TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 207

[Tobie Shapiro]

April 25, 2000007


Dear Lustfull Gustfulls,

	Today is the big "final" divorce 
settlement conference.  I've even put on a clean 
pair of pants.  That's big.  So there's a button 
missing; they won't see it; it's covered by the 
tunic.  At least after this, I'll get to see how 
impoverished I'm going to be without the child 
and spousal support.  There will be money coming 
in from social security for both Meyshe and 
Feyna, and my own diddly check, too.  That's 
about three thousand dollars, not quite, total. 
Then there is the trust fund from which I may 
draw moneys to pay for things for Feyna and 
Meyshe.  The trust fund is small: three hundred 
thousand.  There were companies whose business it 
is to oversee trusts, act as trustee, etc., that 
wouldn't take this one on because it was too 
small.  Plus, there is a clause in the agreement 
that says that if the trust fund holdings dip 
below $75,000, I will have to put some ungodly 
amount into it immediately.  This is fine for the 
first decade or so, but after that, how am I 
supposed to guarantee that the expenses for 
Meyshe will be less than a few hundred bucks a 
month?  He has therapies, social skills groups, 
lessons, and eventually, he may decide he wants 
to live independently.  How would I pay for that? 
Maybe he'll be able to have his own apartment 
someday.  Maybe not.  He's welcome to stay with 
me until I have to be carted off on a dolly, the 
bungee cords securing me to the frame, and 
deposited in a human crisper drawer in the great 
refrigerator of old age.

	I fear this meeting.  I'm scared I won't 
be able to get by.  I'm afraid I won't have 
enough money, even with my share of the sale of 
the Hillcrest house, to buy another house. 
Everything is so expensive in the bay area.  And 
I can't live too far from my mother.  Maybe I'll 
have to live here with her for a while, while my 
house money accrues interest.  Maybe I'll have to 
rent some half way decent apartment.  But if I 
can't afford the mortgage on a decent house, I 
can't afford the rent of a decent apartment.  And 
it has to be in a safe neighborhood for the kids. 
Well, and for me.  Don't forget me.  Can't be 
stepping over the dead bodies, drunks and broken 
glass every time I step out the front door. 
Can't be excusing myself as I walk between the 
people making the drug deal on the corner as I 
make my way to my house.  Can't have a burglar 
come in and sift through the paltry goods every 
few weeks, requiring me to make another police 
report and change the locks, the windows, replace 
the broken furniture, watch another spike in my 
insurance rates.

	I go to this meeting with dread, also, 
that I may run into my ex-husband, villainman, 
and his new wife, Rebecca Elizabeth Foulkes 
Wickett Nygren.  I don't want to share the same 
air with them.  Lord save me.  I'm going to say a 
prayer.  There ain't no atheist in a foxhole.




 
ŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸ
 
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Genetic Diseases


	There are diseases that run in families. 
When both your parents have diabetes and their 
siblings, too, you have to be extra cautious with 
the sugar, and it still may do you no good.  If 
it's prevalent, you may come down with it.  In 
some families, you will hear that everyone had 
kidney stones, or colon cancer, migraine 
headaches, ulcers.  It becomes one of the figures 
on the coat of arms: Headache Rampant Sejant on a 
Field of Naprosyn.  In my family, we all seemed 
to come down with bad cases of neurosis. 
Everyone had an ailment of the psyche, some 
infamous.

	 Great Aunt Anne was paranoid.  Grama 
Fannie was a neat freak.  Grampa was depressed. 
Great Aunt Belle was mean and resentful.  Uncle 
Harold had Oppositional Behaviour.  My mother was 
always depressed, like her father, and had very 
poor self esteem.  There are no categories for my 
father.  His neuroses were virtuostic.  There was 
nothing sick he couldn't do.  His own sister told 
me to think of him as an extreme narcissist with 
no boundaries.  He was probably somewhere on the 
autistic spectrum, maybe Asperger's.  My sister 
had a pretty serious personality disorder.  My 
brother was quick to snap and worried obsessively 
about the size of his brain.  I cannot seem to 
take care of myself, have awful bouts with 
depression, and keep tripping myself in the 
aisle.  I make me fall flat on my face.  I do.

	Until my parents' generation, everyone 
suffered in silence.  Neurosis is incurable, but 
it doesn't quite kill you.  You live on, 
encumbered and wretched, but you live on, and in 
my family, you live on for quite a while, 
longevity being another inheritable disease.  But 
along with my parents' generation came the 
miracle of psychotherapy, available to open 
minded, enlightened neurotics everywhere.  My 
grandparents had never heard of the thing, and 
when they finally did, they attached the usual 
shame onto it.  Anyone who saw a therapist was 
very sick, indeed, not to be talked about, but 
only whispered.  You don't openly discuss crazy 
headed people: the meshugeneh off in the corner 
actively losing his marbles.

	But my parents brought a new attitude to 
the subject of psychotherapy.  It was a 
birthright, a badge and a requisite ritual 
activity for every family member.  If you live 
and you breathe, then you must have a therapist. 
If you do not, then you are not one of us.  We 
prided ourselves in our flamboyant neuroses.  We 
weren't just run of the mill neurotics.  We were 
gifted at it.  We shone as examples to other 
aspiring members of the mentally impaired.  We 
wrote the book.  We were the standard.  We 
practiced neurosis, did a thorough workout.  Like 
fit people do aerobics, we did neurotics.

	As far back as I can remember, 
"therapist," was a common household word.  The 
weekly appointment was a linchpin of the 
calendar.  Without fail, the appointment was 
kept, regarded with due awe.  If you had a shrink 
appointment, you didn't have to do your homework, 
the dishes, parenting, paying the bills. 
Shrinking came first.  My mother saw therapists 
religiously.  My father saw them sporadically, 
only when he'd done something so insane that it 
even scared him.  He'd go to the same therapist, 
and in three weeks, he'd declare himself cured 
and stop therapy.  Neither of them talked about 
their sessions.  This was the only private matter 
that was respected.  Where you were going to be 
in the next ten minutes, the next hour, the next 
three hours, details of your plans for the day, 
the when why where who what and how. Divulge this 
all to the family ear.  Every thought that passed 
through your mind was to be confessed and 
examined.  Your conversations with friends were 
family property.  Even your dreams were not just 
your own business.  But whatever went on in the 
sanctified confines of the therapist's office was 
never questioned, never even approached sideways.

	When I felt myself sliding into despair, 
my adolescent world falling apart, I knew to beg 
for a shrink.

	"Please may I be psychoanalyzed?"

	We all knew that Freud was good for the 
Jews.  He was a holy man.  My first psychologist 
was a woman whom my mother was also seeing.  My 
mother and father went to her as a couple.  And 
my father was also seeing her in private 
sessions.  I didn't know the relationships until 
her attitude toward my father gave her away. 
She'd been poisoned.  I wondered about the 
purpose of their going to her together; what was 
the point?  Was she going to patch up the holes 
in their embattled ship?   That ship, so far as I 
could see, was creeping along the bed of the 
ocean floor, not enough of it left in tact to 
tell port from starboard.  This ship was not 
going to rise above the bottom of the Marianas 
Trench.  If they saw hope for themselves by 
seeking counseling from a licensed professional 
psychologist, then therapists could maybe work 
miracles.  Perhaps, I could crawl in and limp 
out.  Perhaps, I could go in blind, and leave 
being able to determine light from shadow.

	After my second suicide attempt, the 
staff at the emergency room of Highland Hospital 
handed me a list of therapists, and told me to 
call one of them, vow to myself to work on me.  I 
called a Dr. Foote, mostly because I found the 
name ironic.  He was a man about ten years my 
senior, thinning on top, neatly dressed in casual 
chic, slightly effeminate, soft spoken, a little 
formal.  After I'd been going to Dr. Foote for 
about a month, he told me that my mother had 
called him wanting to set up appointments for 
herself.  Was that all right with me?  What did I 
know about boundaries?  I was being asked if it 
was all right with me.  That meant it was 
incumbent upon me to say, "Yes".  I had no right 
to privacy, after all.  Maybe Foote should've 
known this.  Then after another month or so, 
Foote asked me if it was all right with me that 
he take my father on as a patient.  My stomach 
turned.  I was definitely being invaded.  I said, 
"Don't you think that's a bit much?"  Then Foote 
assured me that there wouldn't be a conflict. 
When I was in his office, his attentions and 
loyalties would be one hundred percent mine.  It 
reminded me of teenage boyfriends trying to 
convince me that there was no problem with them 
dating other girls because when they were with 
me, they would be totally with me.

	I balked at Foote taking on my father. 
He would be consulting on friendly terms with the 
enemy.  But he argued his point, and I gave in. 
I gave in because I didn't know that I could take 
care of myself, that I could actually refuse 
without being accused of being selfish, unfeeling.

	After Foote started working with my 
father, he no longer asked my permission.  He saw 
my brother; he saw my sister, my sister and her 
husband, my parents as a couple.  Still, nobody 
asked, "What went on with Dr. Foote, today?" 
That would be a breach of privacy.

	So in essence, there we all were, in 
Foote's room, crowding the couches, sitting on 
the arms of chairs, listening in on each others' 
innermost thoughts.  I knew they were all 
listening, that whatever I told him in my own 
fifty minute hour would be delivered to him from 
other vantage points by everyone else in the 
family.  And whose rendition would be most 
convincing?  This violated the doctor/patient 
confidence, and there could be no true 
relationship between me and Foote any more.  He 
was on call to my father, my mother, my brother, 
my sister, various family members in combination. 
But I had no idea what was going on.  It made it 
a permanent state to be in: the practicing 
neurotic.  With all that practice, I got very 
very good at it.  During my private therapy 
appointments, I could limber up, develop my 
proficiency.

	I wonder how he compared us.  Who is 
Foote's favourite little sicko?  What was unfair 
was that he never charged us the fleet rate.  You 
would think we qualified for a discount.  Maybe 
even hush money.



 
ŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸ
 
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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net