TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 120

[Tobie Shapiro]

January 14, 200000000007


Dear School of Fish and University of Writers,

	I posted my profile and my mug on Jdate, 
an internet dating service for Jewish singles. 
Every once in a while I get word from them that 
someone has selected me out of a pile of 
offerings and has written me a note.  I go and 
collect the note and read the profile, and there 
you have it.   Today, three messages came in from 
strangers.  I really ought to update my 
photographs is what I think, but I don't have any 
more recent photographs than the old ones I 
posted, except for my picture of me gurning for 
the international gurning competition in Cumbria, 
England.  Those of you who haven't seen it should 
go directly to the Cumbria, England site and find 
the gurning competition candidates.:  Try this: 
http://www.cumbria.uk.com/cumbria/fun/gurn.htm

	I don't mean to scare you.  But wouldn't 
that be a great inclusion in my set of self 
portraits for a dating service?  Don't you think 
it speaks to my sense of humour, and my 
willingness to be not your usual camper?  But 
they rejected it.

	Recently, I met a fellow from Jdate.  He 
sounded good on pixel, but when I met him it was 
flat.  He cringed when I said, "Classical Music". 
Now, how could that work out?  He was nice 
enough, but I had to walk away being depressed. 
My "situation" frightens off some of the men, I'm 
sure.  I've been told.  Single mom, on disability 
with two teenagers with disabilities, living with 
her mother, not sure if she can afford a house in 
a decent neighborhood.  Doesn't sound good, does 
it.  Maybe I should wait until I have that house 
in an indecent neighborhood.  Maybe I should 
throw in the sponge?  (Where did that expression 
come from?).  Maybe it's not in the cards for me 
to meet someone just yet.  I'm ready for that. 
It's not such an awful sentence.



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Crisis intervention

	After the big fire that destroyed our 
house and everything in it that I couldn't fit in 
the car, we moved seven times in three years.  I 
don't mean there were seven places we lived, just 
that we picked up and replaced ourselves 
somewhere else seven times.  The first time was 
damn easy because we had nothing to move, no 
personal effects but the carload I'd saved, not 
even a toothbrush or a chair.  But every time we 
moved, subsequently, we had accumulated more 
belongings, and more belongings, until when we 
finally bought a house to call our own, we had 
boxes and boxes.  Of course nothing was 
organized.  We'd lived out of boxes in someone 
else's house for three years.  The kids had been 
growing up without any sense of permanence. 
Everything around them belonged to someone else. 
They asked me, "Is this ours?"  "Is that ours?" 
"Can I keep the picture I drew in school?"

	It took us three years because we had to 
sue the insurance company.  That's just one of 
the perks that comes along with losing your home 
and everything in it (minus one small carload) in 
a major catastrophe.  An act of God, the City of 
Oakland wanted us to believe.  But actually, it 
was an act of man.  Particularly some men who had 
been having a barbecue that started a fire the 
day before the big event.  The Oakland Fire 
Department was dispatched to put the fire out, 
but they didn't stay to watch it.  On the 
hottest, windiest day of the year, they just left 
the scene.  The next day, the heat and wind 
stirred up the embers, and the rest was history. 
The insurance company would have loved, "an act 
of God," because they wouldn't have had to pay us 
diddly.  As it was, they squeezed us and cheated 
us, lied and connived.  So in order to get on 
with our lives, we had to sue them.

	A lawsuit is a terrible thing.  When 
someone says, "So, sue me!" you must set your 
teeth on edge and shudder your last convulsive 
shudder.  They know not what they say.  No one 
could possibly sue for fun.  It is not a sport. 
For thirty days, their lawyers grilled me on 
details of what we'd lost down to fifty cent 
pieces of manuscript paper.  They pursued us, and 
tried to wear us down.  David would have folded 
up and quit, but I saw that if we didn't prevail, 
we would have nothing to start a new life with, 
and I also saw my family in need of security.  So 
I dug in my heels and persisted where a saner 
human being might have said, "You know?  This 
hurts too much.  I've decided to stop."  Thank 
God for my dysfunctional upbringing.  If it 
weren't for the psychosis of my original family 
unit, I would never have been crazy enough to 
tolerate the abuse.

	So we wound up, in 1994, moving into a 
grand house on a coveted street in Berkeley, we 
and our myriad boxes without furniture.  That had 
to come later.  We'd been living at my parents' 
house for a year before we could move into the 
big old house on Hillcrest Road, the twins and 
David and I in one room.  This was the first move 
that we had to hire a moving company for.  Just 
up the street a while and to the right.

	On the second day in the new house, we 
opened up the kitchen's sliding doors and let the 
twins run outside to discover the back yard while 
we went about the awful business of unpacking.  I 
had my head in a big box and was rummaging for 
something to bring out and have a place for, when 
Meyshe came hopping in from the back yard 
beseeching me to follow him out.  "Look!  Look!" 
he cried.  Any language from Meyshe was worth a 
celebration, and absolutely, you follow his 
verbal instructions to encourage more language. 
Oh, and to be civil and a good parent, too.  I 
followed him outside.  He led me to an overgrown 
heap of grass and fallen leaves.  "Mushroom," he 
shouted, pointing.  And indeed, there was a 
mushroom.  A giant mushroom maybe a foot or more 
in diameter, a giant mushroom maybe a foot or 
more in diameter with a neat arc of a bite taken 
out of it.

	"Did you eat this, Meyshe?"

	"Mushroom!"

	Everything I knew about wild mushrooms 
could fill less than a byte.  But I knew that 
people who accidentally, or just plain stupidly, 
ate the wrong wild mushroom, would wind up dead 
or needing a liver transplant, clinging to life 
by sheer will and a powerful yen for safe cream 
of mushroom soup.  We were all in boxes.  Where 
was the ipecac syrup?  I thought hard.  I hadn't 
packed it.  It was still at Gramma and Grampa's 
house.  I was getting Feyna ready to shoot out 
the front door and had Meyshe's shoes on.  I 
called my mother to alert her.  I called the 
doctor to alert them.  They enthusiastically 
authorized the immediate use of ipecac.  Then 
bring him in.  We were out the front door but 
were held up by David who was in the back yard 
removing a sample of the mushroom and placing it 
methodically into a plastic ziplock bag.

	"What are you doing that for?  This is an emergency.  Hurry!"

	We drove up to my mother's and father's 
house and I was out of the car with Meyshe before 
it stopped.  I ran in, dragging him behind me.  I 
took him upstairs to the bathroom and fetched the 
ipecac.  I fed him his portion.

	At this point, my father forbade Meyshe 
to be inside the house, because he was going to 
vomit, and he didn't want a mess.

	"He'll use the toilet like everyone else 
who throws up.  Please, don't put him outside."

	But he was adamant and exiled poor Meyshe 
to the back patio.  I went outside and stood by 
him all through his sickness and confusion.  I 
told him what we were doing and why we had to 
make him throw up the mushroom.  But how much 
sense it all made, I am not sure.  Chances were, 
of course, that there was nothing poisonous about 
the mushroom, but there was a chance that it 
could kill him.  I work swiftly in a crisis.  I 
am a good person to have around.  My whole 
childhood was a crisis, and I learned to think 
quickly and act decisively.  Meyshe bent over and 
puked, and he puked again in the bushes.  Then he 
puked on the cement and he puked on his shoes. 
When the puking was finished, I cleaned him up 
while getting him ready to go to the doctor.  But 
where was David?  We couldn't go without David, 
though I contemplated it.  Where was the father?

	"David!  We have to leave!  We have to 
take Meyshe to the doctor.  Where the hell are 
you?"

	I made a quick run through the main floor 
and found him off in the library looking up 
mushrooms in the Encyclopedia Brittanica.  "What 
good will that do now?!"  I was amazed; truth is 
I was alarmed.  I felt like I had three children 
and the biggest one was the hardest to move. 
"You can do that later!" I screamed.  And then I 
apologized for screaming.  "We have to get him to 
the doctor.  We can't find out now whether that 
mushroom was poison or benign.  I'm leaving with 
the kids.  Are you coming?"

	He lingered at the M-N book.  I left and 
piled the kids in the car.  I couldn't leave 
Feyna with my mother because I couldn't trust her 
with my father around, and I couldn't leave Feyna 
with her own father, because he was distracted 
and usually inattentive.  I couldn't trust him 
either.  So many emergencies to think about.  So 
many angles to a single story line.  I was 
holding on to the boat with my feet and the dock 
with my fists.  As I was about to pull off from 
the curb, David emerged from the house, still 
lost in thought, pondering the genus and sub 
genus of mushrooms.

	Dr. Rhea checked Meyshe over thoroughly 
and felt the danger was past.  I'd done the right 
thing with the ipecac syrup.  Couldn't take a 
chance.

	On the way home, David spoke about 
contacting some expert at the University in 
Berkeley who might know exactly what kind of 
mushroom Meyshe ate.  I was somehow not 
interested.  In fact, David's reaction to the 
crisis of the unknown mushroom frightened me. 
What if I someday needed his help in a crisis? 
Would he be doing research on the history of the 
arrow in western civilization while a good 
example of one was sticking through my chest and 
out my back?


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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net