TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 25

[Tobie Shapiro]

October 10, 2000000000006


Dear Ears, Eyes and Hearts,

	Last night I got a call from the man who owns the house we're 
supposed to rent.  We have a move out date of Monday the 16th.  The 
movers are ready.  I'm weeding through stuff, tossing out monumental 
piles to Goodwill, boxing books, making phone calls.  The owner of 
the house told me that, surprise, surprise, they got an offer on the 
house, and accepted the offer.  There is no house to rent.

	Okay.  This leaves us with a move out date and no where to 
go.  I put a tearful call through to my lawyer and got his answering 
machine.  I told him I didn't know what to do.  Now I have to undo 
all those phone calls I made to the phone company and my isp, the 
veterinarian, yiye.  I am dumbfounded.  Where will we go?  I suppose 
they can't just kick us out on the street, can they?  Maybe it's just 
back to looking desperately for a place again while getting in the 
way of the people fixing the house up for sale.  This is tough.

	Here is something else.



 
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What Makes It So Much Better

	Around the time that I was hooking up with Harry Lum, my 
diminutive Chinese artist, my brother was in his senior year at high 
school with his first girlfriend, Nell, yes, Nell.  Daniel had never 
had a girlfriend at all before then, and I can't figure out why, 
because he's such a dynamic, brilliant and interesting male with many 
unusual sensitivities and communication skills to recommend him.  He 
was Nell's first boyfriend, too, so they were practicing on each 
other:  the first holding hands, the first kiss, the first argument, 
the first lovemaking, the first break up.

	That first summer with Harry, he was packing up to move to 
San Diego to teach at Grossmont College in El Cajon.  He had tired of 
giving classes at the Richmond Art Center, and the University 
Extension was not steady work and didn't pay well.  There were some 
politics involved in his move, too.  The full time teaching job was 
where he needed to go, and so we were busy sorting out his things.  I 
remember being in his garage and seeing a poem hanging on the wall, 
impaled on a nail.  Harry ripped it off its nail and was going to 
toss it into the growing garbage heap.  I rescued it swiftly.  I 
actually snatched it out of his hands, and read it.  It was good.  I 
went off and set it to music.

	It's Spring again, the sappy time of the year
	And here I am again.
	Though I know, only too well, that I'm not a man for all seasons,
	Still if I had my rathers, I'd choose Spring.
	Though I know that what in the wisdom of Winter is folly
	Is now in the folly of Spring, it's wisdom.

	Daniel and I were close, and so Daniel brought Nell by 
Harry's house to visit, visit a real artist in his artist's house 
with his artist's girlfriend, the artist, who is his sister.  Harry 
was a fine host and went to the cupboard to offer his guests 
something to drink and eat.  Harry introduced me to things cultural, 
many gastronomic discoveries.  There were the authentic Chinese meals 
which he would order at down home Chinese restaurants from the 
Chinese menu.  There was jelled consomme with sour cream and caviar. 
There was the seltzer with Italian soda syrups.  He made orgeata 
(almond) sodas for Nell and Daniel.  There was gourmet coffee, fresh 
beans roasted one at a time and placed lovingly into a climate 
controlled room before being ground up by a mill grinder and put in a 
press pot.  There were so many things he knew about.  I was taking it 
all down and letting it all in.  But Nell and Daniel wanted 
ice-cream.  So Harry brought out a tub of Baskin Robbins, 31 flavours 
ice-cream, and dished out a couple scoops each for them.  Nell tasted 
the ice-cream and raved about it.

	"How come this ice-cream is so much better than what we get 
at the Safeway?" she asked.

	"More artificial flavouring," he said with authority.

 
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Strategy in Latin Class

	Almost always, I did my Latin homework in 10th grade, and one 
time, I didn't.  That was only under the direst of circumstances.  I 
actually liked Latin; it had syntax that was the root of our syntax 
and I always liked looking at sentence structure.  Yes, charting 
those sentences with their participial dependent clauses, and all the 
hosts of gerunds scattered on the battlefield pleased my insides no 
end.  I had trouble with the vocabulary, was always looking up words, 
but basically, I enjoyed studying Latin, and to this day I think it 
was one of the most broadly useful subjects I ever studied.

	Miss Jogo was the Latin teacher at Berkeley High School.  She 
was a proper woman, the stereotypical reference librarian.  She wore 
suits with well chosen blouses  with  A-line skirts and prim jackets. 
There was always a pin on her lapel.  She had black rimmed glasses 
and her hair was done like an ionic column.  The day I hadn't done my 
homework, I was petrified that Jogo would call on me.  Then I'd have 
to explain the home life crisis that had occurred the night before 
and prevented me from doing my homework.  Right in front of the 
class.  There was no excuse for being ill prepared but the extreme, 
and this had been extreme.  I had to come up with a plan that would 
keep her from calling on me when the time came in class that she 
would be pointing at us for answers and contributions.  I needed 
about ten minutes worth of a plan.  This is what I did.

	I opened up my three ring binder that had all my Latin 
homework in it, and I opened up the rings.  Then I busied myself 
transferring papers from one side to the other.  On the papers I'd 
transferred, then, I wrote furiously, as if taking extensive and 
intense notes.  I kept looking up at Miss Jogo so that she knew I was 
listening, and then I'd return to the pages of the binder for more 
transferring and furious note taking.  Little by little, I worked the 
binder toward the edge of my desk, until there were just a few 
minutes left of class.  Then, and I had to make it look unplanned, 
the binder with the rings open and loose papers stacked on it fell 
over the edge of my desk.   I looked terribly embarrassed, got down 
on the floor and put all the mess back in order and into the binder 
again.  The bell rang.

	It worked.  Or at least I thought it worked.  It could have 
been that Miss Jogo knew from the moment I opened my binder on my 
desk, exactly what my nefarious purpose was, and that she took pity 
on me.  I was a good student and got As and B plusses.  I was hard 
working.  And that day I was pathetic.  Maybe there was something in 
me that sang to her heart and set her ionic columns buzzing sweetly.

 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net