TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 26

[Tobie Shapiro]

October 11, 200000006


Dear One and All,

	So, the lawyer told me that regardless of the emergency, the 
sudden snatching away of the rental we had lined up, we had to vacate 
this house on the 16th.  I wept fatly.  What am I going to do? 
Meyshe said, "What will become of us?"  I told him not to worry about 
that, because we would not be out in the street.  There were 
solutions and I would take care of it.  I said this, of course, with 
no clue as to where to go.  But we have a solution, temporarily.  We 
will move in with my mother, not easy, because we have to fit people 
into the house, and this means we need three new bedrooms.  Can't 
have Meyshe and Feyna at 19 sharing a room.  I'd double up with 
Meyshe, but there's only a queen sized bed, and that's . . . what do 
we say? . . . inappropriate.  So I take the front bedroom.  There's 
room on the floor for a sleeping bag if my brother should come with 
his wife.  They would take my bed, and I'd move over in the bag on 
the floor.  I could sleep in a bag.  I like bags.  Sometimes I am 
one.  Meyshe can sleep in my brother's old room, the smallish bedroom 
with the fold out futon (I nearly said, "tofu").  And Feyna may have 
to take Jaron's apartment in the basement.  It sounds luxurious, just 
what a teenager would love, her own apartment.  But Jaron's a slob, 
first class, and the apartment is a steaming mess.  Plus, even though 
he's in physical theatre school about five hours north of here, he 
does come home some weekends.  Then Feyna will have to come upstairs 
and sleep in my room, unless Daniel and Carol are here.  Then, maybe 
Feyna and I can both take sleeping bags and sleep in Meyshe's room 
while Daniel and Carol take the front bedroom.  It's going to be a 
juggling act, but we can do it.  Today,  Family Packers comes to 
start the boxing up of everything.  And most everything will go into 
storage, now.  Just a few pieces come over to my mother's house. 
We've got to separate what goes to storage from what travels with us. 
Not easy.  You know, the guy who was going to rent us his house never 
even apologized for yanking the promise out from under me.  He just 
covered his rump, said, "We told you we wanted to sell the house." 
Yes, indeed they did.  But they'd also promised that the house was 
mine to rent, and I need not worry.

	Here, don't worry about this.



 
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What I Had Figured Out at Four

	When I was four, I had a dream which has become famous in my 
life.  Everyone has at least one famous dream, and we usually give 
them names.  I once proposed a chain letter, one without the usual 
threats about not breaking the chain lest you drown in your own blood 
three days later, a chain letter where what you send to the first 
person on the list is a favourite or important dream.  I imagined 
getting tens of dreams from total strangers (four degrees of 
separation) and having a surreal time of it.  But I just couldn't 
bring myself to saddle anyone I like, even remotely, with the burden 
of a chain letter, with or without threat.

	I gave my famous dream a name, "The Orange Peel Dream".  We 
were living in Silver Spring, Maryland in our tract home at 2405 
Colston Drive, right near the East West Highway.  It was the early 
fifties and way before the women's movement, so I considered my 
insights as a four year old, not only psychologically astute but 
politically prescient.

	In the dream, I was outside in our back yard, sitting by the 
back stoop.  All the neighborhood boys were playing baseball.  Every 
once in a while the sky got dark and the boys all ran inside, but 
then it would get light again, and they'd come back to play.  When it 
got dark, the ground got very sticky and I couldn't move.  I made my 
way to the back door and saw through the picture window (that should 
have been on the front of the house) that my father was sitting in a 
chair reading a book or a magazine, a floor lamp casting a glow all 
around him.  I knocked on the window, and asked him what was 
happening.  Why was it getting dark and then light, dark and light? 
Why was the ground suddenly sticky so that I could hardly move?  My 
father said, matter-of-factly, that when it got dark, it was raining 
orange peels, but he didn't explain any more, and went back to his 
reading.  I finally got to the back door and found my mother standing 
behind the screen.  I begged to be let in.  I was in great danger, 
and needed to escape the orange peels.  My father was behind my 
mother, but he was also in front of her and he prevented her from 
rescuing me.  She wanted to save me.  I could see that, but he 
wouldn't let her.

	Then the scene changed abruptly.  I was standing by a trickle 
of a creek.  In the creek were two boys I knew from school, Martin 
Kistner and Mark Young.  Mark was a mischievous kid who used to 
entertain me with his hand puppets.  Mark Young was a simple sweet 
boy whose own mother said didn't understand what was going on in 
school.  It was all way over his head.  I used to play with Mark in 
their huge mansion near Rock Creek Forest.  Martin and Mark were 
playing happily in the water, naked.  I wanted to play, too, but they 
pointed to a sign that said, "No Girls Allowed".

	And then the scene changed again.  I was lying on the couch 
in the living room, my face level with the coffee table.  A cat was 
sitting in the ceiling fixture above the dining room table.  Outside, 
next to the front door was the metal crate holding the milk delivery. 
The rooms were stretching and contracting, stretching and 
contracting.  I couldn't move from the couch.

	And that was the dream.  At four, I already knew the family 
dynamic, the roles my parents played, and how illogical and insane 
the world was, the  limitations bestowed upon women, and the 
immobility that would plague me.  How did I have that figured out so 
young?

 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net