TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 29

[Tobie Shapiro]

October 14, 2000000000000000000000000006


Dear Family,

	This morning, I got up and went into the kitchen to set out 
Meyshe's breakfast.  It's the first thing I do every day.  If I 
didn't set out his breakfast, with the little cup of medications, he 
wouldn't eat breakfast at all, and he wouldn't take his medication 
either.  So I do this thing.  No big deal, just a bowl of cereal 
(they are now going through a raisin bran phase) and a glass full of 
milk with chocolate powder in it, ready for the microwave, and the 
little bucket of medications.  So I got out the bowl  (we have saved 
out two bowls, four cups, two soup spoons, and a few plastic glasses, 
and the rest we left to the Family Packers to pack up).  I reached 
for the raisin bran, which was not there.  It had been packed. 
Likewise, the outdoor cat, Tuft, a shy, skittish, long haired calico, 
was mewling for her food, and I reached for the cup and tub of cat 
food, and it wasn't there.  It had been packed.  We are down here at 
the home stretch, people.  I have to make sure that I wear what I've 
got on through Monday, and then I'm fine for a change.

	Here is something else.



 
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One Swanson Whole Canned Chicken

	One winter weekend, Dweller and I were invited by some of his 
friends at the engineering building at UC Berkeley to take off and go 
up to the snow country near Lake Tahoe.  Dweller's friends were 
Shlomo and his wife, both Israelis, and their new baby, his wife's 
parents, visiting from Israel, plus another Israeli and his American 
wife, Susie.  This was quite a troupe, nine people and ten if you 
count our dog, Griffith.  I forget most of the names involved, but 
boy do I remember the trip.

	We divided up the labour and responsibilities.  To Shlomo and 
his wife was given the task of finding a place for us all to stay. 
Susie and her husband were going to bring food, and I was going to 
bring spices and herbs and do all the cooking.  Now, being older and 
far wiser, there is no way I would divide up the labour and 
responsibilities like that.  An unwise decision is to give the task 
of finding accommodations to Israelis.  Remember, that these are my 
people, so I bear no prejudice, but - here's the but - these people 
were recently out of the armed forces in Israel.  The accommodations 
they were used to were Spartan to say the least.  Luxury is not 
associated with Israeli attitudes.  Neither is comfort, really. 
Maybe it's changed in the last thirty five years.

	Shlomo and his wife found Farfey's Family Fundominiums.  Yes, 
that was the name: a low slung series of quasi apartments, each with 
a minimal kitchen and sleeping quarters.  When we arrived with our 
bags and our babies and dog, our groceries and spices and herbs, we 
got out our several keys and opened the doors.

	Ah, rats.

	The word, "dump", doesn't do it justice.  It was a 
quintessential dump, the very spirit of dump, with peeling paint and 
a thick blanket of dust covering everything, a greasy kitchen with 
cockroaches lying around on their backs taking in the bacon fat.  The 
sheets were threadbare, the blankets musty, the carpeting showing the 
footprints of a hundred thousand dissatisfied customers.  A shaft of 
light from a dirty window lit up swarms of dust motes swirling wildly 
in the dead air.  The Israelis picked up their baggage, smiling, and 
moved in like happy brides over the threshold.  Susie, the only other 
American besides Dweller, me and the dog, announced, "Good God!  We 
brought the aspirin, but we forgot the antibiotics!"

	When it came time to prepare dinner, I took out my big box of 
herbs and spices and asked Susie's husband for a tour of the food 
available to cook.  He held up a large tin cylinder and said, "Ooh la 
la!  One Swanson whole canned chicken."  The vegetables were all 
canned, the poor things, and there was packaged macaroni and cheese. 
A big mistake to let them handle the food supplies.  What were these 
spices and herbs for?  I'd even brought wine to cook with.  I loved 
cooking, setting out a groaning board of delectables for people I 
loved.  There was no opportunity here.  I did what I could.

	One Swanson whole canned chicken came out of the can in the 
shape of the can in which it was packed, and any prodding to bring 
out some chicken like form only made it fall apart.  One Swanson 
whole canned chicken for nine people, ten counting the dog, Griffith. 
I wasn't even aware that canned chickens were a fact of life.  How do 
they stuff them in the cans?  Do the chickens know beforehand that 
that is their destiny?  They'd certainly rebel.  Even being fried en 
masse for a KFC big bucket would be a more elevated demise.

	Dweller had allergies to dust.  I had allergies to wool. 
Between the two of us, we couldn't sleep in the bed.  Where would we 
sleep?  Out in the snow?  Even the snow around the Farfey's Family 
Fundominium was dirty.  All night, Dweller sneezed, great strings of 
snot exuded from his nose, and viscous tears emitted from his eyes. 
By the morning, it was clear that some of us would have to search for 
less hostile digs.  And we found them, a place, not elegant, but one 
that at least had been vacuumed since our births.  We were grateful 
for the luxury of a filth free environment.

	Then, there was the matter of the company.  There were three 
Americans: Dweller, Susie and I, four counting Griffith.  There were 
five Israelis, six counting the baby.  From the moment of our 
departure and all through the weekend, everything was conducted in 
Hebrew, a language in which both Dweller and I were limited to the 
word, "Shalom", which means hello, peace and more significantly for 
our frame of mind at the time, "goodbye".  Also, I remembered a few 
Hebrew words from Labour Zionist Youth camp.  But this did not serve 
me well in the thick of every day conversation.  Dweller and I sat 
out the social life, mumbling to each other in English, too 
embarrassed and not endowed with enough of a sense of entitlement to 
ask that we all speak English, since it was the only language we all 
understood.  For  a while, there was a spate of English conversation, 
for our benefit, in which Shlomo and his wife explained that the very 
serious discussion that had just taken place in Hebrew was about the 
colour and consistency of their infant's shit; it was white, and they 
were alarmed.

	It didn't take long for Dweller and me to come to the 
conclusion that we'd be best off taking a Greyhound bus home.  The 
weekend was a spectacular bust for us, a resounding social, physical, 
psychological and emotional failure.  We tried to think up our 
excuses for an early departure.  Dweller's allergies were a good bet, 
even though we'd moved to new accommodations.  Maybe if we could 
claim that Griffith's shit was white.  Finally, we dropped all the 
excuses and decided that we would just be as honest as possible and 
say that we were feeling out of place in a den of kamikaze Israelis 
and we'd decided to go home early.  We'd leave them all the herbs and 
spices.  We were prepared to leave them our first born child, if 
they'd just let us go with no hard feelings.

	We talked it over between us and decided to book a Greyhound 
bus back to Berkeley.  We trudged through the snow with Griffith on 
his leash, peeing every chance he got, to watch the steam rise from 
the hole in the snow.  What a powerful dog he was!  The Greyhound bus 
station was housed in a little bungalow settled amongst the snow 
drifts.  Attractive posters of all the exciting places you could 
travel to via Greyhound were taped in the windows.  There were three 
steps up to the door.  We nearly skipped up the steps, we were so 
excited at the prospect of a solution to the weekend gone more than 
awry.

	We stopped on the third step because Griffith was bent on 
making another uraic deposit in the snow.  At the end of the leash, 
he strained.  And then we looked at each other.  Our faces went 
slack.  Our solution was nixed by the goofy dog at the end of the 
leash.  You can't take a dog on a Greyhound bus.

	We stood there and wept, putting our arms around each other, 
realizing that the next two days were going to be awful, and 
conducted entirely in Hebrew.

 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net