TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 126

[Tobie Shapiro]

January 20, 200000000000000000007


Dear Whoever is still reading this,

	Yesterday, I went to Peet's (coffee 
house) and met a man from Jdate, that Jewish 
internet dating service.  I've done this before, 
and met people who have no spark for me.  No 
region in the brain that is alert and 
enthusiastic.  Whatever the reasons, I've never 
yet met someone I could envision seeing again for 
any reason.  Yesterday, I met Richard whose last 
name is still a mystery to me.  He was all right. 
That's big happy.  He was all right.  He wasn't 
the new love of my life.  And he wasn't, oh my 
heart is pitta patting wildly.  But he was all 
right.  We had a lively discussion about any 
number of things, and an hour and something went 
by quickly.  Then I had to pick up and go home to 
Meyshe's viola lesson.  We agreed to see each 
other again.  But those end of the date 
agreements can sometimes be crocky.  I can 
remember nodding my head to someone else's, 
"Let's do this again," and shaking it off as I 
walked away.  But it did my heart good to see 
that there are men out there who have something 
to say and a compassionate heart.  Maybe I'll 
hear from him.  And maybe not.  Maybe I'll 
contact him.




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Happy Birthday

	While you're a child, birthday parties 
are events that have to happen.  You must have a 
birthday party every year, invite your friends, 
and worry about whom you are not inviting, invite 
everyone in the class if that's the school rule. 
Your mom takes care of the cake and ice-cream. 
The libation is either milk or soda, or juice in 
some cases.  The table is set with a paper cloth 
denoting a birthday on it.  There are paper 
plates, plastic forks and spoons, plastic 
disposable glasses, paper napkins.  It is all 
concocted with the understanding that there will 
be a mess.  Everyone sits around the table and 
puts a party hat on, or blows the unfurling 
honker with the feather on the end.  The kids 
make noise, and more noise, and a few mothers 
hover in the kitchen, their hands wrapped around 
coffee mugs, leaning against counters or seated 
at stools around a kitchen island.  These are the 
parents who will stay throughout the party to 
help, or just for the coffee klatch, after which 
they run off to do things without having to watch 
over their child.  A little free time for errands 
or whims.

	When I was young, fathers made token 
guest appearances or didn't show at all, and that 
was normal.  I frankly feared the presence of my 
own father, as there might be an embarrassing 
scene.  He had a way of commandeering the 
attention.  A birthday party is supposed to be 
all for the birthday girl or birthday boy, who 
can sit and be waited on, eat cake and ice-cream 
and bask. Then comes the time of opening 
presents.  This is when all the boxes and bags 
that are wrapped in colourful paper with curled 
ribbons and little cards identifying the giver 
are unwrapped hastily and opened up.  Everyone 
gets to see what everyone else gave, and that can 
be uncomfortable.  One year, I may have been six 
or seven, I got five plastic comb and brush sets 
that came in a cardboard box with a plastic 
window in the top so you could see the comb and 
brush sunk into their intended indentations in 
the packaging.  I swear that my impression was 
that I got seven of them, but it just couldn't 
have been, could it?  Five is safe.

	When it was someone else's birthday, my 
mother would take me shopping to find a present, 
and I'd scrub through the shelves, my eyes 
sweeping around the displays to take in all 
possibilities.  I never wanted to get someone 
something that everyone else would give her, so I 
stayed away from fads.  My mother would bring 
something down from a shelf too high for me to 
see, and show it to me.  "What about this game?" 
I'd look at it with a grudge, because I hadn't 
chosen it.   I tended to get unusual toys, 
scientific experiments or tools, never books.  I 
would reach for art supplies, never dolls, 
strange gizmos and gadgets that performed amazing 
tricks, never brand name advertisements or 
merchandise from the latest Disney movie.  There 
was not as much merchandise then, though there 
were Howdy Doody puppets, and for the teenagers, 
tablets with Elvis' face on them.  Sometimes my 
mother would have to say no to my suggestions 
because she didn't think the birthday girl wanted 
a recording of a Haydn string quartet.  When we'd 
finally made our selection, we'd go home and I'd 
make a card while my mother wrapped the present.

	I wonder, looking back, what time she 
ever had to herself to do things she wanted to 
do, or just to sit and stare out into the growing 
world of people, animals, plants and machines, 
buildings and bodies of water, places to go and 
not go, the world visible and invisible, but not 
apparent when you are fiercely watching over your 
children.  As the years progress, the requisite 
birthday party is reduced to any planned occasion 
with the birthday in mind.  You become too old to 
sit with a party hat on your head and blow out 
candles while everyone yells, "Make a wish!" 
Birthdays become events, peopled with friends or 
family.  They take place with less fanfare, fewer 
guests, fewer party favours, and you yourself 
take a larger part in planning them.

	One birthday, my eighteenth, I decided 
that what I wanted for this special landmark 
birthday was an orchestra in the living room.  I 
wanted to play the Brahms second serenade.  I 
would need to invite enough of the proper 
musicians for the score, and have a volunteer 
conductor.  The musicians, I knew.  I'd been 
playing the cello so intensely that pulling 
together an orchestra was more a matter of 
scheduling than hunting.  I'd had experience with 
Michael Senturia who conducted the University of 
California Symphony Orchestra.  He was energetic 
and marvellous, passionate and dedicated.  He'd 
coached a string quartet that I'd been invited to 
join to play Haydn's opus 76 number 2, and the 
Charles Ives second string quartet at a Hertz 
Hall noon concert.  This was a prestigious series 
of concerts given at the University every 
Wednesday.  They couldn't find a cellist at the 
University who could manage the parts, so they 
came to Berkeley High School for me.  Michael 
Senturia was a rigourous coach and exacting 
conductor.  He agreed to conduct.  So there would 
be something like forty guests.  And my mother 
asked me, "What would you like me to make for 
dinner?"  I answered, as if I weren't putting her 
out in the slightest, "Paella".  And so she made 
Paella for forty.  The orchestra assembled and we 
rehearsed the Brahms second serenade.  All my 
favourite musicians were there.  It was a stellar 
crowd.  Then we broke for dinner.  The living 
room had been cleared out for the orchestra and 
now it was plenty roomy for people to sit and eat 
their dinners.  We were everywhere.  As the sun 
went down, we were all full of music and drunk on 
beauty, the sensuousness of Brahms, the luxuriant 
glow of making music together.

	It wasn't I that started it, but I joined 
in with the long sinuous line of dancers forming 
to do Miserlu, that Greek folk dance that goes 
forward and backward, swivels around and switches 
direction, winds up a step further down the road 
than it began before repeating the sequence.  And 
down the road is where it went.  Out our front 
door, down the stairs, pouring out into the 
street, we danced and sang at the top of our 
lungs, right down the middle of the street.  In 
the midst of all this noise, a couple of police 
cars pulled up.  The cops got out of their cars 
and came to the head of the line.  All dancing 
stopped.

	"Whose party is this?"  one asked.

	I raised my timid hand.  "Mine."

	"How old are you?"  the policeman demanded.

	"Eighteen," I confessed, thinking that at 
age eighteen, I was now qualified for the 
electric chair and full responsibility for my 
actions, no longer a minor.  The policemen told 
us to quiet down.  There had been complaints 
about the noise.  Get out of the street and close 
up shop.  Tiptoeing away, we dispersed.  Everyone 
packed up their instruments and skedaddled.  The 
party was over.  That year I got no presents, but 
it was the richest birthday I ever had.  Go 
listen to the Brahms second serenade.  It will 
sweep you up in its arms and carry you away. 
Away.  Away.  It will carry you away.



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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net