TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 206

[Tobie Shapiro]

April 24, 20000000000007


Dear Loyal Comrades,

	Well, didn't we have an exciting time 
Sunday night.  Feyna is changing her meds.  The 
novel anti-psychotic she is taking (she is not 
psychotic.  It's just the category of drug) gives 
her sleep attacks.  When I say sleep attacks, I 
mean that she can be functioning just fine and 
then suddenly, for no reason, she has to fall 
asleep.  She has missed her stop on BART.  She 
has been unable to drive.  She has fallen asleep 
sitting upright in the car next to me.  She has 
slept through class.  She can't help it.  It is a 
sight to behold.  The head nods forward or flops 
over backwards; the mouth hangs open; everything 
goes limp.  This lasts sometimes for hours, 
sometimes for twenty minutes.  Sometimes caffeine 
can help.  Sometimes not.  So, the neuropsych is 
going to switch her med to another drug that is 
not in the same category.  First she has to 
introduce this new med into her system, get it up 
to effective dose.  Then, she'll wean herself 
from the other drug that makes her go unconscious 
sometimes.  At present, she is at the stage where 
she is increasing the dose of the new med.  We 
don't know if this had anything to do with 
Sunday's events, but it's a possibility.

	She got depressed.  Then worse.  She was 
panicking.  She was afraid of her life.  She was 
furious with her learning disabilities.  She 
feared she'd never be able to reach her goals in 
school, or get a job, make a living.  Alex is 
moving to Mexico (or so he says) in a couple of 
months.  She will have to face a new semester in 
the fall without his support and company. 
Suddenly, she will be without her social 
connections.  Isolated again.  The job 
demonstrating and selling Cutco knives is 
bombing.  It's not that she doesn't sell any 
knives.  She does.  Each time she gives a 
demonstration, she sells knives, but this only 
happens maybe once a week, if that.  She knows 
she needs to get another job, but she can't do 
the usual things that entry level jobs require of 
you: speed, multi-tasking, work under pressure.

	All this exploded in her head, and she 
started having suicidal thoughts.  She was 
terrified of them.  Sitting there trying to eat 
her dinner, carving her chicken breast with my 
nice new Cutco table knife, she had a sudden urge 
to slice the back of her hand.  Then she had an 
urge to slit her wrists, and finally, she 
couldn't evict the thought of slitting her 
throat.  She didn't eat, and instead, went 
downstairs to her lair, where she shivered and 
cried.  She tried to get hold of Alex or Natalie, 
but neither was available.  I went downstairs to 
check on her.  She was in dire straits.  I asked 
her if she'd called her therapist, Fortunee. 
Yes, she had tried, but Fortunee isn't available 
on emergency bases.  Her recording directed her 
to call 911 if she were having a crisis off 
hours.  She cursed that unavailability.  She 
swore that she would issue Fortunee an ultimatum: 
either she give Feyna a number where she can 
reach her at off hours, or she'd have to get 
another therapist.  Feyna sat there among the 
crumpled tangle of her bedding.  She wept in huge 
gasping sobs.  I took her in my arms and 
protected her.  I stroked her hair, her back, 
held her strongly.  I told her that I knew that 
she wasn't going to hurt herself.  I listened to 
her intently.  I took it all in, and I ached for 
my daughter.  What a horrible way to feel.  I 
told her I would do everything I could to help. 
Then I called the neuropsych, Abrinko.  His 
recording gave me another number to reach him 
during evenings, weekends and holidays.  I dialed 
it, and handed the phone to Feyna.  Dr. Abrinko 
answered.  She retold her story.  "I'm at the 
breaking point," she cried.  He assured her that 
she wasn't going to harm herself, that he'd seen 
her in this sort of state before several times, 
and she'd never acted on any of the urges.  He 
told her she was stable and sane, capable of 
weathering this.  He would call Fortunee and 
plead Feyna's case.  He steadied her for the 
moment and asked to speak to me.

	He told me that he was sure she wasn't 
going to harm herself.  I agreed.  But just to be 
on the safe side, and to ease her worries, I 
should, "sterilize," the house.  This meant 
removing all the knives and all the medicines 
that she might be able to overdose on.  He asked 
to speak to Feyna again, and he calmed her.  He's 
awfully good.  As soon as she hung up from Dr. 
Abrinko, her phone rang again.  It was Alex.  She 
cried out, "Where were you!?  I tried calling and 
you didn't call back!  I needed you."  I heard 
his voice on the other end of the line telling 
her he'd been in transit.  He was whining.  But 
speaking to Alex was just what she wanted.  She 
lay back on the bed, curled up with the phone, 
and her voice relaxed.  When I was sure she was 
steady, I motioned to her that I had to go 
upstairs.  I would check on her later.

	I went into the other room, collected her 
demonstration knife collection, then went up to 
the kitchen.  In the kitchen, I opened all the 
drawers where knives are found.  I emptied the 
knife drawer.  All those new sharp knives we 
purchased from Cutco.  My daughter the knife 
saleswoman.  Most of my mother's knives are so 
dull you could saw your neck with them and not 
even produce a crease.  But the new ones and some 
of the ones that were classy wedding presents 63 
years ago were sharp enough to remove.  I took 
the scissors, too.   Then I went to the 
silverware drawers.  That's where the piles of 
steak knives are kept, mostly giveaways from gas 
stations when gas stations did that sort of 
thing.  Cheap plastic handles, gnarled from bouts 
in the garbage disposal,  and thin serrated 
blades.  Then decomposing metal handled knives, 
chipping and peeling steel veneer.  I gathered up 
something like fifty steak knives, put them on 
the counter with the big knives from the other 
drawer.  I took the Cutco table knives out of 
their block, and wrapped them up in a towel, then 
put a rubber band around them.  The rest of the 
knives got separated out into knives to keep, and 
knives to throw away.  Honestly, some of these 
things had been cluttering up the drawer for 
decades, never used because they were falling 
apart.  My mother agreed to throw some of them 
away.  I wrapped them carefully in paper towels, 
then several layers of newspaper, rubber banded 
them, threw them in the garbage.  The active 
knives got wrapped in towels and put in shopping 
bags.  Then, I rounded up the Tylenol, any 
medications that could be dangerous if ingested 
in quantity.  Everything in shopping bags.  My 
mother and I brainstormed about where to hide all 
this.  We decided on the back of her walk in 
closet.  Feyna never goes into her Grama's room, 
and has never seen the inside of her closet. 
It's narrow and deep, and piled knee high with 
obsolete clothing.  There are some drawers at the 
back of the closet.  In front of the drawers 
which could not open, they were so stuffed, were 
disorganized heaps of retired clothes.  I dug in 
deeply and deposited the grocery bag.  It was 
completely invisible.  The other bag I stuffed 
into my father's old closet, equally filled with 
a chaos of boxes, clothing, wrapping paper, bags. 
I closed both closet doors, turned off the light 
on my way out of the room.  Then I sat down to 
recover.

	In the middle of the night, Feyna came to 
my door.  She couldn't sleep.  How was she going 
to get to sleep?  I invited her to stay in my 
room.  I cleared off the other half of the bed. 
I told her to read a book.  A good bad book might 
be just the thing.  Instead, she took up an issue 
of The Funny Times, a reekingly liberal, 
hilarious newspaper with cartoons, silly essays, 
wry satire, Dave Barry, Garrison Keillor, Al 
Franken, that sort of people.  She spread it out 
on the pillow and started to read.  She laughed 
(this was good).  She finally fell asleep.

	This sort of thing knocks the wind out of 
me.  Her life is so fraught with struggle, wild 
mood swings, desperation.  She went to school in 
the morning, spent the rest of the day with Alex, 
and stayed over night.  She is due here, as she 
said, "early," but I haven't heard from her.  I 
suppose 7:30 is way too early for, "early".

	And Meyshe is home sick.  Tomorrow is the 
big divorce settlement conference.

	When do I get to take the nap?  I think today should be Friday.




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Measles

	I got the measles around my seventh 
birthday.  This means it was the middle of 
summer, the time of heat and itching.  I may even 
have had the measles ON my birthday.  My 
recollection is more of the misery than the 
timing.  I got it bad.  There were spots all over 
me.  There were spots on my feet, in between the 
toes, on the soles of my feet, between my 
fingers, under my fingernails, inside my eyelids, 
inside my nose, covering the curlicued expanse of 
twisted skin lining the cartilage of my ear, 
marching all the way into my ear hole, past my 
ability to scratch.  My scalp was covered.  There 
were great spatterings of measles between my 
buttocks and all around my poor anus, in my poor 
anus.  All surfaces were painted thickly with 
measles.  It was nearly impossible to move any 
part of my body without having measles rub 
against each other.  I remember imagining that 
this invasion of red spots was scattered 
throughout my insides.  Maybe my intestines had 
measles.  Maybe my veins and arteries had 
measles.  Maybe my heart and my lungs had 
measles.  And the fever was as if my brain were 
being sauteed in a skillet.

	I was only seven.  It was my first 
introduction to prolonged illness, the first time 
I had to suffer longer than I could bear, longer 
than I'd ever been asked to do.  My mother was 
very sympathetic.  She worried visibly over my 
spotted noggin.  She got out a huge jar of pink, 
pasty liquid and globbed it on every measle I had 
to offer.  It didn't help in the slightest. 
Calamine Lotion never did what it was supposed to 
do.  It was just a big bottle of off pink, chalky 
pap that she shook up vigorously before applying. 
While she was applying it, it may have taken my 
mind off it, but the effect was purely 
psychological.  Calamine Lotion was my mother's 
equivalent of her mother's Vix Vapor Rub.

	When we had colds, Grama would take a 
paper napkin and fold it once, then hold on to a 
corner and twist it severely into a point.  It 
would look like a unicorn's horn.  She'd dip this 
thing into the Vix Vapor Rub until it was coated 
thickly.  Then she'd do what I hated.  She'd 
screw this horn up each nostril until she was 
sure my nasal cavity was filled with Vix.  That 
jar of hers was a fright.  When it sat there open 
on the table, I could see the guck, see all the 
deep holes where she'd dipped the twisted napkins 
the last time I was sick.  The Vix in the jar had 
a surface like ocean swells with darkened holes 
poked into it.  She'd also rub the stuff on our 
chests, a thick layer.  It was her miracle drug. 
Smelling it gave off an initial bracing gust of 
mentholated air, and after that, it was just goo, 
goo sticking to my body, goo rubbing off on the 
bed sheets, goo to slip and slide in, goo that 
she would reapply in half an hour.

	If she had been visiting us when I had 
the measles, she would have slathered Vix Vapor 
Rub on my entire body.  I would itch and reek. 
Wavy lines would be emanating from my body.  My 
life as a cartoon.  The Calamine Lotion served a 
purpose.  It brought my mother and me closer. 
All that special time devoted to dabbing thick 
pink glop on my myriad spots.  It was intimate. 
When the Calamine Lotion didn't work, I didn't 
lose faith in my mother.  Rather, I assumed that 
my particular spots were so vicious that they 
conquered even the best that my mother had hidden 
in her bag of cures.  I was impressed with the 
severity of my disease.  I wore it like a medal. 
Example of bad measles, too strong for Calamine 
Lotion.  I asked her to put on more, hoping that 
the additional application would do it.

	But it didn't.

	While I was stewing in my measles, my 
mother's brother, Harold, and his wife, Ruth, 
came to visit from San Francisco.  They entered 
my dark room, recoiled at the sight of me.  They 
tried to hide it, but I saw them back up against 
the wall, and their hair stood on end.  They 
tiptoed out of the room and left the house.  When 
they returned, they'd brought me a present.  It 
was a pink furry stuffed animal cat.  It had a 
roundish head with blunt ears, black button eyes, 
four long legs and one long tail.  There was a 
bell hanging from its collar and a length of 
elastic sewn to the back of its neck on one end, 
and looped around a plastic ring on the other.  I 
liked it immediately, hugged it and heard the 
little chrome bell tinkle.  I was endlessly 
amused by holding the plastic ring and watching 
the cat bounce on its tether.  I gave it a name, 
kissed it frequently, dabbed Calamine Lotion on 
it, spoke to it confidentially.  It sat beside me 
in bed in the dark room.  I held it as I tried to 
sleep.  My mother got me a present, too: a music 
box mounted inside a miniature Swiss chalet with 
a painted stream out front and a tiny water wheel 
that turned as the music played.  To start the 
music, you had to lift the roof of the chalet, 
flip it on its hinges, right under the eaves. 
The pin would be released from inside the wall 
and trigger the mechanism to revolve.  The cat 
could dance to the music.

	It took two weeks for these nasty measles 
to fade enough for me to resume normal 
activities.  Even then, there were hundreds of 
little bumps still palpable on the insides of my 
lips and cheeks.  I wasn't free of the measles 
for four weeks.  Then I caught the chicken pox. 
These sparse blisters were so benign in 
comparison that I yawned through the whole 
disease.  It was a minor annoyance.  I absent 
mindedly scratched at the pox like a chicken 
pecking at feed when it wasn't particularly 
hungry.  I could even tolerate the sunlight 
flowing into my room.  But I still had to put up 
with the Calamine Lotion.  No help.  Dana had the 
chicken pox worse than I did.  She whined and 
kvetched loudly.  It was now nearing her birthday 
on the fourteenth of August.  Our birthdays that 
year were more philosophical celebrations. 
Calamine Lotion icing on an Aspirin cake.

	It's best to get those childhood diseases 
over with early on.  The longer you wait, the 
worse they can be.



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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net