TheBanyanTree: About waiting rooms and bones, #1

[Tobie Shapiro]

April 30, 2000006


Dear immaculate contraptions,

	Last Monday was a real tie breaker.  We sit now firmly on the 
side of  tsoris (Yiddish for "troubles").  On Tuesday, I wrote a 
letter to a fellow I've been getting acquainted with over the net in 
hopes of establishing some friendship, or even, at the extreme, a 
love interest (Jdate.com, the place for Jewish singles of all ages, 
even this decrepit woman of 58).  He thinks I'm something special, 
and I keep warning him about the difference between creative product 
and the person who creates it.  The examples are numerous.

	Anyway, on Tuesday, I wrote him the following:


April 25, 20000000000000006

Dear Elliot,

	Well, yesterday was formidable.  Monday afternoons, Meyshe 
has his therapy appointment with the Doctor Relinger, a specialist in 
high end autistic spectrum disorders.  When Meyshe came to him, he 
was fixated on grim politics.  The evil Republicans (Repugnicans) 
were going to murder us in our beds.  Well, it was hard to disagree 
completely, but it was necessary to set him straight.  I make light, 
but actually, he was bordering on delusional and I feared 
schizophrenia if we didn't do something soon.  Not infrequently, 
schizophrenia takes over as the primary diagnosis with adult autists. 
He's been seeing Relinger for three years almost, and it's been very 
helpful.  We had to threaten to sue the district to get them to pay 
for the therapy, as his condition was interfering with his ability to 
attend to studies and function in the school environment.  So lawyers 
and sneaky words later, I take Meyshe every Monday afternoon to his 
appointment at 3:30.  He emerges at 4;15.  Then, we sit and wait from 
4:15 to 5:00 when the social skills group starts.  And I wait until 
6:00 when it's over.  This is Monday afternoons for me.

	But yesterday was special.  Feyna was called to jury duty and 
was off at the County Court House being triaged by the system.  She 
was scared going in.  What was she going to do if they asked her 
something she didn't know?  How would she know where to go?  What 
would they demand of her?  I could see her brain revving up with 
anxiety, and I calmed her as much as I could.  (Whoever thought that 
I would be someone to be called upon to calm anyone?  But I do it all 
the time.  It seems that I spend much of my time talking my kids down 
from ledges.)  So while Meyshe and I were doing our usual Monday 
afternoon mental ablutions, Feyna was in the Courthouse with 
instructions to call when she was done.  I would come get her, as 
this was the first day.  If they called her back, she would take 
BART.  I was ready to tell Meyshe to walk home if I wasn't in the 
waiting room when he got out of his social skills group at 6:00. 
Feyna called at 3:45, though.  I wrote a note for Meyshe telling him 
that I was off to pick up Feyna, and that he might have to wait for 
the social skills group without my company, but I would be back, 
definitely, to pick him up.  The important thing is not to panic and 
run off somewhere.  I handed the note for Meyshe to a woman who sits 
in the waiting room at the same time as I do every week.  I could 
tell you about her: she's a Chinese grandmother of a ten year old who 
attends another therapist's social skills group for elementary school 
age boys, mostly with ADHD and asperger's, NLD, oppositional 
behaviour, OCD, the whole panoply.  We used to strike up 
conversations, this grandmother and I.   I found out early on that 
she was a born again evangelical Christian.  This had changed her 
life and now she was living in a state of bliss because of Jesus.  I 
wonder at born agains.  They are so sure and so settled.  And I have 
to wonder, too, at Jesus for inspiring the strength out of this 
woman, but I shy away from anything that runs in packs, and 
evangelical Christians qualify.  Our conversations began to border on 
hints at proselytizing, and I don't want to establish that as a 
MOnday afternoon activity.  But I handed the note to her and asked 
her kindly if she would give it to Meyshe when he emerged from his 
therapy session.  She agreed, sweetly.  She's been nothing but sweet. 
And I left to get Feyna.

	I returned and it was 4:30.  Meyshe was nowhere to be seen. 
The Chinese grandmother told me that she handed him the note and he 
took it, then walked out of the waiting room.  I figured and also 
hoped that he'd just gone to take a walk and would return before 
5:00.  I opened up my book and read.  Five o'clock came and went. 
The other young men were called into the office for the group, but 
Meyshe hadn't returned.  I started imagining that Meyshe had 
misinterpreted the note and had walked home, but I couldn't quite 
believe that.  The note was so explicit.  Still, Meyshe rushes 
through things and doesn't notice basics, to say nothing of details, 
so anything was possible.  I told Relinger I'd wait for a while and 
then go home to see if he was there.  I decided that 5:15 was a good 
cut off point, and I kept my eye on my watch.  It got to be 5:15, and 
I reluctantly contemplated gathering my things.  Maybe I should try 
to call the house first.  Maybe someone would answer.  Meyshe never 
answers the phone.  Feyna will if she's on top of it and expecting a 
call.  The housekeeper, who is there to oversee Meyshe as well as do 
laundry and other household chores I can't do because of my (here it 
comes) degenerative cervical disc disease (sounds worse than it is), 
will occasionally answer the phone, but not consistently.  As I was 
contemplating this, Meyshe staggered in, covered with sweat, 
exhausted.  He'd walked all the way to campus (at least a mile) and 
had lain down on a lawn to rest, then ran back all the way.  I told 
him he was late.  His physical state, and the fact that he hadn't 
eaten anything since noon worried me.  It was a set up for his losing 
self-control.  Just add the stressors and you can almost guarantee a 
melt down.  Here are some of the stressors:  heat, crowds, hunger, 
exhaustion, time constraints, noise, unfamiliar environment, 
strangers, unfamiliar social situation.   And we had him dealing with 
crowds, hunger, exhaustion, time constraints and an unfamiliar social 
situation (arriving late to a group).  It occurred to me that he 
might have a hard time adjusting.  But he went in, and I returned to 
my book.  At 5:30, he appeared back in the waiting room, wordlessly 
moved to the door and looked like he would continue down the hallway. 
His head was down.  This was his way of sneaking past me.

	"Wait a minute, Meyshe!  Come back.  What's going on?  Why 
are you out of group so soon?  Is something wrong?"

	He shuffled back in, a frown on his face, and collapsed in 
the seat next to me.  He mumbles over words and skips completing 
them.  He is not easy to understand, especially when stressed.  I 
struggled to listen to his speech, and caught some primary elements 
of the situation.  Evidently, the group had discussed rational 
thought and emotions.  There had been talk of rational thought being 
superior to emotions.  This slapped Meyshe's world view.  He couldn't 
just listen to that as a part of a conversation where different 
people share their different ideas.  It offended his sense of balance 
in a world where emotions mean compassion, heartfulness, loyalty, 
justice and love to him, and rational thought, at its extreme (and 
extremes are what he deals with) means cold, calculated opportunism 
in a world full of need.  Right and wrong.  Good and evil.  As simple 
as that if you are Meyshe.  He had a few frustrating words with the 
therapist, and could not tolerate the equation.  If true, this made 
him inferior.  You see how this works.  And being inferior made him 
nothing.  Useless.  A mistake.  A miserable worm.

	I tried to soften the edges of the conversation, remind him 
that rational thought and emotion had to work in harmony.  That love 
is not rational, but holds the world together, saves our puny race 
from extinction.  That emotion is what makes us human, as well as 
rational thought and we can't do without either.  Suddenly he winced. 
He'd remembered that he'd left his jacket in the inner sanctum.  I 
encouraged him to go back in and try to make amends.  He could rescue 
this situation.  He went in, but appeared back in the waiting room in 
five minutes.  He'd stormed in, according to the therapist, put his 
jacket over his head, grimaced and stormed out.

	Oy.  My boy.  I told him that he was probably hungry and 
exhausted, and that it was amazing how many psychological problems 
were soluble in food and rest.  I put my book away, uncrossed my legs 
and got up to walk out.  But my leg had fallen asleep while I wasn't 
paying attention, and when I put my weight on my left foot, it 
buckled under me, twisted, and I wound up on the floor in some pain. 
Meyshe rushed for me and lifted me up, offering his shoulder as a 
crutch.  He is very protective of me.  People in the hallway asked if 
I were all right, and I answered, "More or less," surprised at how 
hard it was to put any weight on the foot.  I limped down the 
corridor to the elevators, a marvellous exit after so much travail. 
I limped out of the building and I limped to the car.  I was grateful 
for the first time that it wasn't a stick shift.  But I had to use my 
right foot to release the emergency brake.  I checked on the ankle. 
It was swollen.

	And that's what I've been doing since quarter til six last 
night, tending to my ankle, wrapping cold packs around it, avoiding 
using it, hobbling around on the crutches that Feyna was issued when 
she broke her leg at age 14.  I have discovered some things:

1)  There are a lot of stairs up to the front door.
2)  Meyshe will drop whatever is ailing him to come to the rescue of 
his mother.
3)  There are a lot of stairs inside the house, too.
4)  If I put weight on my ankle, just so, I can make my way around.
5)  If I put weight on my ankle, another way, I groan automatically. 
It's impressive!
6)  If I call my doctor after hours, I get a recording saying, "You 
have reached mail box extension one hundred......beeeeeep.
7)  There's nothing like an emergency to set the head straight.
8)  Injuries like this are worse the second day.

	And I'm sure your day has not been without lessons.  At the 
very least, get a lesson out of whatever it is.  That way, nothing is 
a total loss.

	Hobbled but dogged,

	Tobie

	And I thought that would be it.  But I was wrong.  Stay tuned for #2.

	Love,

	The hobbled one
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net