TheBanyanTree: Queazy to India

[Tobie Shapiro]

November 9, 2000005


Dear People many People,

	I just mailed off another letter to my friend in India, and I 
reread it and thought I would share it with you all.  Again.  It's 
not what you think.  This fellow and I are not an item.  I am an item 
with no one.  I am a family with my children, but an item I am not. 
I could have disguised this letter as just another offering and left 
the references to India out, but it would belittle my friend.  So 
here it is, fresh from the press (of time and circumstance).

	Love,

	Tobie

                yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

December 9, 20000005


Dear Phiroze,

	Once again, I face the computer with freezing hands.  As you 
know, I've been reduced to turning on the heat.  A conquered woman.

	Feyna is out taking her driving test for a license.  Meyshe 
is off to school in the taxi.  I'm about to go to the pharmacy to get 
more drugs.  More drugs.  Even more drugs.  And then to the little 
grocery store for supplies.  It all sounds mundane and boringly 
normal.  That's what I'm shooting for, because, as I understand it 
from my lawyer, the divorce ought to be final as of today or even 
yesterday, but how would I know.  The finality will be celebrated by 
some lowly clerk stamping a seal onto a piece of paper, not even 
vellum, just paper.  Or it could be a couple of pixles on a computer. 
I don't know what marks moments of passage nowadays.

	The lawyer also told me that my erstwhile husband of 20 years 
is planning on getting married immediately.  "He's highly motivated," 
said he of him.  What the divorce means for me is that I'd better 
damn well find some alternate medical insurance before Cobra runs 
out.  It won't be easy.  Oh.  Did I pass over that little detail 
about David getting married?  I should have.  That makes me queazy. 
Why?  It's not like I want him.  And I don't really care if someone 
else has him.  It's a little sleazy since the bride used to be a 
close friend of mine.  Maybe that's what's bothering me.  Or maybe 
I'm just queazy with the blast of time as it screams by me.  I'm 
raising my children into adults, with some difficulty.  No time for a 
life on the side.  And, relieved from all encumbrances, my ex rolled 
out of my front door into someone else's bed and is ready to go on a 
honeymoon.  Should I rave on about life not being fair?  I'm way too 
old and wise for that.  I have my joys.  Deep joys.  It's just that 
they're not nuptial.

	I don't let it consume me.  After all, I have central 
heating, and a portable heater at my knees here in the basement where 
the central heating don't reach.  What this means is that my hands 
are still frozen, though my knees are hot.  On average, I'm 
comfortable.

	I think of you in India, celebrating your winter holiday, the 
name of which escapes me.  I could do with an alternate reality. 
Some far off colourful landscape with strange languages rattling by 
my ears, and hospitable people staring at me because I'm so weird 
looking, so foreign.  And so I am.  But I am so in my basement with 
freezing fingers and an imminent trip to the pharmacy in my future. 
Then to the grocery store for supplies.  Then home again, only to go 
out again and come home.  Then go out.  Then return.  It goes on like 
this.  It can actually go on like this forever, if it weren't for my 
noticing that the world is composed of miracles, visible and 
invisible.  I can open my eyes to them or I can hurry up and get 
cracking.  There are hills to climb, boxes to check, and it's already 
9:40.

	Be well.  Give your surroundings a good inspection for me, 
and tell me what gorgeous things you see.  It ought to be compelling.

	Love,

	Tobie
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net