TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 199

[Tobie Shapiro]

April 11, 2000000000007

Dear Horde (and I mean that in the nicest way!),

	I was talking to my therapist yesterday 
(yes, I have one) and somehow I wended my way 
back to my nervous breakdown at 19, after Arthur 
pushed me out.  I sat there, morose, recalling 
the lovely stay in Cowell Hospital where they 
threw me in the suicide lock up, the room with 
everything nailed to the floor, bars over the 
windows, toilet in plain view of the little 
window on the door.  Every once in a while 
someone would open up the flap over that window 
and take a peek in, I guess to make sure I hadn't 
hung myself.  Then when they'd seen that I was 
only rocking back and forth crying, they closed 
the flap and walked away.  It was terrible.  The 
pain was searing.

	My therapist grimaced and shook her head. 
She disapproved of the treatment.   "When was 
this?" she asked.   "I was 19," I told her.  "Oh, 
you were so young!  Those were the old days.  How 
barbaric, cruel.  That was the way they did 
things back then."

	A tiny shot of vindication awakened me. 
It had always been an awful memory of an ugly and 
gut wrenching experience.  But somehow I'd never 
calculated that the treatment was actually cruel, 
cruel like it felt to me.  I just assumed that 
all attempted suicides got treated like that, and 
somehow I must have brought it upon myself.  Now, 
an authority figure, a licensed psychologist, was 
holding it up as an example of how brutal they 
were in those days.  It was a relief.  I sighed, 
shed a few tears, thanked her.





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The First Few Weeks

	After Feyna and Meyshe were born, we all 
three remained in the hospital for several extra 
days.  It was 1987, and health care had already 
begun its prolonged hideous dive into mismanaged 
care.  They allowed one day for birth before 
kicking a fresh mother and infant out on the 
street.  But in my case, I wasn't draining right, 
and they needed to observe me.  I didn't make 
sense to them.  One side of me was evacuating its 
liquids, but the other side was not.  Also, poor 
little Feyna had a tiny case of jaundice and had 
to spend a few hours under a lamp every day. 
There she was, on her stomach, sunglasses curled 
around her eyes, lying under the bright light, 
her shoulders shaking, crying pitiably.  I took a 
walk down the hallway, with my new stitches on 
the C-section incision, and I stood on the little 
platform in front of the window peering at her 
small quaking body, wondering what sort of 
painful subconscious memories this ordeal was 
going to inscribe within her.  Would she always 
be afraid of bright lights, or the sun, or 
sunglasses?  Would she be insecure, so far from 
her mother in the first days after birth?

	When my mother had had her own children, 
the stay in the hospital had been relaxed.  She 
got one week for Dana in 1945.  For me, in 1947, 
it was five days, for Daniel, in 1954 they had 
shortened the expected stay to three days, but 
then she nearly died and had to have a 
hysterectomy, so she stayed a whole week, 
recuperating.  One whole week to recuperate from 
a near death trauma.  And we have all heard about 
the proposed drive through mastectomies. 
Progress marches on.  Don't get in the way.

	When they finally released the three of 
us, I was plopped into a wheelchair, handed both 
of my babies and trundled down the hall to the 
elevator.  The hospital worker held onto the 
handlebars and pushed me outside to the curb 
designated for pick ups.  One infant in each arm, 
I sat there, tired and beaming.  There was no 
crying.  They'd never been outside before.  I did 
not fear the bombardment of bacteria and floating 
viruses raining down from the hostile 
environment.  Everyone, everything, right down to 
the bacterio-viral level was our friend.  And as 
I waited in the wheelchair, strange friends ran 
up to me, cooed at the twins, embraced me, went 
on in foreign languages about whatever they were 
so happy and affectionate about.  Everyone loved 
twins.  These two creatures with their little 
sock caps on their tiny heads, their eyes wide 
open, learning something, learning beginning 
things, like up and down, light and dark, the 
constancy of noise, the feel of motion in the 
wheelchair, the look of motion as they travelled 
over the ground.  The ground.  The sky.  Imagine 
everything being new to you.  Everything new 
under and over the sun.

	David pulled up in the station wagon with 
the two new car seats positioned in the second 
seat facing back.  We strapped them in.  I 
climbed over Feyna to get in between them, where 
I sat, sore, excited, apprehensive, gazing at 
their two oval faces.  They already looked very 
different to me.  I'd spent hours, days, in the 
hospital bed, post operative morphine pumped into 
me, examining my newborn babies.  But to others, 
they were identical, every hair, each eye, all 
twenty fingers alike.

	"Where to?" David asked.

	I asked Feyna and Meyshe, "Where to?"  I 
said, "Let's go to Peet's.  I haven't had a good 
cup of coffee in five days."

	We drove up Ashby Avenue towards a good 
cup of coffee.  Half way between College and 
Claremont Avenues, they both sneezed.  Their 
heads ducked down from the force and their eyes 
shut tight.

	I said, "Buchucha," (German ch) in lieu 
of whatever standard blessing you might expect. 
And, "Buchucha," has been my, "Bless you,", 
"Gesundheit," ever since.  It sometimes seems 
silly calling out, "Buchucha," to a big hulking 
twenty year old, but what of the custom of saying 
anything at all after a fellow human sneezes? 
Buchucha is as good as anything else.

	After the sneezes, they both started to 
cry, independently and together.  It was not a 
joyous noise.  We had no pacifiers handy.  I went 
on instinct and stuck my two index fingers in 
their mouths.  They latched on, sucked, and 
quieted down.

	The first few weeks of being a mother was 
all shocking, awakening, full of uncomfortable 
lessons and happy revelations.  How to wrap two 
babies up in two receiving blankets: the standard 
burrito roll.  Another way to wrap two infants in 
two receiving blankets: the standard sushi roll. 
I'd like to skip the first diaper, too 
embarrassing.  We had a diaper service and used 
cloth diapers plus underpants with velcro that 
folded over the diapers and kept them snug, 
safety pinless.  Each tiny tushie was positioned 
over the diaper, one at a time.  And I discovered 
that I didn't know what to do.  How do you fold 
the diaper?

	I called the diaper service for instructions.

	"ABC Diaper Service."

	"Hello, diaper people.  I've got four day 
old twins here, and I don't know how to fold the 
diapers.  Help talk me through this."

	"I don't know either.  Let me get someone 
else."  He went to find someone in authority, 
someone with a masters degree in diaper 
engineering.  The very important supervisor got 
on the horn.  He said, "Twins, huh?  Do 'em one 
at a time."

	"That much I've figured out.  Now what?"

	He talked me through the maneuvers, step by step until I was done.

	"Can you do the other yourself?"

	"I think so."

	I was wrong.  I had to call back.  The shame of it all!

	The first big work out was getting them 
ready for their one week checkup.  I had newborn 
outfits for them in yellow, magenta, turquoise, 
shirts, pants and vests.  I mixed them all up. 
And the shoes, too.  They were rainbow, or at 
least a slap to the eyes.  I sang to them while I 
changed them into their fancy clothing.  I did 
this an hour and a half before we had to show up 
at the pediatrician's.  We walked in the door ten 
minutes before the scheduled appointment.

	"We're a little early."

	"Parents of twins always are.  You're the 
most organized.  You have to be."

	Another lesson.

	Alex and Ben were fascinated by the 
twins, but their concentration was on how much 
time and attention was flowing to Feyna and 
Meyshe and away from them.  They kept a distance, 
mostly.  My cat, Vogelsang, curled up on our bed, 
while Meyshe and Feyna lay there, napping.  She 
kept her eyes on them.  When Ben came bounding 
into the room and leaned over one of them, 
Vogelsang jumped up, positioned herself between 
them and hissed threateningly.  Ben jerked back. 
My cat had saved a life.  Vogelsang was always 
like that with them, even when, at age three and 
four, they ran after her, testing her patience, 
pulling her this way, rolling her that way, 
flushing her out from under chairs.  No one ever 
got scratched.




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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net