TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 74

[Tobie Shapiro]

November 29, 2000000000006


Dear friends,

	So many of you wrote to me to tell me just what they thought 
of villainman, the bicycle thief.  I thank you all for your empathy, 
but I must stop short of much of the torture some of you suggested. 
(Can you really DO that to someone's balls?)  Anyway, I wrote to my 
lawyer about it, and he wrote a swift and burning letter to 
villainman's lawyer.  The least that will happen is nothing, but 
there's a good chance he'll have to buy them new bikes with all the 
trimmings they put on them, bells, whistles, front wheel suspensions, 
etc.  I'm still shaking my head.  How could he do that?


                                 vvv^^^vvv^^^vvv^^^vvv^^^vvv^^^vvv^^^vvv^^^vvv


Happi Coat

	My great uncle Max was working for Pan American Airways as a 
mechanic when he was in his forties.  He was stationed on Guam with 
his wife, Ethel, during all the preamble to World War Two.  A few 
weeks prior to the United States' entry into the war, Pan American 
sent word to the outpost on Guam that things were heating up in the 
Pacific theater, and they should send all the women and children 
home.  So Ethel returned to San Francisco leaving Max on Guam.

	Max was a Brodofky.  That's my mother's mother's family.  The 
Brodfskys came with a number of built in traits.  They were worriers, 
and that's the first trait.  Woe is to him or her who carries the 
Brodofsky worrying gene.  I used to say that back in the old country, 
which was Lithuania,  the Brodofskys used to hire themselves out as 
surrogate worriers, since they were going to worry anyway, and why 
not make a living at it.  Another famed trait of the Brodofskys was 
that the men were all terribly devoted to their wives.  They doted on 
them, waited on them, adored them conspicuously.  This was very true 
of Max.  Ethel was loved prodigiously, reverently, completely.

	The day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the Japanese 
captured Guam.  Many of the Pan American employees ran off into the 
jungle to hide, but eventually they were all ferreted out and the 
whole lot of them were shipped off as civilian prisoners of war to a 
detention camp outside of Kobe, Japan.  That is where Max spent the 
entirety of World War Two, holed up with his fellow employees, 
starved to the bone, living on heavily censored letters from Ethel, 
and friends and relatives Stateside.  When they were bored, they 
fashioned mock engines out of scrap metal they melted down in a forge 
they built in the camp.  The guards tormented the prisoners with 
false news.

	"We bombed San Francisco."

	"You did?"

	"Yes, and we bombed San Diego, too."

	"But did you bomb the naval base in Denver?"

	"Yes, we bombed that, as well."

	For the whole war, Max was a prisoner, and when he returned 
after the war, he was emaciated, beaten, heartbroken and demoralized. 
But Ethel nursed him to health.  Fed him, loved him, listened to him. 
He regained his weight and then some.  They resumed their lives. 
Then in 1958, Ethel was stricken with bone cancer.  It ate her up 
from the inside out.  There was nothing anyone could do.  She died in 
1959, and Max was plunged into despair.

	After her death, he took on a challenge.  He returned to 
Japan on a mission.  He kept a diary, and in it, he told of his 
purpose in returning to the country that held him captive for four 
years.  He returned to rid himself of his hatred of the Japanese.  He 
couldn't tolerate the hatred in himself.  In his diary, on his return 
trip, he wrote that his mission had been successful.  That was the 
first of many trips to Japan.

	When I was thirteen, he returned from one of his trips with a 
gift for me.  It was a silk brocade, "Happi Coat", like a short 
Kimono, reversible.  On one side, it was a golden beige with floral 
patterns, and on the other side, it was a copper colour with white 
geometric patterns.  All hand made, utterly luxurious, and obviously 
precious.  I remember feeling unworthy of it.  How could I, a 
loathsome awkward teenager, filled with self hatred, possibly wear 
such a valuable, beautiful article of clothing?  I hung it in my 
closet, where it remained until I was in my twenties.  During my 
clothes horse years, I used to don that Happi Coat as one important 
layer in the many layered embroidered Asian robes that I wore on 
festive occasions.  I wore it once to a family gathering at my 
grandparents' house in San Francisco, and my great uncle Max, of 
course, was there.  He saw me wearing the Happi Coat and smiled.

	"Oh!  So you DO like it!  I thought you didn't like it, 
because you never wore it."

	"Oh no.  I've always loved it.  But I felt unworthy of it. 
It's my favourite of all favourites."

	I took Max's Happi coat with me to New York on one of my 
music business trips.  I stayed with the sister of a friend, who 
lived in Soho in a loft.  It was a divided up warehouse.  Debbie 
Bloom and her paramour, Chaz, lived there.  I unpacked and hung up 
the coat in the front closet.  The night before I returned home to 
Berkeley, I was talking about the history of the Happi Coat that was 
hanging in the front closet.  I brought them both to look at it.  I 
riffled through the clothing that was hanging on the rack, but I 
couldn't find the coat.  Alarmed, thinking it missing, I went through 
the clothing again, one at a time, carefully.  I came across it, but 
saw why I had passed over it the first time.  It looked black.  I 
checked the lighting, looked around me for some explanation. 
Everything else appeared normal.  It was just the Happi Coat that was 
black.  I examined it.  The side facing out was the beige side.  I 
removed the coat from the rack and held it up.  It was black.

	"What colour is this?" I asked.

	"It's creamy," they said.  "Light tan with flowers."

	"It doesn't look black to you?"

	"No.  Are you putting us on?"

	"No.  It's black.  It's not black, but it looks black to me."

	I replaced the coat into the closet and wrote it off to my 
weird life.  What you see may not be what you see.  Always doubt your 
own eyes.  Then doubt them again.  An hour later, I checked on it and 
it was beige again.  It must have been the lighting.  There had to be 
some explanation.

	The next day, my mother picked me up at the airport.  I was 
wearing the Happi Coat.  My mother sighed deeply, shrugged, and said, 
"I suppose I should tell you that Uncle Max died last night."

	"When?" I asked.  She told me.  He had died at the precise 
time I was showing the Happi Coat to Debbie and Chaz.  What you see 
may not be what you see.  Always doubt your own eyes.  Then doubt 
them again.


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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net