TheBanyanTree: High School Graduation

[Tobie Shapiro]

June 15, 200000007


Dear Kin,

	Here is last night's journal entry.  Kind of a current day Life Story.



	This was Meyshe's high school graduation 
day.  There was a hitch.  He came down with a 
rotten cold, right in the middle of a heat wave, 
too.  Outside, the sidewalks are softening and 
the asphalt is melting.  That puts a drag on the 
tires, doesn't it!  So Meyshe lay around all day 
suffering under the heat.  I kept asking him how 
he felt.

	"Crummy," he'd say.  "I feel crummy." 
And I'd give him a sigh of empathy.  His head was 
all stuffed with mucous.  He snortled and moaned.

	"Do you mind if I moan?" he asked me.

	"Go ahead, Meyshe.  I understand."

	Then he stretched himself out on the 
couch in the television room and delivered a 
lonesome, hopeless moan into the hot air.  I 
listened to his unhappy noise and instantly felt 
the same.

	So I made all the necessary phone calls 
to all the family who were planning on travelling 
through the awful rush hour traffic to get to the 
graduation by 5:30, without dinner in their 
tummies, and sitting in the oppressive hot house 
- the church next door to Children's Learning 
Center - patiently or impatiently bearing witness 
to the procession of students, the disabled ones 
who fall through the cracks in the public school 
system - no programs suitable for them.  Too far 
out at the edge of the bell curve.  And 
Children's Learning Center takes them in, gives 
them an education and trains them to be able to 
learn, even though they are deaf and autistic, 
aphasic, have auditory processing dysfunctions, 
hyperactivity, anxiety disorders, Tourette's 
Syndrome, Asperger's, the dropsy and Hacket's 
disease, time warp, Hissop's Cradle and worse. 
They take these lost kids and help them find and 
found lives.

	I called everyone and told them that 
there wouldn't be a need to trek out to Alameda 
for the graduation, and so there wouldn't be a 
post-graduation dinner at Pomegranate, the only 
restaurant to which every finicky, diet 
restricted kvetch will agree to go.  Then I 
called the restaurant.

	"Remember the reservation for eight or 
ten people at 8:45, name is Shapiro?  Well, 
everything has changed but the last name.  Not 
eight or ten people, instead zero; not at 8:45, 
not at all.  You can stop cleaning the house and 
put away the vacuum cleaner.  We can't come.  So 
sorry."

	And I sat at the computer  nearly all 
day, my arm pits stinging, my hair damp from 
sweat.  I played solitaire, the only thing I was 
good for while baking in the vengeful weather. 
Go away, sun!  Bring me fog.  Fog, glorious fog, 
a cold wind to blow the heat east over the hills, 
far away, somewhere inland where the mutant 
population actually glories in the stuff.  Climb 
right into the oven, reach out and turn the knob 
to 375ª, eat chips and swill beer, baste 
themselves with Gatorade.  Don't come out until 
they're crisp, even all over.

	Meyshe didn't seem to mind missing his 
own graduation.  He was too busy being hot and 
sick to care.  Feyna cared more about it than 
Meyshe did.  She was passionate about him 
rallying to make it to the ceremony.  "This won't 
ever happen again," she pleaded.

	But he stared out at her from his rheumy 
eyes, sneezed heartily on his sleeve.  She got 
the message.  Okay, so as long as they had some 
pieces of their frozen birthday cake for a 
dessert celebration.  Then it would fulfill the 
function.  She's still missing her own formal 
graduation from high school, because she opted 
out of bending unto breaking under the crushing 
weight of her high school's tyrannous rule, and 
taking the California High School Proficiency 
Exam, got her diploma that way, without a cap and 
gown, without a ritual, without all the relatives 
and friends, just a letter in the mail six weeks 
after the fact, confirming that she'd passed. 
Congratulations.

	When it was time to go to sleep, Meyshe 
came into my room, beaten by the heat, escaping 
his sauna of a bedroom.  All he's got is one 
medium sized table fan that oscillates feebly, 
moving an invisible puff of stagnant air in the 
general direction of his pillow.  It can't be 
much help.

	I've got more vigorous a fan.  I shove it 
right up to the edge of my bed and blast my head 
with a forceful wind, my hair flying away from my 
head, loose papers sailing in every direction, 
papers that are held down under weighty objects 
snapping noisily, trying to get away.  Meyshe 
would have slept downstairs on the couch, but 
Grama was there watching television, so could he 
sleep in my room with the fan?  It made a ruckus 
so he could sleep.  Can't sleep without a 
background noise.  And of course, the answer is 
yes.  Welcome to my sweltering demise.  He set 
himself a bed on the floor at the foot of my bed, 
a box of kleenex nearby.

	I asked him, again, if he felt bad about 
being too sick to go to his own graduation.

	"Not really," he answered, and snorted a 
rumbling gob of snot back up into the higher 
recesses of his nose.

	"What about the speech you were going to make?"

	He plunged his hand into his pocket, 
pulled out a thin stack of three by fives.

	"Would you read it to me?"

	He flipped through the cards.

	"Thank you very much, everyone!  I am so 
delighted to be participating in this grand 
graduation ceremony!  First off, I want to show 
my gratitude for everyone that has been such 
magnificent teachers and loyal friends while I 
was a student here at Children's Learning Center.

	"I would describe my days of field trips 
at the Exploratorium, Japan Town, the San 
Francisco Center, SFMOMA, and a lot of the hikes 
as enriching and brilliant.  Those memories would 
remain with me for the rest of my life.

	"My favorite subjects were Art, Ceramics, 
Geography, and Literature, because I want to know 
so much about the world and I love to learn.  I 
would like to thank Elana for teaching me many 
subjects I am really passionate about.

	"I would like to thank my mother for 
being such a compassionate parent and for her 
insightful humor.  I would also like to thank my 
sister, Feyna, and my Grandmother.  I also thank 
Debbie for being my speech therapist ever since I 
was around 8 or 9, and then Liz Isono, my 
occupational therapist, whom for I've been 
working with for eight years.

	"Finally, I would want to thank Jane, 
Bren, Nancy, Lela, Allen, Nicque, Amy, Paul, and 
all of my teachers for their tremendous support. 
My friends gave me such joy and laughter.  Thank 
you, Ryan, Rebecca, Steve and Sara.

	"My plans for the future are going to a 4 
year college to major in the Arts; having a 
family; and participate in social and 
environmental activities in the community.

	"I appreciate all of you here, Adieu!"

	He sneezed loudly into his sleeve, then 
stripped to his undershorts, got into his 
makeshift bed, and fell asleep instantly.  I 
stared at him for a long time before I spun 
around to get my head closer to the fan.

-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net