Last August, my son Leo handed me a computer and said, "Here. I filled out as much as I could on my own, but you need to do the rest to give me permission."
"Permission for what?" I said.
"I’m trying out for America’s Got Talent."
"What?"
I had not known, at that point, that my 11-year-old had been obsessed with watching YouTube videos of past performers. Only that he’d taken up ukulele at his summer camp and seemed to like it.
"What are you going to perform?" "No idea," he said. "But I’ll figure it out."
Four months later, early in the morning on December 17th, 2017, we arrived at the Javits Center for his audition.
This was the moment he’d dreamed of. Getting his audition number.
You see that water bottle, the blue one? Yeah, we accidentally left it there.
I hope it’s found a nice new home. See that flag, the American one? Yeah, at the time of this photo, everyone was talking about how Trump wanted to fire Mueller, which would have plunged us into a constitutional crisis.
It’s been a crazy year, hasn’t it? It felt good to be doing something proactively joyful in America that day.
America’s got talent, but it also has an entire generation of young adults who face shaky economic futures.
We still have no paid maternity leave, no paid parental leave, no subsidized daycare, no universal healthcare.
Buying a home has become increasingly out of reach for so many, particularly those saddled with student debt. The gig economy has become the economy: I know. My life has been defined by it.
Nevertheless, I was glad to see that these young adults minding the registration desk had work that day, even if it was only temporary.
They lost Leo’s paperwork. Then they found it.
Registration took about twenty minutes or so, which is probably longer than average.
He finally got his number.
He was psyched! It now sits on our refrigerator, affixed by a "Lock him up" Trump magnet.
We finally made it to the first holding room.
Anyone with an 11-year-old will know how hard I had to beg to take this photo.
All of them, really, once we’d entered the AGT holding room mecca, where having an embarrassment of a mother following you around with her Nikon was its own form of preteen torture.
I told him he’d be psyched to have these images one day. And by "one day" I mean the past three months, which have proven me prescient.
I do not know what this woman’s talent was, but I loved the way the light was hitting her beautiful head.
This was just a small corner of the giant room.
A wide shot of other contestants filling out more paperwork.
Leo spent time practicing his song, "Can’t Help Falling in Love," made famous by Elvis Presley in the film "Blue Hawaii."
About a month and a half before the audition, I bought him this new ukulele, the one with the amp input, for Hannukah.
I also signed him up for weekly lessons with Eve Silber, a guitar and ukulele teacher whose card I happened to pick up at the newly-shuttered Matt Umanov guitar store, a 53-year-old fixture in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood which has historically been the launching pad for so many musicians and bands but is increasingly becoming a high-rent shopping mall shell of its former bohemian self.
Teaching oneself an instrument is fine — and pretty easy these days, what with all of the instructional videos on YouTube — but I figured he should work with an actual ukulele teacher before a big audition.
Nearly every single contestant had their photo shot in front of the AGT sign by a friend or loved one.
My son refused, but that’s OK. I got this shot instead.
I’m happy to report there were adequate and clean restrooms.
He was still practicing and ignoring me while waiting in line to go into the next holding room.
Every line seemed longer than the last.
Here, Leo is checking to see how many people are still in front of him. That being said, AGT auditions are a highly efficient machine. The lines may be long, but they move fast.
While open calls for this round are over, AGT is still accepting video submissions until March 9, 2018.
I wish I’d had more time to shoot other contestants, like this one.
But being a mother and guardian of a young contestant in a large room where we could easily get separated from one another precluded this.
Here we are in holding room number 2.
The girl behind Leo brought her xylophone. Her mother and I chatted while waiting.
Everywhere you looked, contestants were practicing their American talents.
This man wrote his own song and wound up in the same audition room with Leo.
This was the third holding area.
After this, he went into a fourth holding area, where personal cameras were forbidden: just picture these same chairs, but in a hallway outside an audition room.
After that, my son and around twenty other contestants were lead into a large audition room, where a young woman behind a computer called up one contestant at a time to perform.
They each had 90 seconds to showcase their talent. If they went over 90 seconds, they were cut off.
After Leo’s performance, which was just under 90 seconds, all of the other contestants spontaneously rose to their feet and gave him a standing ovation. It was a beautiful moment.
Done! He’s really proud of himself here.
He’d set his mind to something and did it. Because of this, I told him, he was already a winner, whether or not he gets called back.
The whole experience lasted around five hours.
I’d bought him the uke case in Kathmandu, Nepal, where I fled after nearly dying last summer. Remembering that hideous moment made me choke up.
I’d nearly missed this milestone in my child’s life, and so many others to come. My $2314.20 monthly COBRA health insurance premiums have decimated my retirement savings, but at least I was alive to see this day.
So I’ll eat cat food in my dotage. God bless America.
In a few weeks, Leo will find out if he’s made it to the next round.
But again, whatever happens from here on in is immaterial. He now has a foundation of understanding that if you set your mind to something, you can achieve it.
At least America has still got that.
Read the original article on INSIDER. Copyright 2018.Follow INSIDER on Facebook.
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