Jinx

On evenings when he has late meetings, my father often calls me as he drives home. We talk about politics, literature, crazy people we've encountered, our family, my mom (hi mom!) until he pulls up the gravel hill, past the cows, and into the garage.

Tonight I told him about the thing that has been gnawing on me for days and how I can't see the way past it. He listened and told me he understood, compared it to some times in his own life, quoted a good poet. He doesn't really have an answer, you see, because we are built the same way -- mirror images, or maybe more like those stacking Russian dolls -- and any answer lies in a complete reprogramming of the way that we are both hardwired to respond. More and more our conversations go like this: my problems, his parables, no answer. It has taken me awhile to adjust, to realize that the point of these exchanges is not an answer. This has been the crux of growing up for me - the bittersweet exchange of hard, clear answers for a more reciprocal understanding. I understand. I don't know.

I really wanted an answer tonight, though. Something to make it all clear up and go my way. But I let that go somewhere toward the end of the conversation and just listened to his story instead and realized suddenly how much more important it is to have someone say I understand instead of Now, this is what you need to do.

You have to remember this conversation forever, I thought as I hung up, you have to remember to talk to your daughter this way some day. I don't know how I'll remember the particular things my father said tonight, though; how I will hold them distinct in my heart and mind from a life time's worth of conversations about how to be gracious in a difficult world. Who needs answers when you have examples?



(And here's a poem I wrote about my father ten years ago, when we were fighting because I wanted to drop AP Calculus and AP Physics C.)

I Removed Atticus from the LIST today

Don't worry.
The others are still there
and someday
(probably soon)
he'll rejoin F. Scott and
George Washington
among those honorable
and insightful men
laid out on the list which defines
you

for

me.

But Calculus isn't camelias
and I am neither Jem
nor Scout
(It doesn't work both ways;
it is an unfair game,
I acknowledge)
nor am I able to integrate
Physics C into a novel that
you've always told me to read
a word game
a lesson on the Magyars
(your people).

See how truly I am your daughter.
Even now, my anger cannot last
as your genes in me dictate.

Consider Atticus reinstated.

discrete, related

Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.
- Walker Percy

1. The left-handed captain and I went sailing in the middle of the night, because the wind was right and it seemed the thing to do. Even though I see him maybe once a year, usually at a wedding, we both rank the invention of the keel higher than the ipad on the list of man-made wonders, which means that he gets it, that we speak the same language in this incomprehensible babbling world. We unwrapped our bandaged, stinging hearts to the night air. We watched the grace of the wind in the sails. Let's go to the Bahamas he said and pointed the bow toward a new life. For awhile we sailed as close to the wind as you can, between the longitudinal lines of past and future. He turned the boat around, though. A good captain, a willing first mate, fair seas, good wind, gin, limes, and stars clear enough to guide can not change this fact: so much of where we go is determined by who we've left behind, and what waits for us back on land.

2. I had 4 patients the other day, all men with heart failure, all dying alone. The eldest one told me, as I went through all three of his wallets cataloguing his valuables, that he never trusted anyone enough to get married. The youngest man, only ten years older than me, looked old enough to be my father's father. When I went in to his room to change his IV, he grabbed my hand and said The doctor said it's too late for me to change - you don't think it's too late for me to change do you?

I didn't want to say it to a dying man, but aren't we all dying?

It's never too late, but sometimes it's too late.

3. I run it around and around my mind, like worry beads. People choose what they choose. People choose what they choose. In these words there is an answer, in this truth there is rest.

The Little Things

There are so many things to be thankful for in spring, not the least of which are purple grapes, thunderstorms, and Claritin D.

Easter Vigil

All day I have been reading articles about controlling infection in post-cardiac surgery patients. They have titles like Mediastinitis Following Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery: Pathogenesis, Clinical Presentation, Risks, and Management and Bugs are eating my soul: a case study of sternal abscess, osteomyelitis, and mediastinitis complicating a closed sternal fracture. These articles explain the best medicine has to offer when it comes to treating boggy, calcified, or rotten hearts. We use the strongest antibiotics we have, because once you're heart is infected, it's very hard to root out the blight. Necrotic tissue does not just come back to life.

In a few minutes I will leave for church, where we will have the biggest party of the year. We are celebrating because our hard hearts have been softened and He has washed them white as snow.

wabi sabi

The sky is so blue it hurts.

strangers in a strange land

And when he said the sakura are not the right color here I knew exactly what he meant.

How I Make it Through the Night

It is no small thing to ask someone to watch over you all night. Parents know this, sure. But imagine for a minute that it's not your own soft child in your care, but crusty Uncle Frank, the homeless woman outside Dunkin Donuts, or a man who only only screams in Korean. Maybe you've been caring for a houseful of kids, working your other job, going to school all day, but would you please just buck the strong pull of circadian tides and make sure these people don't die in the next 12 hours?

It helps to think back to the days when we would spend the night dancing after working all day. This is a different kind of club; keep moving to the hum of ventilators, the beat of alarms. Find your rhythm. Keep smiling. All these men, competing for my attention, demanding round after round of liquid & lots of charm. What'll it be this time, Joe? Normal Saline or another 1/2 of Lactated Ringer? As dawn breaks through the window, Squirrel will come find me to say, finally, she's had enough and we will take off our shoes and limp to breakfast through the stirring streets.

If I don't feel like dancing, I think of the last scenes of The Sound of Music and how the poor von Trapp children sang their hearts out at the Saltzberg Festival before climbing through the Alps all night to freedom. Keep climbing this dark mountain and ignore the heaviness of your limbs. Be thankful you are not fleeing for your life, carrying Gretl on your back. I hum Edelweiss to myself and move a little faster, looking over my shoulder just to make sure.

Mostly, though, I think of all the long, sleepless flights I've taken around the world and how they share the same surreal quality of the cardiac transplant unit at night. The dim lighting, the incessant call bells, uncomfortable seats. The processed air drys out your contacts as you glance at your watch again, trying to calculate the time on the ground. My mood is pressurized as I walk the hall checking on my patients. We are all passengers tonight, flying through the night, hanging on the silver balance. Hoping to make it home safely to the comfort of our own beds.