TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 84

[Tobie Shapiro]

December 9, 2000000000000000006


Dear eyes, ears and hearts,

	Today is the tenth anniversary of my 
father's death.  It seems like forever, and it 
seems like yesterday.  I cannot believe the 
relief of the last ten years, how I do not have 
to be on high alert for my safety and the safety 
of my children.  I don't have to look away when 
he enters a room.  I don't have to hate him so 
actively to keep his poison from being injected 
into my bloodstream.  And his sickness no longer 
infects the family.  We are a better group since 
his death.

	One of the things Jews do on the 
anniversary of someone's death is we light a 
thing called a Jahrzeit candle (pronounced: 
Yartsite).  It is a candle in a little glass, 
that burns for 24 hours at least, and it is just 
a memorial to the person who has died.  When my 
kids see a candle in the window, they ask, "Who 
died?" and I tell them.  We just got through 
remembering uncle Max with a candle and now my 
father.  Here's the situation: one of the things 
I decided quite thoughtfully was not to light a 
Jahrzeit candle for my father.  I haven't ever 
done so.  But now we live with my mother, and I 
know she will light one.  So I'll have to look at 
it.  I'm not looking forward to that.  My 
children know how difficult my father was for me 
and for the family.  I'm sure they'll notice the 
candle, but I know they won't say anything to my 
mother.  I am not here to convert her.  She knows 
how I feel, and we don't talk about it.  That's a 
silent agreement we have.  My father is one of 
the few things that comes between us.  It hurts.



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The Mysteries of Sport

	My mother tells me that P.E. for her was 
a nightmare.  She had flat feet, and the teachers 
made her grip marbles in her toes and walk back 
and forth across the gym floor.  She hated 
sports, and preferred reading.  Plus, physical 
efforts, the joys of exercize and exertion were 
just absent in our familial culture.  This is on 
both sides of the family.  What was emphasized 
was your brains.  You couldn't exercize your 
brain enough, or too much.  But expecting a smart 
Jewish girl to get out there and hit a ball or 
run around the track was just not right.  We 
looked down on P.E.  It was for other people.

	I was a slow runner, had short little 
legs and was always on the small side, so I 
didn't measure up to the big strong kids, nor the 
ones who were known as jocks.  They were the ones 
that you couldn't play team sports with because 
they would play for the whole team, hogging the 
ball, elbowing the weaker players out of the way, 
generally being selfish.  "MINE!" Carol Jurs 
would yell, when the ball came sailing over the 
net towards me.  And I would give it to her, just 
step back and let her have it.  First of all, it 
was better for the team, because I might fumble 
it, but also, I didn't want to hit the ball and 
create another volley.  That would just 
perpetuate the game.  My heart wasn't in it.

	Most P.E. teachers were aware that there 
were kids like us, and kids like Carol Jurs, or 
Patsy Skaggs.  And they treated us just like the 
rest, as if we had a natural inclination to run 
in circles until we were exhausted, then run some 
more, or batter a ball to other players with our 
hands, heads, or tools of the game.  When there 
was choosing up of sides, I was chosen last, and 
there could even be groaning as the unfortunate 
team realized it would be stuck with me on their 
side.  "Oh no.  We'll never win, now!"  A great 
thing to hear, and so conducive to making me like 
sports.

	I was good at Red  Rover, though.

	"Red Rover! Red Rover! Let Julie come over!"

	And Julie would run like hell, get a good 
momentum going, so she could break through the 
enemy line, all of our team holding hands 
tightly, trying to resist her force.  I was good 
at that because I had strong hands from playing 
the cello.  I could grip my neighbors' arms fast 
and prevent even the strongest of the other 
team's players from breaking through.  But of 
course, this just meant they'd try to break the 
line somewhere else.

	In the fourth grade, at Oxford elementary 
school, in Berkeley, there was a cavernous 
basement that was used for recesses when the 
weather was inclement.  White painted lines were 
put on the floor, making it possible to play 
official, full sized games of hopscotch 
basketball, four square, track.  This was also 
the grand room that all the little school 
children would go to when an air raid drill 
sounded.  We'd file on down to the cavernous room 
in the basement of the school and we'd stick our 
heads under the benches that ran the perimeter of 
the room.  All our heads protected by our locked 
fingers and a puny wooden bench above, and our 
asses facing Armageddon.

	Once, when it was raining, we all flowed 
into the basement, and I found myself corralled 
into playing four square.  That's played with a 
volley ball in a big square divided into four 
equal squares.  In each square, a player would 
stand, and the ball was bounced to other players. 
You got one bounce before you had to return the 
play.  Three good players, all fifth graders who 
had grown the horns and tails in the summer 
between fourth and fifth grade, were commanding 
the squares.  There was room for only one other 
new player.  And the rest of us stood in line 
waiting our turn to get creamed.  The fifth 
graders cooperated with each other to eliminate 
the new fourth player, unless she was one of 
their clique, in which case, they played happily 
forever, not giving each other any hard serves. 
It wasn't fair, but at least they were not, to my 
knowledge, on steroids.  When it came my turn, 
the three fifth graders actually sniggered.  The 
server slammed the ball hard into the far corner 
of my square, and I was done for.  Each time it 
came my turn, the same thing happened until the 
bell rang and released me from the torture of 
enforced exercize at recess.

	Sometimes, the P.E. teachers got too full 
of themselves.  This happened in Junior High 
School.  I was in the ninth grade, and showed up 
for P.E., ready to go down to the locker room and 
change into my disgusting and revealing P.E. 
suit: a white top and blue shorts with an elastic 
waist.  But this time, the teacher stopped us and 
informed us all that this period, we were going 
across the courtyard to the auditorium where we 
were going to take a test on basketball.  A test? 
In Phys Ed?  We were going to be required to use 
our brains?  It was dismaying.  What could we be 
asked about basketball?  We hadn't been taught 
anything about basketball.  What was this test 
for?  But at that age, we are rounded up and 
directed by the adult shepherds, and they herded 
us into the auditorium where we each chose a desk 
and were handed a test.  I remember being 
dumbfounded.  I knew none of the answers.  What 
did I know from basketball?  So I faked the 
answers.  It became a joke.  The questions were 
all about the rules of the game, the girls' 
version.  We had different rules from the boys. 
But I didn't know either set of rules.  There 
were some questions about basketball history, 
great players, who won what and who played whom. 
I forget all of the questions save one, and that 
was my favourite.

	"In the year 1891, ___________________________ invented basketball."

	I filled in the blank.  Who invented basketball?  Mr. Basket.

	We never heard about the test after the 
taking of it, and they were never corrected and 
handed back to us.  So it didn't matter. 
Generally, that's how I felt about P.E.  It 
didn't matter.  I was raised that way.  Still 
today, when I'm asked if I exercize, my routine 
answer is, "The only thing I jog is my brain."




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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net