TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 150

[Tobie Shapiro]

February 13, 2000000007


Dear the gang,

	Today I actually am going to the hairdresser.  Okay.  No big 
deal.  But it is.  The number of times I've had my hair done could be 
counted on the fingers of my hands.  I think I went to a hairdresser 
before my second wedding (I'm not sure).  I had my hairs tinted 
burgundy twice (it wears off after a month or so).  And every once in 
a great while when my hair is sticking straight out from my head in 
stiff clumps, I go in for a remedial treatment.  So a hairdressing 
appointment is a big deal for me.  I've never paid much attention to 
cosmetics.  I don't wear any make-up, except the rare smoosh of 
lipstick when the occasion is formal.  I go to a divorce support 
group (it's a group of two) every Thursday.  The other woman 
suggested we both go to get a make-over.  This was to satisfy the 
assignment that we do something good for our bodies during the coming 
week.  A make-over sounded as in character as a stint as a warden in 
a maximum security prison.  So wish me luck on my hair.  I would love 
to dye it purple, but I'd have to bleach it first, and I'm not about 
to do that.



                                 zZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZz
                                  77777777777777777777777777777777777777777
                                  \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\


Rudolf Steiner laughs at us

	We must not have been in our right minds when we decided that 
Feyna should go to Waldorf School for kindergarten.  Well, we 
actually weren't in our right minds.  Our house had burned down and 
we were in the middle of moving from house to house, in the 
beginnings of suing the insurance company.  The world was a crazy 
place to be living in.  Our judgment was off.  We needed calm in our 
lives.  Maybe that's what hooked us into Waldorf.

	At the open house for new parents of prospective students, 
there was a steadiness, an even, swimming along kind of feeling. 
Smooth and soothing.  The teachers all talked about their classes as 
if the students actually cared to be in school.  They required 
musical instrument lessons.  They forbade plastic of any kind or 
artificial ingredients in everything from toys to lunch boxes.  This 
was supposed to hold us to our word to do the same at home.  The 
entire staff of the East Bay Waldorf School did not just show up to 
work and do a good job, they were part of a religion.  They believed 
in Rudolf Steiner and his theories about education.  They lived and 
breathed it.  We were expected to do the same.

	Let's see.  This organic apple was packed with two other 
organic apples in a plastic bag at the store.  Throw out just the 
bag?  Throw out the bag and the apples because their flesh has been 
contaminated by the plastic?  Retrace steps and refuse a bag, 
juggling the apples with your other items on the way home?  What 
about packing a note in the lunch bag?  I used to do that.  I'd draw 
crazy creatures doing wacky things on a piece of paper and put that 
into the bag.  But wait.  These pictures were coloured with markers. 
The markers were plastic, and the colours artificially produced. 
Day-Glo orange does not appear in the natural world, so out go the 
pictures.

	The lunch box, itself, had to be made of natural materials, 
too.  I hunted up and down for a wicker lunch box.  Finally, I found 
one at a Rite Aid store.  And then I had to figure out what to send a 
liquid refreshment in.  Plastic container with straw?  No. 
Certainly, the pre-packaged juice boxes were not acceptable.  Could I 
send some milk in a glass bottle?  Uh oh! Metal screw on cap.  No 
straw.  Do they even make wooden straws?  How about pouring a flagon 
of milk into many quadruple folded paper towels?  Would it hold out 
until lunch?  Then again, the machinery used to perforate the paper 
towels is certainly not organic.  And how about getting Feyna there 
and picking her up every day?  We'd have to use a car - not natural - 
or carry her in a litter.  We could come every day in a howdah on top 
of an elephant.  Elephants are super organic!  This school was 
requiring the orthodoxy of the Amish without any of their perks.  No 
eternal life.  No savior.  No God who loves you, you specifically, 
the wide embrace of the deity.  Just an organic lunch box and toys 
made out of natural materials.

	Then there were the other parents.  I often felt that I 
needed to wave my hand in front of their eyes to sever their ties 
with the great mystic beyond in order to ask a simple question.  "Do 
you mind my interrupting your trance to ask whether there is school 
tomorrow?"  They were sweet, air headed, air souled, air bodied. 
Making real contact was a problem.  The conversations didn't have any 
sense of groundedness.  These mommies and daddies were elsewhere 
having their tarot cards read, or discussing the deeper meaning of 
the daily grind with their palmists.  Phrenology is not dead.  It was 
a cult.  And the parents were supposed to be true believers.

	The children were expected to be wispy little faeries: vacant 
heads and pliable minds, calmed into a state of half napping.  Their 
image of children included no mischievousness, no desire, no 
tantrums, no misbehaving.  These were the good children that exist in 
mythology. "He's always a help to his mother.  Little Landru just 
waits patiently until we tell him what to do, and he never gets his 
clothes dirty."  There was something extra in the drinking water.  I 
avoided the fountains.

	When discussing Feyna with her kindergarten teacher, I always 
felt that if I should give her the full power of my words and 
energies, she'd be stunned by the blast.  She'd think I was manic. 
How can I say this?  They were terminally mellow, frighteningly even 
keeled.  A reading of brain activity would be a flat line.  I felt 
alien.

	When we interviewed the teachers and administrators, we 
stressed that Feyna was Jewish, because there seemed to be some 
Christian terminology in the air. They had Christmas vacation, and a 
Christmas pageant, and they had Easter vacation.  It was a clue.

	"Well this is not a Christian school, but it's not Jewish. 
We do have many Jewish families at Waldorf."

	I said that just as long as Feyna didn't come home confused 
and singled out as different, or get filled with talk about Jesus, 
we'd be all right.

	"Welcome to Waldorf," they said.

	And when Christmas time came, Feyna came home saying, "The 
child is coming.  After the child comes, everything will be all 
right."

	Ooops.  Time to call the school and talk to them.

	"Who is the child?"

	"I think he's a boy in the other kindergarten class.  He's 
bringing joy.  I don't know who she is."

	Ohmigod.

	I spoke to Kristen, the teacher, and told her Feyna was 
confused, and what was going on at school?

	"Oh, we're just getting ready for our Christmas festival."

	"But we were told Waldorf wasn't a Christian school."

	"We're not.  But everyone celebrates Christmas."

	Major disconnect.  A week later, Feyna came home crying. 
Should she believe in Jesus?  What was a savior?  How could a child 
save us?  I talked to Kristen again.

	"Feyna is Jewish and she's coming home with strange ideas. 
You are teaching her Christianity.  We told you she was Jewish before 
we registered her here.  We were told Jewish was fine.  It would be 
respected and that Waldorf was not a Christian school.  This looks 
like a Christian school to me.  You're messing with her mind."

	"We're not a Christian school, but we do employ metaphors 
that are based in Christianity.  She should have no trouble."

	"Oh, but she does.  She's in tears."

	We agreed to leave her out of the Christmas festival.  That 
made it a long vacation.  Then, in March came her birthday, and they 
told us that the parents would be required to attend a ceremony in 
the classroom.  They rehearsed Feyna for the ritual, and when we 
arrived, we were instructed to sit in two chairs that faced Feyna, 
separated by a bridge.  There was a spiral of votive candles set up 
on the floor, and Feyna was to walk the spiral, then light her own 
candle off of the votive candles and join us over the bridge.  She 
would cross over into a new cycle.  See the symbolism?

	Feyna purposefully strode between the little flames in the 
spiral and then Kristen handed her her candle.  She bent over to 
light it, and her hair caught fire.  Everyone sat there as if this 
were part of the ceremony.  I didn't think so.  Was there anyone in 
this mob of the vacuous who recognized a crisis?  I sprang from my 
seat, and broke up the ceremony by smothering the flames with my 
clothing.  Feyna didn't know what hit her.  The birthday party was 
over.

	We lasted the rest of the school year, a couple of months, 
but said goodbye to Waldorf and its band of merry pranksters when 
summer came along.  We went out to shop for another school for first 
grade.



                                 zZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZz
                                  77777777777777777777777777777777777777777
                                  \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net