TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 131

[Tobie Shapiro]

January 25, 200000000000007


Dear Peoples,

	Yesterday was my turn at the writers' 
workshop on Creative Non-Fiction to have my work 
critiqued.  I'd selected four Life Stories and 
printed them out for the class.  They went home 
with them last week along with a sheet of my 
questions, just hints for what I wanted to know 
from the exercize.  And yesterday, I sat there 
while they all talked for four minutes each about 
my excerpts.  I have thin skin is what I 
discovered again. I thought maybe I'd grown older 
and wiser, more level headed, sturdier.  But I 
hadn't.  The odd thing is, it was mostly praise. 
They think I'm very funny, and they care about 
the person in the stories (that was one of my 
questions:  Is there any reason at all that you 
care about the narrator?  Why?)  I included the 
zoo story, that awful thing with my father.  And 
they were all horrified at the scene.  But some 
said it was too much information, and the piece 
wandered, which it did.  All the things everyone 
said were legitimate criticisms, and the rule 
from the instructor who is excellent is never to 
be negative.  Never tear anything apart.  Say 
things in a positive way.  So I figured that 
whatever they said that was partially negative 
was held back quite a bit and reworded for my 
comfort.  When I took home their comments and 
read them later, I cringed.  This morning I felt 
like maybe I shouldn't be a writer.  Well, I 
shouldn't if I can't take the well meant comments 
of a few friendly readers.  Why is my skin so 
thin?  Why is it so hard for me to take the 
commentary?  Why do I torture myself so?




 
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The rules as practiced in pre-school

	I looked all over for a co-operative 
nursery school.  This was going to be necessary 
if I wanted to keep Feyna and Meyshe together. 
Meyshe was no where near ready to be left off at 
a pre-school with your average care giver.  This 
was a job for MOM, and if I were going to be 
there, it had to be a co-operative.  When I was 
little, co-operatives were the very thing.  They 
were everywhere, and all the progressive mothers 
put their kids in co-ops.  But between my 
childhood and my children's childhoods came the 
women's movement and now most of the mommies were 
at their high paying prestigious jobs.  What they 
needed was day care: drop the kids off and go to 
work.  Come back at the end of the day and pick 
them up.  But when I got pregnant, and thought 
about raising a child, I decided I wanted to be 
there for the raising.  Besides, I had no job to 
show up to.  No one hires expressive artists to 
express themselves for a living.  Maybe if I'd 
had a career in the arts, was recognized and 
rewarded for my work, I wouldn't have had 
children, and that will just have to remain a 
mystery forever.  Nothing like  a mystery forever.

	At the point at which Meyshe and Feyna 
were ready for pre-school, Meyshe didn't have a 
diagnosis yet, but I knew he was not growing up 
along the same path as the rest of the  little 
toddlers.  He ran around the house listening only 
to his own internal voice, unable to communicate 
verbally, but capable of writing and reading 
notes.  He wrestled free of standard discipline 
and only took my direction.  He avoided eye 
contact.  He busied himself grabbing and 
manipulating whatever he could find, spinning pot 
lids, and using letters, refrigerator magnets 
alphabets, to spell.  He spelled and spelled, 
fascinated by the putting together of symbols to 
make words that meant something in the physical 
world.  I would engage him with conversation, 
back and forth on the floor with letters from the 
pile of letters.

	Meyshe

	Mama

	Meyshe letters

	Meyshe alphabet

	alphabet words

	spell alphabet

	elephant

	big elephant

	elephant boy

	It was pretty much a ten tantrum day. 
When the order of his world fell apart, or when 
he was denied what he wanted to do, he would 
scream and run.  I would have to get him in a 
hold, cross my legs around him and wrap my arms 
around his arms, holding his hands across his 
chest.  He'd kick and scream, arch his back, 
shriek, shake his head.  Sometimes I had to lie 
down on top of him.  But if I could keep him held 
tightly, immobilize him, he would eventually calm 
down and we could all go on with our lives, until 
the next tantrum.  He needed this desperately, 
because the world was making no sense to him, and 
usual physical stimuli like sound, vision, and 
touch were distorted to him.  Sometimes in the 
midst of racing around throwing things, he would 
come running to me and grab my hands, wrap 
himself up in my embrace and force me to sit him 
down and put him in the tantrum hold.

	You don't drop this guy off at a day care 
center.  So I found a co-operative, run by 
parents and a teacher named Dianne.  Dianne had 
the magic touch with children.  They followed her 
around and watched her face for cues on what to 
do, how to react.  Dianne was an amazon.  Must 
have been six feet tall, and strong.  She had a 
curly mop of dark brown hair, and always dressed 
in jeans.  She was used to the adoration of her 
charges, and she didn't share the caretaker 
position gracefully.  When it was the mothers' or 
fathers' days to do school duty, Dianne gave the 
orders, and the parents took them.

	That is, except for me, because I was 
there every day watching over Meyshe.  He seldom 
joined in the simple games the kids were learning 
to play, like duck, duck, goose, which I never 
figured out myself.  He preferred to sit in the 
playground and sift dirt through his fingers, 
watching it fall to the earth where he'd pick it 
up and sift it down through his fingers again. 
The group games were just too much for him.  Too 
many faces, too many rules, too much eye contact. 
He related to the people in his family, but not 
to these thousands and millions of others who 
invaded his small world and demanded too much of 
him.

	What he liked to do was jigsaw puzzles. 
There was a cupboard full of them, and he could 
do the baby puzzles blind folded with one arm 
tied behind his back.  So, I found the puzzles 
meant for the kindergartners, and those came 
closer to his capabilities.  He'd learn a puzzle 
the first time through, then he'd have memorized 
it.  He'd do the puzzle from the top down.  Then 
he'd do it from a corner spreading outward, then 
just placing each piece where it was going to 
wind up and filling in the blanks.  The puzzles 
began to bore him; they were too easy.  I brought 
puzzles from home and donated them to the school. 
Two hundred, three hundred piece puzzles.  And 
Meyshe would master them the same way he mastered 
the smaller ones.  But this was deemed illegal by 
Dianne.  He was not to use the kindergartners' 
puzzles and I was told to gather the puzzles I'd 
donated and bring them back home with me.  They 
were age inappropriate.  It didn't do any good to 
argue with Dianne.  But this limited what Meyshe 
could do during play time.  He was back outside 
sifting through the dirt.

	Dianne actually resented Meyshe, and even 
though I was grateful to the co-operative for 
accepting Meyshe, I couldn't stop myself from 
feeling bitter about Dianne's bias against him. 
She plain didn't like him.  He wouldn't respond 
with the proper adulation due her, and he didn't 
listen to her words.  He was different, very 
different.  She took no pleasure in his amazing 
abilities.  The kindergartners did.  They came 
rushing in a group to surround him.  One of them 
said, "Watch this!  Okay, Meyshe, spell rainbow." 
She gave him a piece of paper and a crayon.  He 
wrote out RAINBOW on the paper and turned it back 
to her.  "See?!" she said to the others, and they 
all ran away.  Dianne saw this as a disruption of 
the regular order, and told the kindergartners to 
leave Meyshe alone.  I did what I could to 
educate Dianne about Meyshe's special needs, but 
I was a resounding failure.  I flunked.  She 
wanted him like the others, and he wouldn't be.

	On the last day of school before the 
summer break, all the children gathered up their 
drawings and constructions to bring home.  Dianne 
was waving goodbye to each little child, and each 
little child waved back, thanked Dianne for a 
wonderful year and danced off.  When it came 
Meyshe's turn, there was a sort of a stand off. 
Dianne stood there waiting for Meyshe to conform 
to the procedure, but he didn't.

	"Goodbye, Meyshe.  Have a nice summer," 
she said.  Meyshe ducked his head down (duck, 
duck, goose) and ran at Dianne who was caught 
completely off guard.  He rammed her with his 
hard bony skull right on her pubic bone.  She 
gave a cry of pain and surprise.  I asked Dianne 
if she were all right, and I apologized profusely 
for Meyshe.  "Just go, she seethed, through 
clenched teeth.

	Feyna had been watching all this, of 
course, and on our way out she asked me, "Will 
Dianne let me come back now?"

	"You didn't do anything to her," I answered.

	"But I'm Meyshe, too," she said.




 
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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net