Rocks optional.
Absolut Boston
Several dashes bitters
Juice of one blood orange
Juice of 1/2 lime.
I recently stayed at the Park Hyatt D.C. in Georgetown, and cannot emphasize enough what a lovely and relaxing experience it was. The service was unparalleled, and I had the most delicious whiskey sour ever, a sublime concoction of 18 year old Sazerac and blended-to-order sour mix. It was accompanied by WARM pistachios and the Washington Post. The bed was comfortable, the shower wonderful, and the front desk responsive and friendly without pretension. I highly, highly recommend it.
My father puts the sharpest point on paradox. He’s masculine to the degree of being weird, but he loves to dance. I remember more than one woman from his legendary list of girlfriends whispering into my twelve-year old ear, “Your dad is the best dancer.” When I’d tell him that later, he’d pat my thigh with his hairy knuckled hand and say, “Too bad for her, you’re my favorite partner.” No matter how many women he dated, or how much I hated them, I clung to the knowledge that he liked me best, and that I held the most important opinion. I can guarantee that he never read a parenting book or a word of self-help in his life, and that this tiny (to him) reassurance came easily and naturally.
He is a cop, but he has a softer side. He admires Martha Stewart and once made a lampshade out of a white pickle bucket. He just pried the handle off and drilled a hole in the bottom, then inverted it onto the lamp and topped it with a lovely finial. He made his own coffee table, and can sew a few things from dish towels. He irons the crispest cotton shirt. He is fastidious about his clothing and hygiene. His getting-ready-to-leave-the-house ritual regularly spans over two hours.
Every Friday night, he took out his shoe-shine kit, a small metal bin with an inclined top (to set his boot on) that he made himself. Inside, there was Kiwi polish; black and brown paste. A small wooden brush with a round head and soft bristles caked with polish and a rectangular buffing brush with bristles so soft you could barely feel them on the back of your hand. After showering and shaving and combing and hair-spraying (that’s right, I said hair-spraying) and carefully tucking his white Hanes T-shirt into methodically pressed Wranglers, but before buckling his belt, he’d sit in his favorite chair and smear polish onto his boots with the little round brush, working it in ever-increasing circles across the tops.
He had a lot of boots: ostrich, lizard, calf, elk, snake. He would work for several minutes on the right and then the left, and then get up to go look at himself in the mirror, a break to let the polish cure. He’d return then, in his sock-feet, to inspect the right one. Each time, he would explain to me that one could tell when it was done by noting that the thin coat of polish had turned dull. He’d take out the buffing brush (what were those bristles? Boar? They were so soft and tapered at the permanently dyed black ends) and flick it across the top and the instep, never forgetting the heel, until the boots shone like a worn-smooth saddle. Every Friday.
The sharp petrol and charcoal scent of Kiwi boot polish is the singular olfactory sensation I associate with him, unless you count gasoline. When my parents divorced, he had to take up cooking for my sister and me half of the time; a great stretch for a man who eats only so he won’t faint. He particularly liked to cook outside, because he is somewhat uncomfortable indoors. I remember him kneeling beside his black Silverado, sucking on a stiff yellowed plastic tube run straight down into the gas tank, drawing the gasoline closer and closer, until it zipped round the curve and blasted across his tongue. He’d quickly stick his thumb in his mouth and cover the hole until he could drain the petrol into a mayonnaise jar, then pour it over the bag of Kingston briquettes in the grill and light a match, spitting gasoline the whole time. The result of this process was an inferno rivaled only by solar flares. Until I was twenty years old, I thought hot dogs tasted like gasoline, and was startled to eat a frankfurter which had been steamed.
He’s a clever practical joker; he has enticed me to eat an acorn by claiming it would be delicious (it is, I assure you, more like taking the morning-after swig of cheap Canadian whiskey only to realize that someone has put their cigarette out in the glass). He has tricked my children into eating bitter pears. He once spent an entire afternoon constructing a fishing line-and-pulley system to drop a rubber tarantula onto my mother’s shoulder while she was visiting friends (did I mention they’re not married anymore?) He loved to set up his jokes in the most elaborate fashion, but now I can see that the part he enjoyed most was the retelling of the story: “You should have seen your mother’s face when she realized that girl wasn’t really my pregnant twenty-year old girlfriend…”
These activities balance his more stern side. He’s law-and-order; he won’t wear a black cowboy hat and always chooses gray felt because black is “for outlaws.” His favorite television includes “The Lone Ranger” which he takes very seriously. He never tolerated lying or deceit, and told me once he would shoot anyone who hurt me. Of course, he would shoot them in the legs and then put them in jail, because the good guys don’t kill anyone unless they absolutely have to. He loves guns, and prizes them as only a lawman can. Once, he was practicing his quick-draw from a new holster, admiring himself in the mirror, when he drew and fired through several walls of our trailer; the bullet lodged in a dresser, an incident which is not yet forgotten by my mother.
He taught me to shoot his .45 when I could barely lift it, mostly because he thought the kick from the .357 might be too much. He kept his personal revolver locked and unloaded in a bank deposit bag in his desk drawer, and his service handgun, a .45 or a 9mm Glock, loaded under the seat of the car when he wasn’t at work. He showed us hollow-point bullets and Kevlar vests and night-vision scopes. He had a collection of items purely for conversation: brass knuckles, a small steel knife with a boot clip, a shotgun he never touched unless it was to pawn until payday.
As an adult, on a visit to Oklahoma, I wanted to go to lunch with some friends, but had not rented a car. I asked if I could borrow his new shiny truck, and he, the most gracious person in the Universe, said sure, but he had a caveat; he explained that the truck’s tool box was “full of weapons,” and that I should be careful to lock it up when not attended. I agreed that that was reasonable and started for the driveway. He walked me to the car, and as I was unlocking the door, I thought of the transmission and said, “Is it automatic?”
He looked at me with incredulous gravity, and said, “Yeah, you just pull the trigger.”
I confess that for a long time I only really, truly loved red wine. I was attracted to oaky California Zinfandel (although ultimately only carnally satisfied by Chateauneuf). I wandered long in the gardens of Rioja, and feasted on Super Tuscan after Super Tuscan. But then I had Meursault. And Condrieu. And lush Alsatian Pinot Gris. And slowly, the composition of my case of wine shifted to the whiter side of pale. Now I find myself drinking white all year long. This wine is made from a blend which I initially questioned as perhaps too… fusion: verdehlo, vermentino, sauvignon blanc and viognier. Luckily, I didn’t read the label first, and so I bought it anyway. It’s sturdy, reasonable, quick-witted and bright; not unlike Senator Sherrod Brown on the Senate floor this week. The vermentino gives a nice acidity, and the steely sauvignon fences in the over-the-top fruit that California viognier can bring. It’s a white wine for winter; comforting and substantial, but affordable enough for parties.
When the last leaves in Ohio fall, my fickle wine-love turns back to red. It’s not quite cold enough for zinfandel or cabernet, and so my new favorite French thing under $20 (It’s $13 in Ohio) is the Kermit Lynch Cuvee 2007 Cotes-du-Rhone, a blend of grenache, cinsault, mourvedre, and syrah. It’s expansive, soft but not flabby, finely-honed but not sharp. It has such an elegant scent that at first I worried it wouldn’t have that particular southern wet leaves-and-mushroom character, but it does, just woven with plum and black pepper and iron and leather. I suggest cancelling any plans for the evening in favor of The List and the Cotes-du-Rhone.
The List, Rosanne Cash
Just when it seems that the most haunting goose-bump inducing vehicle for this woman’s voice was Black Cadillac (or was it Rules of Travel? Or Interiors?), she releases this, a stunning collection of some of the best American/roots songs ever written, as if they were meant for her voice alone. She’s joined by Rufus, and Bruce, and yes, Neko. It’s crystalline, clear, and resonant. Be sure to get the itunes version, as it’s currently the only way to get the track with Neko Case, which is worth the price of the album.
It’s okay, Doc. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all!
Why does everyone always make that same joke? I always wonder if it’s meant to comfort me or the joker. If I’ve seen a thousand, does that mean I might be less interested? Don’t they want me to be interested? They came to me for advice, after all. Presumably it is meant to de-sexualize nudity. Like if I’ve seen it all, it probably doesn’t turn me on anymore. That is the most depressing thought possible. One of the popular complaints about doctors is that we have a hard time seeing the patient as a person, that we don’t relate on an individual human level. And yet, when faced with that uncomfortable interchange where clothing becomes an issue, the person at the point of revelation objectifies herself to remove any sensual element, to ease the momentary conflict that represents both a glimpse of a power imbalance and a fleeting vulnerability. Sometimes, though, it’s the physician who is assailable.
In medical school, we had to practice the heart and lung exam on each other. The class was divided into genders (as far as they knew); our instructor was this crusty old French Canadian, whom I had really admired up until then. She felt that it was necessary that we take off our shirts and get into gowns for this exercise, and there was nowhere to change. While I was wishing that I had shaved my armpits, she chose one of us (who happened to be the most reserved and modest, and later became a dermatologist, perhaps due to this very experience), and sat her on a desk to use as a model for the exam, which I guess is the way they do it in Montreal. As the instructor went for the location of the mitral valve with her stethoscope, she flung wide the future dermatologist’s gown, and left her sitting there for a long, painfully embarrassing time while we all tried to focus on her chest and memorize the four locations to listen for murmurs: A-P-T-M (aortic, pulmonic, tricuspid, mitral) the mnemonic for which is All Physicians Take Money, the only one I can think of that involves currency. More typically, mnemonics for memorization in anatomy are weirdly sexualized. The bones of the wrist can be remembered by Some Lovers Try Positions That They Cannot Handle (scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate) The structures that pass through the superior orbital fissure: Lazy French Tarts Lie Naked in Anticipation of Sex. The twelve cranial nerves: Oh, Oh, Oh, To Touch And Feel a Valley Girl’s Vagina And Heiny. I imagine that it goes without saying that the rest of them are also misogynistic and um, grammatically painful.
The cardiopulmonary lesson was relaxing compared to the Pelvic Exam Module. During this path to a bleeding ulcer, one reads a book about how to do the exam, watches a video, and inspects a model to review the anatomy. Then there is a “simulated patient” who is a woman trained (and paid) to be the recipient of pelvic exams by bumbling medical students and to provide them with “feedback” in order to hopefully polish things up a bit before they are wielding a speculum amongst the masses. The idea is to role-play, to pretend that I am a real doctor (ha!) and that she is a real patient. Part of the requirement is to recite out loud all the steps so that the preceptor, (a fifty-something guy sitting on a metal chair in the corner scribbling on a legal pad) will know that I have memorized the exam and have some clue what I am doing. This is a damn sight harder than it sounds. Faced (literally) with the actual lady, and her actual, you know, pelvis, aware of the guy in the corner, and having to say out loud things like, “I’m going to separate your labia now,” it is very difficult to remember to palpate the ovary and inspect the cervix. When it is blessedly over, she is supposed to gently explain all the things you could have done better. In my case, it was even worse. She sat up and smoothed the sheet with her hand. I noticed her wedding band, but thankfully I have no memory of her face. Her shiny pink cervix, yes; but the color of her eyes, her age, and her hairstyle have all vanished. As the guy in the corner and I both waited, his pen poised above the paper, eyes on the clock, the back of my neck wet and clammy, she said (I swear to God), “That was very nice. Have you done this before?” She paused, sweetly, expecting an answer, but there was no way I could possibly form a useful sentence (Like what? Yes, but it’s not usually so brightly lighted? Yes, but usually after dinner and wine? No, but I already know where everything is?), so I just said no, and smiled sheepishly.
Since it was my first day as a real doctor, and my first day on call, I decided I should stop in to introduce myself (I subsequently discontinued this practice), and peeked my head in the door of her clean dark room. I explained who I was, and that I’d be on call overnight, if she had any kind of acute medical problems. I told her I’d read her chart and was familiar with her history. I had on my brand new white coat, which was so crispy that it made a distracting noise when I flexed my shoulder. It had my name embroidered in blue right above the pocket. I had some concerns that I had not turned my pager up loud enough and that perhaps I would not hear it if it went off. I remembered that I had not found out where the call rooms were, and wondered how I would go about finding them. I smiled warmly and asked her if there was anything I could do for her right now. She turned her swollen face away from the blue light of the TV and looked me right in the eye and said,
Fuck you.
I was somewhat taken aback. Certainly it is not the first time anyone ever told me such a thing; I’m quite used to it, in many ways. But I confess that it’s the first time I had heard it from a 13 year old patient. Why so crabby, I wondered, fingering my brand new reflex hammer, cool and reassuring in my pocket, scratching against several little spiral-bound books which would hopefully tell me what to do in case of any, you know, emergency. I was most assuredly hoping for the absence of any such event on my first night as an actual physician, and so had been disturbed during lunch to hear the Chief Resident explain the process for doing a lumbar puncture on a newborn in the middle of the night. A spinal tap on a newborn; I had somehow made it through medical school without ever successfully getting clear spinal fluid out of anybody, let alone a tiny baby. Blood, sure. Fat, bits of flesh, little hunks of bone, of course. But actual clear CSF? Not yet.
The perfect tap is supposed to be pure-sterile, devoid of even one single red blood cell. It’s called a “Champagne Tap,” both because it is sparkly clean, and because when you are the tapper of such a success, your supervisor is required by tradition to buy you a bottle of Champagne. Of course, most medical students and residents cannot afford even a little Moet, and so it ends up being just domestic sparkling wine, but it’s better than nothing. Lumbar puncture is not as easy as it sounds, at least not at first, and the first few I did were more like Merlot than Champagne.
There are actually many steps involved. The most pressing thing to do is to explain the process to the parents without unduly frightening them. Then you have to take their very cute, warm, cozy baby and lay him on his side on a table with nothing on but a diaper. Then the holder, usually a nurse, takes his arms and legs and draws him into an arc. You open up a sterile tray filled with a very long steel needle with which to puncture his back and a lot of clear plastic things to drain his oily spinal fluid into ( if you get any spinal fluid! Ha ha!) You put on gloves and a mask (mostly to absorb the sweat running off your forehead), and find a sweet spot between his vertebrae where you think the wellspring of liquor might reside. You take a scrubby swab of Betadine and draw ever-increasing circles on his back over your chosen hole-to-be, moving very slowly in hopes that someone will walk in the door and announce that the tap is not needed. When no one comes, and with his mother watching, you draw the stainless steel needle out of its opaque sleeve (no one likes to look at the bare bevel before it’s needed; it’s hooded like an executioner) and aim it at the soft little back.
The sensation of the needle piercing the epidermis is tiny, like the feet of a fly on the back of your hand, but instantaneously you encounter the tight ligaments; supraspinous, interspinous, ligamentum flavum. The resistance here is intimidating, but there is no where to go but forward. You increase the pressure, tentatively at first, and when nothing happens, a little more. Working your way through the fibrous barrier is the worst part, pushing, adjusting, angling; but finally the needle pops through the dura, a bizarre giving-way like cracking an egg that signals you wait for the fluid. You remove the stylet that occupies the interior of the needle, and if your aim was good, a tiny glistening drop of transparent liquid gathers at the hub of the needle. The surface tension causes the first drip to quiver at the edge, rolling off slowly as if it’s reluctant to leave.
There is a reason you don’t hear many Generation X’ers on the NPR This I Believe segment; we haven’t been able to think of anything. That is apparently because we’re all so morose and sarcastic that some of us didn’t even vote for Barack Obama because we gave up HOPE between 1981 and 1992, before there was even a poster. No matter–as we are told every four years, our generation isn’t big enough to warrant novel marketing schemes, let alone sway an election. Sure, others of us spent hours canvassing and phone banking and proselytizing, but we never really thought anything good would happen. Now we have a centrist disguised as a progressive elected by disaffected liberals, which gives me that old Clinton feeling all over again. No matter, at least I still have HOPE, the bumper sticker.
I was driving my 120 mile round trip commute recently when I heard an eloquent and moving This I Believe essay on the power of love (or some other sentiment) by Huey Lewis and the News-I want a new drug? I forget. I am constantly amazed at the cortical real estate I have devoted to song lyrics. Is there some evolutionary advantage here? Did my ancestors chant escape routes or recipes for mammoth, resulting in improved survival and thus the vestigial capacity to remember every word of Purple Rain? Surely this is an argument against Intelligent Design. I doubt a truly omniscient creator would provide hard drive space for the entire Duran Duran discography). These “audio essays” always make me a little teary and wistful and sentimental, but for some reason on this day, the depths of the convictions expressed on this program made me wonder a couple of things, apparently not surprising based on my birth year:
1) Who cares what everyone else believes?
2) Why are they taking up air time which could be filled with Splendid Table or This American Life?
3) What do I believe?
I have to admit that I am a typical Xer, as pointed out frequently by my Boomer boss. My earliest political memory is Nixon’s resignation, my parents are divorced, and now so am I. I hate group activities, feedback, constructive criticism and supervision. I never had sex before HIV, don’t have a shred of religious faith, lack loyalty to any particular organization, and mostly just want to be left alone to pursue my tangential avocations. I have three jobs and seven hundred hobbies, and really resent the fact that I can’t do them all. I have more than $200,000 in student loans and credit card debt from medical school scheduled to be paid off just as I become eligible for Social Security, which at that point will have become insolvent. (And if it does still exist, I’m hoping to get a discount by having my SS check direct-deposited toward my debt to Sallie Mae). I’m afraid of the church, disappointed by Congress, disgusted by popular culture and frustrated by laziness and ignorance. It is a life filled with paradox; I doubt the methods of education in public schools, but I think most home schooling is ridiculously arrogant. I resent the lack of genuine interaction in society, but I don’t see why anyone would make a phone call when they could just text or email. I feel guilty about my carbon footprint, but I have my espresso beans shipped from San Francisco.
I certainly do not believe in flavored coffee. Coffee already has a flavor; it’s coffee-flavored. It’s ridiculous to make it into hazelnut-amaretto-raspberry-french-vanilla. It’s even more ridiculous to have to stand behind someone simultaneously cackling into her cell phone and ordering a grande mocha caramel frappuccino without whip. Not only is that not anything remotely related to coffee, but she’s subtracted thirty calories from an 875 calorie beverage, and robbed me of four minutes of my life I will never get back. Starbucks needs an express line. The line for those of us who want to order coffee because we are away from home on business or because we woke up in a strange place with a pounding headache and need to find our way home, or because we are in an unfamiliar city and don’t know where to find better coffee. That way everyone who needs a mango tea shaken with Splenda and topped with gumdrops or who just dropped in to pick up the new goddamned Taylor Swift CD can have their own queue, and I can be on my way without getting blood on anyone’s new Abercrombie hoodie.
I also do not believe in kitchen gadgets, the quintessentially American invention. If there really are people who cannot slice a bagel without a plastic holder, or who are uncertain how to dice an onion, or who require an electric peppermill, I might as well go out and peel off that bumper sticker right now, because our culture has become so helpless that soon we will lose our position in the food chain. Surely we still have dominion over pancake batter without needing a dispenser for it. Doesn’t anyone look at the microwave bacon rack (and the microwave too, for that matter) and envision its future in the landfill? All the kitchen tools we need were invented hundreds of years ago. They are knives, grinder, scissors, ladle, corkscrew and spatula. And okay, grapefruit knife; but it’s steel, not plastic.
Another thing I do not believe in is air freshener. If one requires fresher air, one can open the window. If the air is not fresh outside one’s window, there are larger problems requiring more drastic solutions than further polluting the air with chemicals, especially if the chemicals require a plastic gizmo that uses electricity. If the house smells so bad that such a device is needed to spray perfume into the air around the clock, my first suggestion is to check the basement. I don’t know why everything is so complicated. In the bathroom at the local Senior Citizens Center I saw a sign taped to the wall that read, “DO NOT SPRAY LYSOL UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.” I am frightened by the thought of a situation in which the need for Lysol would be absolute.
Further reflection reveals a long list of things in which I do not believe: ghosts, aliens, wall-to-wall carpet, all whimsical variations of the martini, original sin, dried oregano, most uses of the word “addiction,” and raw food diets. After this soul searching, I know that I do believe in science. Don’t let anyone tell you that science is the opposite of religion. Science requires a certain level of faith; you have to just accept certain things, like electricity and gravity and absolute zero and neutrons and carbon dating. Of course these things exist, but I’m not smart enough to explain electricity (and neither are a lot of other people; that’s why when you ask someone what electricity is, they start talking in water metaphors). And then there are some concepts, like neutrons and absolute zero, that just have to exist in order for all the other reasonable corollaries to be true. But unlike religion, science encourages dissent, and no one is more attracted to dissent than a disgruntled Xer.
One of the things one learns in biology which carries over to medicine (and not everything does) is the concept of homeostasis. This is the idea that the inside of the body (and with a little extrapolation, the Universe), is constantly adjusting every little molecule to achieve a perfect milieu. This happens on both the micro- and macro-level, tirelessly, around the clock, a flux of water and metal and electricity and proteins too complicated in each moment for the larger organism to even consider. In every instant, there is another equation, a complicated transaction whizzing along some gradient in every cell, magnified in the state of the human as a whole. If you eat too much sodium, your kidneys pee it out. If you forget to have breakfast, your liver releases glycogen. If your intravascular volume goes down, your heart rate goes up. If you drink sixteen margaritas, you barf.
Therefore, because I believe in homeostasis, I believe in balance. Fortunately for me, my service to the disabled children of the Midwest is balanced by my black, irrepressible hatred for humanity when I am behind the wheel of a car. When I am driving, I concentrate on the road. I do not smoke, read the newspaper, yell at my kids, apply mascara, talk on the phone, give blowjobs, or sing karaoke. I drive, paying attention to the traffic patterns, alert for incompetence at every turn. I am never disappointed. The fact that a snarled, tooth-grinding, two-hour traffic jam in a major American city frequently turns out to be caused by drivers slowing down to look at a fellow driver changing a tire is enough to send me into a paroxysm rivaled only by the experience of following someone who doesn’t know how to merge. There should be a separate license required to drive on the interstate. The test you take in the parking lot where you snake the Ford Taurus through those orange cones is inadequate to ascertain whether or not you will freeze at the top of the on ramp, crippling traffic behind you for three miles. I realize that a lot of people did not take physics; however, it seems fairly self explanatory why there is an on ramp in the first place. If you were supposed to screech to a halt, it would be an intersection.
My commute gives me a great deal of time to listen to the radio, plan my day, see the countryside, and think of solutions to the many problems I see on the road. I frequently see my drive home from work as an obstacle course. If I make it home in less than 2 hours without crying, I feel like a winner. The obstacles include, but are not limited to:
1) Minivans—particularly Chrysler Town and Country and Dodge Caravan. As a matter of fact, any vehicle made by Chrysler is seventeen times more likely to have an owner who drives under the speed limit for safety and has no idea where he is going. The PT Cruiser in particular seems to attract a subset of the populace that owns an automobile for the sole purpose of driving aimlessly at 35 MPH.
2) Cell phone talkers who can only talk while taking their foot off the accelerator–if they could drive and talk at the same time, I wouldn’t care. But they are not good problem-solvers. Something tells me that these are the people buying egg slicers.
3) The rich white guy in the Tahoe who knows full well that the lane he is in is about to end, and so speeds up to get to the very head of the line of people who politely moved over when they read the fourteen signs, in hopes that this would foster an orderly flow through the bottleneck. I hate that guy.
4) The lady who is driving 55 MPH in the left lane of an eight lane interstate on purpose, to teach everyone a lesson about how we should also be driving at this rate. This lady is the source of my deepest seething resentment. I call her names inside my car. I imagine that she has all sorts of horrible qualities. I feel sorry for her husband. I know she is bossy and self-righteous and politically backward and probably lives a passionless life filled with iceberg lettuce and margarine and that she only listens to the adult contemporary station. I am certain that her kids are smoking pot and having sex out of sheer rebellion against her unyielding domination.
I’d like for someone to develop a communications system where your cell phone account could be linked to your license plate number, giving me the ability to hit you up when you are driving in front of me, and ask the questions burning in my mind: Why does everyone who drives a Volkswagen Beetle feel compelled to get a vanity plate to point out that the car is a Beetle? Why did you pay eighty thousand dollars for a 750Li if you’re going to drive it like it’s an RV? What does that bumper sticker mean? You got what you voted for, are you happy now? How do you find your way home at night if you can’t decide where to turn? My girlfriend is embarrassed when I pass people and glare at them through the window. She says I don’t have to glare. But how else will they know how much I despise their driving?
People say that Nixon used to pour cheap wine for his guests, but replace the wine in the decanter he drank from with Margaux. What a guy. I don’t believe in saving things for special occasions or just for myself. We can hoard all our money and keep the china locked away, and put plastic on the sofa, but it won’t make any difference. Everyone with perfect carpets and shiny shoes and overflowing wine cellars will end up just as dead as me. I drink the Raveneau from the Spigelau and eat with the silver and cook the fresh morels for whoever sits down at the table. I do not understand the concept of saving it all for a special occasion. Every day that I do not have a psychotic break is a special occasion. Conversely, I feel that one should always be prepared for the “special.” What if I ended up with that cute girl in my living room and didn’t have any real Champagne already chilled? What if I needed to make a salad at the last minute and hadn’t smuggled that Reggiano from Tuscany? I figure using the good stuff invites the unexpected.
Besides, when you witness the events in a Pediatric hospital, you learn to consider each day of neurological integrity as a special occasion. I can still chew my own food and pee by myself? Waiter, another dozen oysters, please! The stories are almost unbelievable–the kid who had been working in a junkyard with his grandfather when one of those big steel hooks on a crane came loose and swung right into the side of his head, removing about a fourth of it. The cheerleader who had a cardiac arrest right in the middle of cheer practice (it was caught on tape by someone’s mom who was watching). The shaken baby, the toddler who drowned while both her parents were serving in Iraq. The brain tumors and the diving accidents. The teenager who skateboarded into the side of a bus and hurt his brain–some years later, he had a nosebleed and aspirated blood, causing further brain damage. There was the seventeen year old who was canoeing with a group of fellow counselors from her church group, when the canoe tipped and she was trapped underneath a rock for quite some time, and not adequately resuscitated due to the remote location. I heard that some years later her mother quietly turned off her tube feeding and let her die.
We all have everything to lose, and the losses are random, not based on merit. You can’t hide, so why bother? It makes more sense to appreciate what hasn’t happened to you (yet) and move on to accomplish something. Being paralyzed by fear or indecision or laziness is just as good as being dead. Living a meaningful life is not for cowards; it is not available to those who refuse to look at the truth straight-on, or for those who cannot change.
I do try not to tell stories of tragedy and meaningless violence and stupid accidents, but it’s what I do all day and so it’s difficult not to interject, especially when I hear people complaining about what my friend Lisa Whipple calls “first-world problems.” (Not unlike air fresheners, traffic jams, and flavored coffee, perhaps). Recently, my twelve year-old was resisting going to swimming lessons. (Apparently, swimming lessons are still held, as they were in my youth, early in the morning in a pool still cold from the night; he wasn’t feeling so much like shivering and turning blue at nine a.m.). His dream summer morning combines Playstation, lemonade and the sofa. Cry me a river, I said; you should come to work with me and see some kids whose dream it is to be able to swim across the pool on a beautiful summer day! He rolled his eyes–the 800th time he’s heard this speech, I know. It’s my version of the Starving Children in Africa lecture, though it sometimes takes the form of How Would You Like to be Sewing Nikes in China? Or Maybe You’d Rather Go Live with Dick Cheney? The point being obvious; his life is better than ninety-eight percent of the kids on the planet, most of whom live in poverty, many of whom live with fear and abuse and hunger and other insecurities he can’t even imagine, things so bad I wouldn’t even tell him for fear it would sink into his tender heart. There’s no room for complaining that someone’s helping you with your breaststroke when you have loving, if odd parents, a warm bed to sleep in, good food, and an intact spinal cord. And so this is the HOPE I have left, the only real way remaining for my generation to change the world. I can’t make sense of the Universe, and I can’t protect him from everything, but I can encourage him to eighty-six the whining and do something useful instead.
This, I believe.