TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 146

Fri Feb 9 07:31:44 PST 2007

February 9, 200000007

Dear ye,

	I have begun my day making salmon 
sandwich and big bowl raisin bran for son.  I set 
out pills.  Good Mommy.  On Monday, I forgot to 
set out his pills.  He didn't notify me.  He just 
didn't take any.  His pills make it possible for 
him to focus, calm him down, give him some 
measure of self control over his impulses and 
keep him alert.  They also help curb some of the 
more bizarre thought patterns that can plague him 
(such as: maybe we should go into hiding because 
we're Jewish).  So, at school he was unfocussed, 
couldn't attend to his tasks, babbled on about 
things that weren't the topic of the moment, and 
then fell asleep.  His teacher told him he hoped 
it wouldn't  become a habit.  I felt awful.

	Late in the afternoon is when the Ritalin 
wears off (Ritalin is not all he takes.  It's 
quite a cocktail).  So when I brought him to see 
his therapist at 3:30, I figured the worst was 
over.  But nooooooo.  He was being silly on the 
way over to the therapist's office, hanging on 
me, tousling my hair, generally ignoring social 
distance and social norms, interjecting nonsense 
words into a conversation.  "Did you know you're 
such a weerp?"  I warned Dr. Relinger about 
Meyshe's buoyant mood and handed him his check. 
"Good luck,"  I said.  I went out to the waiting 
room where I opened up my journal and started to 
write.  Fifteen minutes later, Relinger delivered 
Meyshe to me.  He was bouncing up and down.  "He 
can't carry on a conversation.  It's pointless to 
continue," he shook his head.  "I'll credit you 
with the rest of a session.  Sorry."   He had 
been blabbering on in some unknown language, 
lying on the floor, twiddling his hands at the 
doctor, laughing hysterically, all that fine 
autistic stuff.  Anyone who is shocked that 
parents give their offspring medications to help 
them get on in life, take heed.  It is sometimes 
necessary.

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Hit and run

	We had gone to the city to see Gramma at 
Mt. Zion Hospital, my mother and I.  That 
morning, she was talking to someone on the phone 
about an article that had come out in the paper 
about me and handwriting analysis, and she sat 
down, without looking behind her, onto a chair 
that wasn't there.  She fell down hard on her 
rump and broke her hip.  All day at the hospital 
we'd been trying to locate her.  The hospital had 
no room number for her, or, "She's in X-ray," or, 
"They're taking her to surgery," or, "She should 
be out of surgery by now."  There was not even a 
fleeting moment when my mother and I glimpsed 
Fannie Dora Silberstein as she was scooted by on 
a gurney.  We waited in hallways and waited in 
waiting rooms.  We kept going up to the desk but 
there was no tracking device on Gramma, so we 
just waited until they found her a room.

	Finally, around about seven thirty in the 
evening, they gave us a room number.  We rushed 
up to her room and found her there, with her 
teeth out, delighted to see us.  She hid her 
smile with her hand.  She was in good shape, and 
they expected a full recovery.  We breathed more 
easily then, and chatted with her for a while. 
But she was pretty dopey on medication, and by 
eight o'clock we left.  We returned to my car, 
buckled up and headed back over the bridge toward 
Berkeley.  This was 1978, and I still had my 
little white Datsun 510, a handy serviceable 
vehicle that had served me well on my many trips 
down to San Diego and back and back and forth. 
It was eight thirty, dark out, with clear skies. 
The stars were visible.  The freeway was 
practically deserted.

	I was nearly at our exit and had moved 
over into the right lane.  Then I saw a bright 
set of lights in my rear view mirror, getting 
brighter by the second.  There was somebody in 
the fast lane speeding, going at least eighty. 
As I watched, the car crossed three lanes wildly. 
It was as if I had been a magnet to this speeding 
missile.  He hit me in the left rear bumper, and 
we started to spin, then coming out of the 
collision, the other car hit us again in the left 
front bumper, and we were set spinning in a wide 
circle in the opposite direction.  "CRACK!" I 
heard, and my head hurt.  It really was as if it 
were all in slow motion.  I saw the front and 
rear windshields explode into a million little 
pebbles of glass and watched calmly as the car 
spun around in a huge arc.  I thought, "I guess 
I'm going to die," and felt no particular fear, 
no regret, no life parading before my eyes.  Just 
nothing much.  Death seemed like another 
mundanity, something that one does because one is 
human.  The car hit the railing flat on the side 
with the car facing the traffic the wrong way.  I 
looked out at the empty freeway.  The little 
orange car that had hit me had stopped briefly, 
then gunned his engine and tore off.  Hit and run.

	I looked over at my mother and saw her 
head deformed by swellings over her eye and on 
her cheek, deep dark shadows cast over her face 
by the lone street lamp shining down on us from 
above.  This must have been the loud, "CRACK," 
that I'd heard.  I wondered what injuries I'd 
sustained.  I told her she looked fine.  She'd be 
okay.  Then I thought of getting help.  I was 
right up against the railing, the door crushed 
in.  The window was blown out, so maybe I could 
climb out the window and stand on the shoulder to 
attract attention.  But then it occurred to me 
that I might be in shock.  Maybe I had no legs 
any more and was just unaware of it.  So I 
decided I'd better sit where I was.  And we both 
sat there for a long time before a highway patrol 
car pulled up in front of us.  Two cops opened 
their doors, got out and sauntered over to us. 
One of them leaned in the passenger window which 
no longer existed, and he shone his flashlight at 
us.

	"Is everyone all right?" he asked.

	"No," I answered, but he ducked out of 
the door and went to talk to his partner.  The 
other cop came over.  He leaned in and addressed 
us.

	"You should get yourselves to the hospital," he advised.

	I couldn't believe I was hearing this. 
"I don't have a car anymore," I told him.  I said 
it with some noticeable sarcasm.  The cop went to 
talk to his partner again.  They both came back 
over.

	"We're not authorized to drive anyone to 
a hospital," one of them informed us.

	"Then how will we get there?  Are we supposed to walk?"

	The patrolmen huddled again.  They came 
back and told us they'd drive us to the hospital 
emergency room.  My mother got out and then I had 
to climb over the seats to get out her door, as 
exiting through my window would have plummeted me 
to the sidewalk far below the freeway.  We 
shuffled into the back of the patrol car, and 
they spoke into their receivers that they were 
taking two survivors to the hospital.  They gave 
their coordinates, and the crackling distorted 
voice on the other end said something like, 
"Roger".

	At the hospital we both got X-rayed.  No 
broken bones.  My mother would have a monumental 
shiner.  But she was otherwise fine.  She had all 
the external injuries.  I had the invisible ones. 
The next day we had to go visit Gramma at the 
hospital in the city.  Any deviation would give 
her a clue that all was not well, and Gramma had 
the Brodofsky gene for worry.  She must not know 
we'd gotten into any mishap.  My mother had spent 
a lifetime hiding facts from her mother to keep 
her from worrying on her.  So my mother put 
makeup over her eye and wore sunglasses.  We came 
every day, no matter how we felt.  Gramma healed 
and went home and things went back to normal, 
except for us.

	For three months afterwards, I could not 
lie down without violent vertigo.  I sat up to 
sleep, creating kinks in my neck from my head 
wobbling off into unconsciousness at odd angles. 
I had to engage a lawyer to get the insurance 
company to fork over for the car.  For the 
lawyer, I had to go find the car in the junk 
yard, and photograph it.  A friend drove me 
there.  The car was crunched like an accordion. 
Only the passenger cabin was uncrumpled.  All the 
windows were gone, and the engine had dropped 
down through the floor.  If I had just seen this 
wreck without knowing anything about it, I would 
have said, "Somebody died in this car."

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-- 

Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net