TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 70

[Tobie Shapiro]

November 25, 2000000000000000000000000006


Dear Treed People,

	We're still recovering from Thanksgiving.  There were really 
not that many leftovers.  That is not the sign of good planning on 
our parts.  We cooked way too much.  It is a sign that our family ate 
way too much.  There were pies left over and they were divided up and 
sent home.  The yams were divided up and sent home.  The turkey was 
doled out to celebrants.  And what we're left with is dregs really. 
Not enough to make a good soup out of, even with  the carcass. 
Thanksgiving is special also for the leftovers, don't you think? 
Those turkey curries and turkey sandwiches and turkey stews and 
soups.  Well, we don't have them this year.  So shoot me.  We should 
have cooked way way way too much instead of just way too much.  Next 
year, we'll get a 30 pound turkey for ten people and see what 
happens.  My uncle Kuo and aunt Anne used to smoke turkeys in a smoke 
house when they had the turkey farm.  Old Chinese recipe.  But I 
think they sent the turkeys away when it was time for slaughter. 
They couldn't bear to do it.


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How to deprive the heart of blood

	At first, David's boys took to me.  They clearly liked me. 
They put on a show for me.  Alex and Ben tried to perform a 
levitation before my very eyes, but the two round wooden poles they 
were using for legs were pretty obvious, even with the blanket draped 
over them for disguise.  I laughed and knocked my fist on the wood, 
smiled big at them.  They smiled back, delighted and let down that I 
spotted their trick.

	Then they went back to stay with their mom.  It was fifty 
fifty then.  They'd spend three weeks with their mom, then three 
weeks with David.  Three weeks with their mom and three weeks with 
David.  It wasn't fair on the boys, really, since their mother, 
Vicki, had moved them out to Lafayette, to the east of those tunnels 
through the hills.  Out where there were very few black people, and 
the county pastime was shopping.  There were a lot of expensive 
malls.  Living half time on one side of the tunnel and half of the 
time on the other side robbed them of the ability to make permanent 
friends, be part of extra curricular groups, have some sort of life 
outside their parents.  But the way their parents wanted it was three 
weeks here, three weeks there, and there was the end to it, until 
they changed their minds.

	After the boys came back from their mom's the next time, 
David planned a dinner where I could get to know Alex and Ben better, 
and they could get to know me.  I showed up at the proper time and 
place.  David was making dinner.  He told me it was to be sturgeon 
and broccoli.  I was impressed that he knew how to cook at all.  This 
seemed like a good sign.  When everyone was seated at the table, 
David brought in the plates of food and handed them around.

	"What!?  Sturgeon and Broccoli AGAIN!?"  they whined.  I got 
my laugh out of that: the chef exposed.

	Then proceeded the contest in which Alex and Ben tried to 
embarrass Tobie.  They stood up on their chairs and hooted like apes. 
No, that didn't phase me.  I'd seen far worse than that at home. 
They tossed a playboy magazine at me.

	"Where did you find that magazine?" David interrogated them.

	"In the bushes" came the reply.

	"I'm not over fond of Playboy magazine," I told them, "but it 
doesn't scare me or outrage me.  You'll have to try something worse. 
Have anything worse?"

	Alex and Ben went through a list of offensive topics, most of 
them sexual, and my replies were always factual and dry, without a 
trace of shock.

	"Do you and dad have sex?"

	"Yes we do indeed have sex.  Yes."

	"Ooooh!  Does come get on the sheets?"

	"I don't know.  Probably, but why don't you guys go take a look."

	"What's 69?"

	"That's oral sex where both partners are in a position to 
give oral sex to the other."

	"Do you eat Dad's come?"

	"No I don't.  I don't like that at all.  And he hasn't suggested it."

	David was turning pale, and his jaw was off its hinges 
listening to all this.  A while after, when they got their subjects 
straight, they asked their father, "Dad, do you and Tobie have oral 
sex?"  He turned a crimson yes and said, "No". That was the reaction 
they were looking for in me.  But at this dinner, they got no 
satisfaction.  I was not ruffled.  Finally, they collapsed in their 
chairs, beaten, exhausted of their repertoire.

	"Doesn't 	ANYTHING embarrass you?"

	And I said to the two of them, with a smile on my face, "Why 
should I be embarrassed if YOU make fools of yourselves?"

	They cleared their places and went scuttling off to their 
rooms to do homework, or sulk, or both.  Some major test had been 
passed.  I was now officially formidable, and also playful.  We 
developed a bond.  But that didn't sit well with their mom.  Soon Ben 
was bringing us his questions.

	"Is it all right to love both Tobie and Mom?"

	"Of course it is.  There's no such thing as too much love."

	"But Mom doesn't seem to think so."

	I told him that there was always enough love to go around, 
that love is not a finite quantity, and that chances are, the more 
you love, the more love you have to give.

	"Mom doesn't think so.  She says I can't love you and her at 
the same time.  That if I love you, then I must not love her, and if 
I don't love her, then she doesn't love me."

	What do you do with information like that?  You don't want to 
contradict his mother, but you also don't want to scar the kid for 
life.  "Well, honey, then that has to be your mother's problem."

	"But she's making it my problem."  And who could argue with that?

	After disruptions stemming from the three weeks/three weeks 
plan, when both Alex and Ben were short on friends and couldn't be in 
clubs or after school classes, Vicki and David wanted the custody 
arrangements changed from three weeks here, three weeks there, to 
weekdays there, every other weekend here.

	The divorce and custody wars went on endlessly, with the two 
boys being tugged in either direction, until finally Alex came to us, 
nervously, and told us he had something to say.  He started 
hesitatingly.  Finally, he said, "I want to live with you and Tobie." 
This brought big troubles.  Vicki locked him in his room and took the 
phone away from him.  She put in word at the school that David was 
not to be allowed to see Alex, as she was the custodial parent (an 
untruth), and she feared kidnapping.  Poor Alex was put through the 
wringer.  Finally, there was a custody hearing.  He hadn't seen or 
spoken with his father or me for two weeks, because of his mother's 
interventions.  He was confused and desperate, but unwilling to rat 
on his mother.  The evaluator ruled in favor of his staying with his 
mother.  Then the saddest scene took place.  Vicki stuffed Alex into 
the back seat of her car, while he cried pitiably, "I don't want to 
go.  I want to go with Dad and Tobie.  Please, Mom.  Please."  How 
could she just push him in and fold his legs into the back seat, tell 
him to put on his seat belt and drive off?  I still wonder how she 
could do that.

	 And the next time when Alex and Ben visited, the behaviour 
became alarming.  Before the ride back to their mother's house, Alex 
would get a fever, shake all over, cry, vomit.  It was pathetic to 
stand by and watch this.  I couldn't bear to watch this suffering and 
not do anything.  I suppose this came from my not having been rescued 
as a child, or maybe it was the sheer inhumanity of the situation. 
Just the inhumanity broke my heart.  I discussed this whole issue 
with the lawyer.  The lawyer told me that Alex, at fourteen, could 
essentially be wherever he wanted to be.  That the court may have 
said that Alex was to stay with his mother, but that David couldn't 
break his arms and legs to get him in the car.  It was Alex's call. 
He just had to assert himself.

	That is a very difficult thing for a fourteen year old to do, 
especially when his mother was likely to view this as traitorous, and 
withdraw her love from him.  He was weary of being compared to Ben 
who was the good boy who loved his mother and now hated Tobie. 
Everything had been poisoned as an issue of loyalty.  If you liked 
cats, that was our family.  Dogs, it was their family.  Culture and 
classical music was our family, country and rock and roll was theirs. 
It was all divided up.  The kids couldn't move an inch without 
betraying someone.  I saw the damage in both kids.  They were both 
having their souls beat up, dragged around and punished for a natural 
inclination to love those people who showed them love.

	The next time Alex was faced with having to go back to his 
mother's house, he broke out into a sweat, wept, shivered, threw up, 
claimed he was dizzy and about to faint.  I went to him in his room 
and broke a rule.  I told him what the lawyer had told me.

	"Honey, you're fourteen.  You can be where you want to be. 
And David may be under orders to bring you back to your mom's but he 
can't break your arms and legs to get you in the car."

	A few minutes later, David came in to take Alex back to 
Lafayette.  Alex looked up and said, "You'll have to break both my 
arms and legs to get me in the car."

	This is how he began to stay with us.  And when, after the 
twins where six months old, Vicki walked off to Chicago to be with 
one of David's colleagues, Ben, too wound up full time with us.

	I have been through custody battles and watched the ugly side 
of divorces.  I do not recommend it.  For everyone involved, all the 
players, it has to take years off your life, and deprive the heart of 
blood.


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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net