TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 81

[Tobie Shapiro]

December 6, 2000000000000006


Dear Pipples,

	Today I have another divorce settlement 
conference.  This seems to go on and on forever. 
I do not look forward to being in proximity to my 
ex, AKA villainman, even though we don't see each 
other at the settlement conferences.  We're in 
separate rooms.  But I can sense him.  And there 
are always nasty surprises at these conferences. 
One more thing that I have to settle with that I 
don't want.  Less and less that I'll have to live 
on.  I hate to be counter revolutionary, but Less 
is  not more.  Less is less.

	This is another morning that I woke up 
way before my alarm, and I had to get up in the 
dark and start moving around getting my day 
started.  Just now, the sun is rising, and I see 
light outside the window.  Wish me luck.



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The problem with pork

	Dweller and I went car camping many times 
during our four years together.  We'd plan these 
trips sitting at a map of the western states, 
going over the roads and towns, camping sites and 
noting the places where the ocean met the land. 
We'd mark up the map and have an itinerary, then 
pack up the car with camping gear and be off. 
One trip, we travelled up the coast of California 
into Oregon and came back down, inland.  Oregon 
is finer than California, everything on a smaller 
scale.  The trees are smaller, the forests more 
delicate, the camp grounds more compact, the 
people less arrogant.  It's hard to explain 
regional differences, but there they are.  People 
from California marvel at the absence of taxes 
when going to a restaurant in Oregon.  People 
from Oregon marvel at the presence of enormous 
sales taxes when in California.  Oregon is a 
beautiful state, filled with trees and greenery, 
rivers, lakes and rural roads.  We took all of 
the rural roads, it seemed, and we stopped at a 
campground on a lake.

	We set up camp and in somewhat of a hurry 
because it was getting late, and we had yet to 
cook up dinner on the camp stove.  We'd brought 
an ice chest that we'd stocked with food, and the 
night's dinner was going to be country style pork 
ribs, string beans and sauteed potatoes with 
onion and tomato.  I was the camp cook, and got 
accolades from Dweller.  How can you make such 
good food in the middle of nowhere on a couple of 
burners running on sterno?  And the answer was, 
because I loved to.  I loved to cook.  Inventing 
new combinations of spices, herbs and sauces, 
figuring out new ways of preparing the same old 
ingredients.  Dweller had made me a spice chest 
with all sorts of compartments and drawers, and 
it was always full.  There wasn't a cubbyhole 
untaken.  So, on our trips, I took along a large 
case of seasonings and sauces.  There was no 
reason to have bad food just because we weren't 
at home.  Dweller set up the stove on the picnic 
table, and I seasoned the pork ribs, put them 
into the skillet to cook.  I'd brought wine to 
cook them in.  Manischewitz, unfortunately, goes 
very well with pork.

	As I cooked, the sun began to set. 
Twilight is a luminous time.  The light is just 
what Rembrandt wanted.  One quote attributed to 
him was that from thenceforward he, ". . . would 
paint at no other time".  The sunset was to our 
backs, and we turned to enjoy the show of colour 
and lights, clouds, shadows and the ubiquitous 
glow.

	I called out that dinner was ready, and 
we got our plates and sat down.  It had been a 
long day of hiking and driving, and we were 
hungry.  About ten minutes into the meal, it got 
so dark we had to fire up the Coleman lantern. 
It cast a light on our table, and cast shadows, 
too.  When we lit up the lantern, our plates were 
suddenly illuminated, and it was readily apparent 
that the pork was on the rare side.  Dweller 
opened his yap and let the piece he was chewing 
fall back onto his plate.  I swallowed mine.  He 
immediately began to fret about Trichinosis, the 
awful pork disease.  We'd heard from childhood 
that you had to cook pig meat thoroughly, 
otherwise you could contract Trichinosis, and 
Trichinosis was not something you wanted to get. 
At the time, I had no knowledge of what 
Trichinosis would do to you, just that you 
shouldn't get it.  Perhaps your blood became 
infected with colourful bacteria that sapped your 
white blood cells, or your pores began to ache. 
Maybe you could go blind from it, or lose the use 
of your tongue.  Maybe it was parasitic and for 
the rest of your life you'd have to be feeding 
little worms that lived in your gut.  But it was 
not to be taken lightly.

	For some reason, we had a great divide. 
I was not terribly concerned.  I suppose I 
trusted the butcher to have given me clean meat, 
meat without Trichinella Spiralis spores or 
spirochetes, and I was willing to leave my meat 
unfinished, but that was the limit of my worry. 
Poor Dweller was seized with terror.  He knew he 
was going to come down with the vile disease, and 
there, of course, would be no cure.  He ran up to 
the closest pay phone.  We looked up the nearest 
hospital and I called.  I asked for the advice 
line.

	"What seems to be the matter?"

	"We ate very rare pork, and want to know what to do."

	"You should always cook pork thoroughly. 
Otherwise you could get Trichinosis."

	"Yes, we're aware of that, but we already ate the rare pork."

	"You shouldn't eat rare pork."

	"I know, but we already did.  Now what do we do."

	"Most pork would be clean, but some 
isn't, and that's why you have to cook it 
completely."

	"Yes.  We know that.  It was dark.  We 
didn't see that it was rare, and we ate it."

	I don't know why the advice nurse needed 
my excuses and disclaimers, but I felt she should 
know lest I be labelled a careless chef, and both 
of us be labeled Bozos.

	"What I want to know is what we should 
do, now.  Now that we've already eaten it."

	"Now?"

	"Yes.  Now that we've eaten the rare pork."

	"You just shouldn't eat rare pork."

	"I know!"  Maybe I sounded impatient. 
Maybe I even sounded rude.  Maybe she was just 
tired of me and my rare pork problem.  Whatever 
the reason, she curtly pronounced that I should 
call my private physician and make an 
appointment.  I started to explain that we were 
away from home on a vacation, but she'd hung up.

	That avenue explored, Dweller decided to 
force himself to vomit.  He listed the things 
that might help: drink a glass of warm salt 
water; eat a few teaspoons of mustard; run on a 
full stomach.  Curious that none of these 
remedies included: stick your hand down your 
throat.  But Dweller got his medical knowledge 
from his father, and his father was a 
chiropractor.  Maybe they're built differently.

	"Where's the mustard?" he asked.  I got 
the flashlight and went through the condiments 
bag.

	"What kind?"

	"Yellow," he said.  "French's yellow mustard."

	I wasn't sure we had that, but it turned 
out Dweller had tossed it in the bag at the last 
minute.  I handed it to him.  He got out a spoon, 
squirted himself a heaping teaspoon, shoved it in 
his mouth and grimaced.  Then swallowed.  A 
shiver went up my spine.  He gave himself two 
more doses, eliciting two more grimaces.

	"Now what do you do?" I asked him. 
"Stand around and wait?  Or is this supposed to 
work immediately?"

	He wasn't sure, and decided to drink the 
warm salt water.  But where do you get warm 
water?  We hadn't put a kettle on.  It would take 
forever.  He trundled off to the camp showers to 
see if they had hot water.  He returned with a 
tall glass of lukewarm water, into which we 
poured a goodly amount of salt, then stirred it 
robustly.  He knocked it back in one awful swig, 
gave another grimace, shook his head violently 
and waited for the magic puke.  But no magic was 
afoot.  So he decided to run around the lake. 
Maybe that would bring up the offending rare pork 
that, God  only knows, we shouldn't have eaten.

	All this time, while Dweller was pursuing 
remedies, he did not express concern that I 
pursue a similar course of action.  So where was 
his husbandly love?  Or did he suspect that the 
rare pig meat would act only against him? 
Shouldn't it act doubly on me, the Jew?  I was 
touched by his concern.

	He jogged around the lake and returned to 
the campsite unvomited.  I suggested that we call 
my mother, the family medical maven.  We both 
huddled at the pay phone, and I called, collect. 
I explained the dire circumstances and asked her 
divine advice.

	"What should we do, now that we've eaten the rare pork?"

	"You shouldn't eat rare pork.  You should cook it thoroughly."

	"Yes, I  know.  But we already ate it.  Now what do we do?"

	She said, "Oh, don't worry about it. 
You're not going to get Trichinosis.  Meat is 
inspected, and besides, they can treat it.  Just 
go to bed."

	I requested that she tell Dweller, 
directly, and I put him on the line.  I watched 
as his face registered some relief, and then that 
sinking look took over.  He'd already performed 
spectacular feats to get himself to throw up, and 
all along, it wasn't even necessary?  It was 
enough to make him sick to his stomach.


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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net