TheBanyanTree: Balabosta

[Tobie Shapiro]

August 15, 2000000003


  a little glossary:

balabosta = supreme homemaker (beds made, preserves put up, house 
cleaned spotless, shining, kids educated, curtains made, meals 
prepared, guests coddled, husband doted on, all before 7:00 a.m. 
This does not get attached to prissiness, as one might think.  These 
are strong capable whirlwinds of women.

koshered = set up and ritually cleansed and blessed for adhering to 
the laws of kashruth according to orthodox Jewish custom

Litvak = Jews of Lithuania, and the Polish/Russian/Lithuanian border 
called the pale of settlement.



Baruch Hashem,

	Like two terriers, Meyshe and I leap through our Hebrew 
lessons with the very lovely and knowledgeable apparition, Julie 
Batz.  Here is a lady with a charmed aura, a glow about her.

	Every once in a while, a person drops into my life, like the 
divine hand has invented a new blessing.  And, there will be an 
entity with a benignly mesmerizing presence, like a kiss on my life. 
Whatever turmoil is roiling within her, externally, a corona of calm 
affects everyone around her.  This floats about her like some sort of 
invisible light, and it commands a respect, a gentleness that most 
people are in too much of an hysterical drive to bother with.  An 
awareness of both the enormity and unimportance of our existence is 
not usually housed in single individuals, certainly not at the same 
time.  But I do think that it's present and humming in every human 
being who possesses a curious deep soul, a sort of elevated, sacred 
intelligence.

	People like Julie are what make moments precious; they give 
pleasure to us merely by being, and they make the contemplation of 
matter and void bearable.  Yet, here she is, with her eight year old 
daughter, Sasha, newly moved into a new magical bungalow (a house 
I've walked past and wondered about a thousand times) because she and 
her husband are separating.

	There is no end to wonder.  No end to misery.  No end to the 
complications of the he and the she, the love and the death of love. 
A wound, a healing, a prayer, a curse.  All in one set of two hundred 
bones and skin.

	Alle meyne kleyne bendelech
	all my little bones

	In the elfin cottage of Julie Batz and her eight year old 
daughter, to be shared, Sasha, nearly everything was put away less 
than a week after they moved in.  There were only a few boxes, 
stacked neatly in the living room, and they didn't take up too much 
space or attention.  Pictures were hung, tables and counters cleared 
off;  a vase with flowers sat, in a stately pose, in the exact center 
of the dining table.  The kitchen, an odd disjointed one, that would 
drive me to eye rolling insanity, was all organized, shelves set up, 
glass vacuum cannisters all the same size, filled with staples: rice, 
beans, pasta, lentils, couscous, barley, oats.  There were no crumbs 
anywhere.  The kitchen had already been koshered.  On a shelf under a 
window, four tiny forcing pots were filled with clear water, and 
smiling pansies placed in each one, all four facing us in the 
kitchen, who looked out over them into the green back yard.  She 
explained what will be planted where:  the herbs, the greens, the 
flowers and fruit, where the potted foliage would go, where the play 
area for Sasha.

	Imagine growing up in such order?

	Upstairs, the ceilings are low and dormer windows poke out to 
a view of the sky.  There is where the grown up tall people will 
stand if they wish to age gracefully.  The rest of us, the Pooh 
people, can scuttle about anywhere.

	Pictures hung on the bedroom walls.  Books were set in 
shelves, alined neatly.  The hall bathroom was spotless, probably not 
because it hadn't been used yet, but because Julie knows what to do 
with sponges, rags, scrubbers and cleanser.

	A quilt for her bed, a quilt for Sasha's bed.  The soft wood 
floors were polished to a shine that would send a bug skating.  A 
breeze floated in Sasha's dormer window, crossed the hallway, 
brushing our cheeks affectionately and then wafted out Julie's dormer 
window.

	"You're a balabosta!" I said, in a sort of gleeful amazement.

	"I get it from my grandmother.  She was German."  She smiled 
back, and blushed.

	So that's it!  We Litvaks are doomed to house and feed our 
hooked beaks snapped between the pages of huge unwieldy tomes --  our 
hair a fright, our brains seething.  Studying, frenzied, wringing out 
our tortured lives like rags, our sweet souls pondering the 
ineffables, all our zealously adored ineffables, into the wee 
bleeding hours of the morning, while the house and all its potential 
decor falls to shit.


Tobie
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net