TheBanyanTree: They go camping. I don't.

[Tobie Shapiro]

May 12, 2000000003

Dear Happy Campers,

	I found this lurking in my big binder (mentioned the other 
day).  The occasion was the first day in years that I was alone in my 
own house.  I mean to say that every hour of every day, I am not 
alone.  I am on Mom duty.   The times that David takes the kids 
someplace for a couple hours, leaving me at home to hyperventilate as 
I recover from "total immersion Mothering", are so far and few that I 
am always unrested.  There is no rhythm of rest in my life, and it 
takes its toll.  But the weekend in question, David drove off with 
Meyshe and Feyna to go camping with the older half siblings, the two 
boys I raised and who are off on their own, charging and cowering 
before life's many mountains.  It is hard for me to believe that the 
16 year old twins with their combination of astounding gifts and 
calamitous impairments will ever be out there looking ahead for 
themselves, hell, even just taking their own medication without me.

	I tell myself it will come.  That love, intelligence, 
duration, stubbornness, awareness, and more love will save lives. 
Mine and theirs.


Saturday, Shabbos, April 5, 2003

	Today, while trying to put myself through detox, I got a call 
from the intoxicants.  Some ridiculous dispute was going on among the 
jolly campers.  The four offspring of my fecund husband were spatting 
over who got to do what.

	The Nygren elders were calling the Shapiro-Nygren youngers 
such names as, "selfish".

	They were, when explanations were unravelled over the phone, 
"selfish", because the youngers did not want to do what the olders 
wanted to do, and also insolently insisted on voicing their younger 
desires.

	Interesting definition of selfish.

	By the time the phone call was made, Feyna wanted to come 
home, Meyshe was destabilized, and David was worried about the cost 
of the pay phone (one of those rip-off captive audience jobs that 
charges six hot chops a minute.   Further, according to Feyna, one of 
the elders didn't want her to call me for advice, because I would 
just, "be on Feyna's side."  Later, I discovered that the particular 
elder who had uttered this was David, my husband.

	How very many people there are for me to raise!

	And while all these babies were squeezing their tears of 
disappointment, loss and outrage, David was stuck trying to 
accommodate everyone,  having not enough juice to flip the switch, 
and not enough tools in his little tool chest.  Poor dear.  "Which 
way should I bend?  Quick!  Promise everyone everything!!"

	The phone call was disturbing, and more or less a pain in the 
tuchas, at least I got to talk to Feyna.  And when I hung up, and sat 
back down, reclined slightly, like a Passover celebrant reminding 
herself what freedom tastes like, I couldn't help but enjoy the image 
of all that shit and drama hitting some distant, unseen fan, someone 
else's fan for a change.

	"They'll probably live", I told myself, and rewound the movie 
a bit, to make sure I hadn't missed one boring minute of it.


Love,

Tobie
at present, not reclining
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net