TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 18

[Tobie Shapiro]

October 2, 2000000006


Dear Observers,

	Today is Yom Kippur and so I'm doing this quickly before the 
day begins.


 
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Three Lives

	My mother is actually the one, and always was the one, who 
told the best stories about my father's side of the family.  Maybe my 
father didn't remember the stories well, or didn't pay attention to 
what went on around him, but if you wanted to know who was related to 
whom and how, it was my mother you went to.  And if you wanted to 
know something about these people, she knew the stories to go with 
the names.   My mother told family stories frequently, and I'd sit 
there with my mouth hanging open, listening to the history that kept 
the family tree nourished.  Now, I have many of these stories 
memorized so that the histories go on, and these people live on. 
This is one of my favourites.  It recalls my grandpa David to me, who 
died when I was just three years old.  But I remember him well.  He'd 
put me up on his shoulders and walk me through Rock Creek Forest in 
Maryland so that I could touch the leaves of the trees.  He always 
laughed well, and when he had his heart attack and was confined to an 
oxygen tent, he encouraged us to jump on the bed, which drove my 
Grandma Lena crazy.

	My father's father was David Shapiro.  He came over from 
Lithuania by himself when he was 16, around 1890, and he spoke, "not 
one word English".  He was clear on what he wanted to accomplish in 
the new land, the goldeneh medina.  He asked around.  What was the 
most prestigious occupation you could have in the States?  Not the 
one that would make you richest, mind you, but the one that would 
give you respect, status, yiches.  He was advised that doctors were 
held in high esteem, and so he enrolled in high school, finished that 
in no time and went on to college to become a physician.  He achieved 
this in some startlingly short amount of time, especially considering 
that at the outset he knew not one word English.  And he set up shop 
as a physician (an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist, though he 
tended to all parts of the body) in New Jersey, Passaic, New Jersey, 
right across the river from New York City.

	At the time, Passaic was fairly rural, and the population was 
heavily immigrant, immigrant from everywhere but eastern Europe was 
common.  He did not send out bills when he knew the patient couldn't 
pay, and he did rise in the middle of the night to walk through snow 
to see an ailing patient or deliver a baby, because, "they need me." 
He got paid in chickens, in casseroles, in promised labor, and 
sometimes in money.  David  Shapiro was a first class character, full 
of life and obstinacy, humour and intelligence.  There are many 
stories about him.

	As this story goes, a young man from Italy, a huge peasanty 
fellow with a new bride, came to him to entrust him with his wife's 
new pregnancy.  The problem came when seven months after the 
marriage, she was delivered of a fully formed, full sized baby boy. 
The man was a peasant, but he could count all right, and it didn't 
add up.  He came to my grandfather, in a high state of excitement, 
wild and furious.  He was gonna kill his wife and the new bastard 
baby.  My grandfather thought, I am sure, about the ethical 
considerations of murdering a wife and child, whosoever it was, and 
the imperative not to bear false witness.  And he came up with a 
solution.  He clapped the man on the back and told him in an 
encouraging voice, "Well, don't worry!  Sometimes, with a big strong 
man like you, it only takes seven months."  He saved three lives.

 
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Serenade

	I had two communities as I was growing up.  These were the 
two groups I could count on no matter what.  I had friends all over 
the world because of these connections.  I belonged to two families. 
The first family was the family of Jews.  I knew if I were stranded, 
penniless and forgotten in any corner of the globe, all I'd have to 
do was go to a synagogue and my people would sustain me somehow. 
There are Jews everywhere.  Even in the farthest corners of the 
earth, we show up with our crazy habits and dense history full of 
exultation and tragedy.  There are stories about travellers winding 
up in Tibet needing to get a minyan together to say Kaddish, and 
being able to scrape up the ten requisite adult Jews for the minyan. 
So anywhere I wander, there would be shelter for me.  My family.

	The second family was the family of classical musicians.  We, 
too, are everywhere.  There is some bassoonist or violist with her 
instrument out, practicing in the jungles of Borneo, or a threesome 
needing a 'cellist for a quartet in a village in Thailand.  And if I 
have my 'cello with me, I am welcomed.  We may not be able to speak 
to each other in a common language.  We may wear different clothes 
and eat different food, but we will all sigh at the same chord 
progression in a Brahms string sextet together.  My family.

	In high school, it was these two groups that sustained me. 
the music department at  Berkeley high school was a sub culture.  We 
were all scurrying around the halls with our sheet music, coming in 
and out of practice rooms with our instruments, lining up our 
schedules of rehearsals and concerts, making our jokes about the 
music we were all practicing together, celebrating the birthdays of 
composers.  One of the biggest uproars in the history of the Yellow 
Jacket, which was the student newspaper, was when some ignorant 
savage wrote in to the paper regarding a recent school assembly in 
which the concert orchestra played a Beethoven piece, saying that 
classical music should be removed from the concert because, 
"Beethoven, Bach, Mozart: these men are dead and forgotten about." 
We wanted the guy's head.  He didn't know what he'd stepped into.

	Part of the culture of music was Mr. Haynes.  He was the 
conductor of both the Berkeley High School Orchestra and the Young 
People's Symphony Orchestra, and he also taught classes in the music 
department at Berkeley High.  On Mr. Haynes, I had a daddy crush, 
which is to say that I wanted him to be my father, not the wrong one 
I'd gotten.  And my fantasies about Mr. Haynes were all about how 
good it would be with him for a father.  So I did special things for 
him, brought a big cake to orchestra on Brahms' birthday, did extra 
work in class, said, "yes", to every musical request he made of me, 
praised him,  voted on his side every time.

	One year on Halloween, I got a group of us together for a few 
rehearsals, and we all gathered outside his house with our chairs and 
music stands and we played Christmas Carols for him.  The Haynes 
offspring came to their windows and leaned out, and Mr. and Mrs. 
Haynes stood on the front porch to listen.  We got an ovation. 
That's what family is for.

 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net