TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 100

[Tobie Shapiro]

December 25, 2000000000006


Dear Happy Mediums,

	Today is Christmas.  Things ought to calm 
down a bit after today.  Then there will be the 
work up to the big new year's eve celebrations. 
I've never gotten much out of new year's eve.  I 
can't get worked up over the ball falling in 
Time's Square, three hours earlier, but broadcast 
every hour for repeated new year's eve 
countdowns.  I usually go to bed whenever I 
usually go to bed, and sleep through it, unless 
some fire cracker wakes me up at midnight.  Oh, I 
know, "Bah, humbug!".  There is a little bit of 
the curmudgeon in me.  But that disappears when 
anything is involved with my children, or playing 
chamber music, or reading good literature, or 
listening to classical music, or global ethnic 
music, or, or, or.  There are a million "or"s. 
We all have our points of ecstasy.  Mine are 
numerous.  But they aren't the new year's eve 
ball dropping in Time's Square.  Anyway, today is 
Christmas.  So Merry Christmas to all you who 
celebrate it.  May today be a blessing for you 
and yours.



 
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Let Us Start at the End


	At nine o'clock, the telephone rang.  I 
heard it from my position between my twins.  This 
was the last phase of our bed time ritual.  They 
were nine years old, and shared an alcove down 
the hall from David's and my bedroom.  Every 
night, I put them to bed in the same way.  First, 
we would get them into their pajamas, which 
consisted of an oversized t-shirt that came down 
to their knees.  Then we'd play a game in the 
dark.  One of our favourites was, "Invention". 
One person would call out the name of an 
invention and the other two would have to 
simulate it with their bodies.  For a 
refrigerator, one might form a cavity, and the 
other might be the door.  For a chair, one might 
be the cushion and front legs, and the other 
might be the back and the back legs.  We did 
cars, telephones, beds, howdahs, doors, 
televisions.  It was a good game.  We also 
played, "Find mama in the dark," and, "tag in the 
dark".  After the game, they would climb into 
their beds which were futons on the floor set 
apart by about a foot.  I would seat myself at 
their heads between them, and stroke Feyna's hair 
on my right and Meyshe's hair on my left while I 
sang to them.  I sang all the songs my grandma 
sang to me when I was a child.  Just exactly as 
she had sung them.  This is what I was doing when 
the telephone rang downstairs.  I prayed it 
wasn't for me.

	But soon, I heard David shuffling up the 
stairs.  He came up into the alcove and he handed 
me the phone.  "It's your mother.  She sounds 
upset."

	I rose from my place between them and 
took the phone around the corner.  I could feel 
Meyshe and Feyna listening.

	"I think this is it," she said, her voice 
jumping.  I'd never heard my mother sound like 
this.  She was usually so calm, so steady, 
someone to rely on for any emergency, slow or 
fast.  Now, her voice was leaping high, then 
whispering, then low.  There was panic in it. 
And she sounded almost as if she were going to 
cry, which never happened.  My mother just 
doesn't cry.  How she managed the stoicism while 
we were growing up is beyond anyone's ken.  She 
had a house full of children, all strong willed 
and hyperactive, and one of her children was her 
husband whose behaviour was often designed to 
cause the maximum torment to all those around 
him.  He was jealous and competitive, scheming, 
selfish, manipulative, argumentative, bellicose, 
sexually twisted, given to tantrums and sudden 
outbursts.  How could she not have thrown up her 
hands and surrendered her soul to agony?

	"What happened?"

	"We were out.  Justin was playing chamber 
music, and I told him we should go home early 
because he said he didn't feel well.  I should 
have made him go home.  It's my fault.  He was 
playing and then suddenly he said, "Mickey, I 
can't," and fell over on his back.  The 
paramedics are working on him now.  I think this 
is it."

	"Mom.  Calm down.  It's probably not it."

	"Why?"

	"I just don't feel like this is it."

	"You don't?"  I could tell she was 
thinking of me as a seer, someone with an angle 
on the future.  Someone magic who could make it 
all go away.

	I agreed to leave the house and meet her 
at Alta Bates Hospital emergency room.  That's 
where they were taking him.  On my way there, I 
thought of the warnings I'd gotten from so many 
people:

	"Watch out for the death of the parent 
you have conflicts with.  It'll floor you."

	So, I was ready to be floored.  I didn't 
have such a simple thing as conflicts with my 
father.  I had gaping chasms.  He was insane, a 
narcissistic sadist with no boundaries.  He made 
toys of the people around him and used his 
children like they were his laboratory rats.  I 
had been his target, the chosen one.  I endured 
the sexual abuse, the psychological torture.  He 
ruled the house.  The one who behaves the worst 
writes all the rules.

	Why did he choose me?

	When I arrived at the hospital, I was 
floored by all the other people waiting. 
Sitting.  Idle.  Watching the television.  They 
were lame and halt, sad and antsy. No one had 
anywhere to go but here in the hospital.  Waiting.

	We were put in an isolated room, off of 
the main waiting room.  And we sat there, not 
talking.  My mother remained motionless.  She sat 
in her chair about to be given a sentence.  The 
doctor would come in eventually, and give us the 
story.

	How do I fix my mother?  How do I pull 
her pieces together?  What can I do to stitch her 
seams to keep  her whole?  I'd done this all my 
life, through the awful fighting with my father. 
From morning to night, they fought.  He baited 
her.  She bit.  Through the abuse that she would 
refuse to see, through her depressions, through 
the anguish of her marriage.  And here it was. 
Maybe this was it.

	The doctor came in finally and began, 
"Let us start at the end.  He has died."

	My mother didn't cry.  She didn't stir. 
Her face registered no surprise; her body did not 
receive a blow and recoil from it.

	What I felt was relief.  Only relief.



 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net