TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 54

[Tobie Shapiro]

November 9, 200006


Dear Folks,

	I shall say nothing about the elections 
in the U.S.  There.  I said nothing.  I'm 
tempted, but I won't.  Last night I dreampt that 
my cat got out and ran off into the woods where 
there were all sorts of wild animals.  It was my 
father who let her out.  He used to do things 
like that with my cats.  It was hard for me not 
to think he did it on purpose.  But it's possible 
that he was just absent and clueless.  Still, he 
enjoyed the trauma I went through when he pulled 
stuff off like that.  You may have gathered that 
my father was a major negative figure in my life. 
And my mother is the angel of light.  It's not as 
simple as that, of course, but if you were in any 
frame of mind to boil things down, that's how 
you'd have to boil them.  That would be boiling a 
long time until you had just the last bits of 
essence left in the bottom of the pot.

	Do you get any sense of cohesion to my 
life from all of this scattered unsequential 
telling?

	Another unsequential telling.


                          ŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸ

Playing on a Cheesebox

	The first cello I owned was made of 
plywood.  It was one of those execrable 
instruments stamped from a form and glued 
together with enough spit and Elmer's to make a 
go of it.  We were not rich and it didn't make 
sense spending much more than this for a young 
hopeful musician who might stick with it, and 
might just give up and watch television instead. 
But by the time I'd been playing for five years, 
and had joined orchestras, played chamber music 
and lived and breathed classical music for all of 
those years, it seemed like a good idea to buy me 
something a bit more serious.  Not a 
Stradivarius, not thousands and thousands, but 
just something more serviceable than shit.  My 
teacher recommended it.  She said only I could 
get a good sound out of the cello I had, and 
there was just so much even I could do.  She was 
fond of me, and knew my talent.  I was ecstatic. 
I couldn't wait to play on a real instrument.

	The idea came up at the dinner table and 
my mother thought it a good one.  Keep our eyes 
out for a good cello.  Maybe my teacher would 
come across one.  She had her finger on the 
pulse.  There was a hitch in the plan, though. 
My father gave a speech arguing that there was no 
such thing as a good instrument or a bad one.  If 
you were a good musician you could play well on a 
cheese box.  Of course, it wasn't the case that 
he actually believed this.  He played on his 17th 
century violin made by an Italian violin maker 
named Amatius Albanis.  He was not about to throw 
his violin into a dumpster and go off to get a 
cheese box, even if it were from a big wheel of 
high class brie.  With the facts so obvious, it 
was wretched having to present arguments to the 
contrary.  But it didn't matter, because there 
were no arguments that made any difference.  It 
wasn't just idle conversation either.  The fact 
that there were no good or bad instruments meant 
that he was vetoing my getting a good cello.

	"Why would he do this?" I asked my 
mother, in tears.  "I need a new cello.  The one 
I'm playing is terrible."

	She told me not to worry.  We would win 
him over.  This just sounded hopeless.  How could 
you win over a crazy person on a mission?  What 
was the mission, anyway?  To further my 
burgeoning career as a cellist?  To stop me in my 
tracks?  To amuse himself at my expense?  I 
pondered all that and worse while the debate flew 
around our heads, and a new cello was impossible 
until there was agreement.  The reasons for no 
new cello also changed occasionally.  While it 
was supposed to be true that there was no such 
thing as a good cello or a bad cello, it was also 
true that we could not waste that money.  A few 
hundred dollars was a huge investment, and we 
didn't have the money to spare.  We had to have a 
set of priorities.  And to demonstrate to me what 
the priorities were, my father went out and 
bought himself a new car.  Just walked into the 
showroom and bought whatever colour they had.  He 
showed off his new car to the family, and I 
stewed in resentment.  Then he went off and 
bought my mother an electric meat slicer, a 
machine that could cut salami so thin you could 
see through it, a machine she didn't even want, 
and told him so.  But, this was the best machine 
on the market, and he spouted that to the family. 
So there was such a thing as a good meat slicer, 
just not a good cello.

	The veto went on for two years, and 
several times, my teacher, Ruth Saphir, said 
she'd found a cello for me.  And several times I 
had to tell her that we couldn't buy it.  "Why 
not?" she asked me.  And I didn't know what to 
say.  What reason was I to give without giving 
away an ugly family secret?

	My father had a couple of birthdays 
during this time.  For the second birthday, I 
went out and got a cheese box.  A real one.  And 
I fashioned a musical instrument out of it.  Sort 
of like a violin.  Sort of like a harp.  The 
strings were rubber bands.  I presented it to 
him, but he didn't seem to get the joke.  He just 
said thank you, and set it aside.  How 
unsatisfying.  Sarcasm like that deserves an 
answer.

	Finally, after the second year of this 
nonsense, my mother relented and ditched the plan 
to convince my father.  We went forth and got me 
a cello.  I brought it home and practiced with 
renewed interest.  My father complimented me on 
the new cello, and said that he always knew I had 
it in me.  I deserved to be playing on a better 
instrument than the one I'd had.  He was glad to 
do it for me.

	Where was my gratitude?

                          ŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸ
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net