TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 16

[Tobie Shapiro]

September 30, 20000000006

Dear Fellowpersons,

	While I'm typing up these stories my situation is blowing up 
in my face.  I have a move out date for getting out of my house: 
October 15.  And I don't know where we're going to move to.  There's 
a possibility, but the owners want to sell, not rent, and haven't 
gotten back to me about the certainty of moving into their house.  So 
how do I plan moving?  How do I even fill out change of address 
forms?  And what if it falls through?  Then we're either out on the 
street, or we're with my mother and that isn't good.  This is 
profoundly upsetting.  Think good thoughts all you friends.

 
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The Good Book

	William Steig died a few years ago.  He was a most prolific 
and recognizable artist/cartoonist who must have had hundreds or 
thousands of his drawings published in the New Yorker.  And don't get 
me started on the New Yorker.  The poor magazine is a shadow of its 
former self since Tina Brown got in there and turned it into People 
Magazine for self-proclaimed high brows:  articles about Madonna, pop 
icons and celebrities!  The idea!  There ought to be a magazine put 
out that would carry on the tradition of arcania and delight in the 
obscure that the New Yorker used to have.  They should call the 
magazine, The Old Yorker.  Built in audience.

	  Nevermind my rant.  I was talking about William Steig. 
William Steig was also a writer of books, many children's books, 
including the Dr. de Soto series about a mouse dentist, and Shrek. 
Yes, Shrek in the original book was nothing like the movie, so much 
better, even profound.  Steig's love of language is a phenomenon 
seldom seen in children's books.  Steig had been around for a long 
time.  When I was just four years old, there was a book on my 
parents' shelf called, "The Agony in the Kindergarten", by William 
Steig.  It had a drawing and one line of writing per page.  I loved 
that book and carried it around with me.  It got dog eared and the 
spine was spent.  I had my mother read it to me over and over, 
strange fare for a four year old.  It was more philosophical and 
contemplative than any children's book you might name.  But, "The 
agony in the Kindergarten", was written for adults, to bring out the 
empathy in them, help them dredge up the darker side of young 
childhood.  You must go out and find a copy of this book to 
appreciate it.  There is no description and I can't even try to give 
an example.  It may not be easy to find, however.  My mother still 
has her copy.  Maybe I could copy a few pages and mail it out to 
those who request.

	When I say I had my mother read it to me over and over, I 
mean that she was forced to read it to me until I had memorized the 
entire book.  I would bring the book to any guests who came over, and 
I'd recite it, page by page, to the astonished visitor who thought 
the four year old was reading pretty sophisticated material.  That 
book is one of the most influential books in my life.  It fixed an 
empathy and world view in me at any early age.  I still carry it 
around inside me.

 
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What I Figured Out at Five

	At a very young age, I must have been five, my mother took me 
with her to a doctor's appointment.  The way I remember it, I was 
left in the waiting room with a pile of magazines, but that cannot be 
correct.  My mother would never have left me alone in a waiting room. 
So, perhaps I was so engrossed in what I was doing that it seemed as 
if I were alone in the waiting room with a pile of magazines.

	I selected the National Geographic, and leafed through the 
awe inspiring pictures.  This was a time when the exhibit of 
photographs, The Family of Man, was published in catalogue form. 
That book profoundly touched me.  And so I was ready for photographs 
of human life from all over the world.  What I found that pulled me 
in and captured me whole was a full page picture of a crowd.  It 
could have been in India or Africa or China, a populous area.  There, 
before me, were thousands of people from some place on the other side 
of the world, wildly colourful dress and skin a darker shade than 
mine.  It was a great gathering of souls.  Together, they were a mob. 
But on that day, I looked at the mob, and then individual people, one 
by one.  I identified with each person as being important and 
unimportant, each having a life as vital and propelled as mine, each 
person with an identity and a family, days that were filled with 
hours of living, the sacred events of a private life.  And then, 
suddenly, the person was a member of the crowd again, just one dot in 
a field of dots, a pointelist's painting of a solid mass of people, 
each one a stroke of the brush.  I suddenly felt kinship with each 
person in the photograph.  I, too, was nothing, just a dot in a 
crowd, and I, too, was the center of my own universe, all important, 
consumed by my private life.  Important, unimportant, both.  Small 
and large, both.  The realization of being part of a world of vital 
entities, no more nor less vital than any of the billions of others 
smacked me across the head and woke me up, shook my child's tunnel 
vision about my central role in the universe.  I was never the same 
again.  Nor did I ever want to be the same again.

 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net