” I agreed with him as I gleefully skipped away cottontail bobbing behind me. My final memories of Rosewood were ones of joy. |
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