TheBanyanTree: By way of Thanks

[Tobie Shapiro]

February 2, 2000004


Dear Everyone,

	I've gotten so many words of love and offers for prayers from 
so many of my friends here.  I wish I could be more articulate, but I 
am not thinking clearly.  This is a good sign.  At least I know I'm 
not thinking clearly, so I can be pretty sure I'm not completely 
gone.  David thinks he's thinking clearly.   I've come to the 
conclusion that he's suffered a real breach in his fabric.  He can't 
keep going on the way he was going on, so dead and dull and flat and 
guarded.  In order to destroy the old fellow, he's had to do the 
awful rotary blade dance.  It's very effective in keeping others at a 
distance and it keeps you busy.  It also gets even.  It's pay back 
time for all the moments he suffered squashing himself.  (Oh, LOrd! 
All those moments I spent trying to sing him out, urge him out, learn 
who he was).

	So, maybe even though he's got an I.Q of three thousand and 
is admired world over by physicists and astrophysicists......,maybe 
he can function scientifically now, and carry on as if life were 
moving forward, but he's just not in his right mind.

	Meyshe didn't want to speak to David for a while.  Not a 
word.  He told me, "I shall give him the cold shoulder if he tries to 
talk to me."  After a week and a half of misery, there was an 
appointment we had to bring Meyshe to.  David wants to be there at 
appointments, to crush boxes in the basement, to drive kids here and 
there, but doesn't want them "to get the wrong idea" should we do 
something on a Saturday afternoon as a family (GO FIGURE!!!!!!!!!!) 
I asked Meyshe if it would be all right that Papa come along to the 
appointment (evaluation by shrink to authorize psychiatric 
intervention for recent development of perseverative paranoid thought 
patterns).  Meyshe looked up at me and said, "I guess I might like to 
meet him again."  ....as if this were some new creature that would 
have to be introduced.

	In the car on the way over, Meyshe was entirely silent. 
David parked on a busy downtown Oakland street, people rushing here 
and there.  When Meyshe got out of the car, he suddenly turned to 
David and began to shout, urgently, "HOW DARE YOU!!!  HOW DARE 
YOU!!!!  SHAME ON YOU!  YOU, A MAN OF SCIENCE!  LOOK WHAT YOU'VE 
DONE!  YOU'VE WOUNDED YOUR WIFE AND YOUR CHILDREN WHO LOVE YOU!  YOU 
HAVE AN ILLNESS IN YOUR HEART AND IN YOUR MIND!!!!  HOW COULD YOU DO 
THIS TO US!?"    People were stopping to take this in.  Then Meyshe 
got down on his knees, clenched his fists tightly in prayer and 
continued, "I BEG OF YOU, PAPA!  I BEG OF YOU!  COME HOME TO YOUR 
WIFE AND FAMILY!!!!!"

	Then he was done, got up, turned up the street and walked 
toward the building.  David looked stunned.  He whispered to me, 
"That tore my heart out."  And I said, "Gee.  That's funny.  It 
didn't tear your heart out when I said the same thing."

	I am continuing

	more later.

	Love,

	Tobie
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net