Solstice 2002

Solstice 2002

Dear Ones,
I find myself here again, staring in fear at a blank page, a year later, a year older, a year grayer, and no wiser. It has occurred to me this year, that it is well and good that we SHOULD age and die as we do. There is no way in hell I could keep this up until age 120. I can barely imagine five more years of pulling at the harness, let alone another 50. So perhaps I am achieving some philosophic peace with the inevitable click of the ratchet, the spin of the globe, and the waning of my pre-spent youth. This is, as many of you know from long, rueful experience, the eleventh of a series of letters to my world in which I try to summarize our year, and invite nostalgic contact with old acquaintances. This year’s theme has proved elusive. Much has happened to challenge and vex us, and even to make us laugh, but too much of the former, I fear, and precious little of the latter. But onward ho. We remain in southern Delaware, I working away as an ER doc and fearless leader, managing our little Department mostly by throwing my body into each crisis as it comes along. (Crisis being defined “daybreak.”) But I have a fairly jolly crew of good docs, and except for schedule crunches due to military service, and other unscheduled departures, things go along fairly well with minimal stoking. Of course we get our daily compensation not from our pay, but from the many daily instances of snatching unfortunates from the jaws, (nay, flossing them from the very teeth) of death. At the beginning of the year, before it was determined in advance that we would be the new rulers of Iraq, I had an excess of staff, and was bold enough to embark on an online law school program. Well, all planned free time quickly evaporated as “things changed” and I have been struggling to find a spare minute to urinate ever since. I have fought hard to keep up, and as I write this, (while urinating, to save time) I have just finished my finals, at the end of my first year. I really did bite off more than I could chew, but am too polite to spit it out at the table, so I have carried on chewing. Next year will be easier, they say… I have learned lots, but in my current state of panic, pre and post exams, I cannot remember a thing. The real test will come in June, when I must pass a two-day test given by the California State Bar or, discontinue my program. You get three consecutive cracks at it, six months apart, but I hope to get it over with at the first go. I just keep reminding myself I can do it. For god’s sake, Dan Quayle is a lawyer. Meanwhile, my physical exercise program is ranked far behind sleeping and urinating in my Mazlovian needs hierarchy. So I feel I have aged shockingly in just one year. I try to ride my bike, but not as often as I should. I have a nifty recumbent (lying down) bike, which doesn’t hurt my butt or hands, and draws quizzical looks from the local rednecks. But even a new toy hasn’t dragged me out that much. I really feel the lack of physical conditioning when I am called upon to assist patients from chair to stretcher. We had a little 3-year old girl come in with asthma, unable to breathe at all. In our rush to get her from the wheelchair to the stretcher, I hadn’t the time to figure out much more than the urgency of the situation, except that I vaguely realized something wasn’t right. I grabbed her dress and made motions to pick her up out of the wheelchair, but nearly shot my intestines into my scrotum with the effort, and she didn’t budge. I looked again, and saw that my 3 year old weighed over a hundred pounds, and her elbows were the start of where her arms emerged from her sides, so that she looked like a giant thalidomide baby. A little more knee bending and a burst blood vessel or two, and we had her up on the stretcher, but I was regretting that lift for weeks afterwards, upon finding all my intestines in my scrotum. Opening her mouth to examine her, I saw that all her teeth were black circles, rotted off at the gum line, resembling more a wooden fence burned over in a prairie fire. We got her breathing again, fortunately, and two weeks later, I saw her walking around a local playground with a tootsie pop in her mouth, none the worse for wear. And so it goes. We also enjoy the “Name that Baby” competition at the registration window. It goes something like this—A young male “Playuh” appears in the registration window…
“My daughter in there. Can I see her?”
“Sure, what’s her name?”
“Shakeshia Collins?”
“No, we don’t have a Shakeshia Collins here.”
“How ‘bout Shakeshia Davis?”
“Nope, we don’t have one of those, either.”
“Well, her momma name Mofique.”
“What’s her mother’s last name?”
“I dunno…Bailey?”
“Sorry, sir, no luck there either.”
“Mofique Johnson?”
“No, sorry”
“You got any babies in there?”
“Yes, quite a few.”
“Can’t I go look?”
“Uh, no, sorry, that is not allowed. You will have to give us a name to be allowed back. But thanks for Playing!”
Catherine has retired this year, the lucky dog. She is happy as happy can be, quilting, baking, and just doing what she wants to do. But mostly, her focus is being home for the kids and me, and supporting my crazy, brutal schedule. She has had much time on her hands, actually, and has fallen in with thieves and highwaymen- the ruffians of conservative talk radio. After a daily brainwashing at the hands of Dr. Laura (I’ve seen you naked.) Schlessinger, Rush (Do you know any black people?) Limbaugh and Michael (Don’t call me savage.) Savage, she is not fit for dinner conversations on any subject more touchy than the weather. But we love her still, and when this phase passes, I’ll be there to support her next one…
Michele is finishing her philosophy degree at Salisbury University and will be wed this August to Eric, her pilot-fiancée and all around nice guy. She is “nesting” in a nice little house in Salisbury, and working at Pier One.
Nat is in the Army deployed as an MP to Kosovo of all places, protecting Muslims from savage Christians. He is adjusting to his new life, but is suddenly aware of just how long five years can be. I am proud of him, though. He has hunkered down to a tough job he took of his own accord, and he is doing well. He will come out of it a tough and resourceful fellow, I believe.
Hannah is a junior, a probationary driver (YIKES!), playing softball all over the east coast and starting to think about college. We are inviting her to think about ones we can actually afford, but she keeps sending away for brochures from fine, small, personalized-experience kinds of places I never heard of, which makes their claim for 24 thousand dollars yearly in tuition all the more ludicrous. How do people who do not play professional sports ever educate their children? I guess I need to find out.
Everett has taken a sudden interest in Taekwon Do (“It’s NOT karate, Dad!”) and has earned his blue belt already, aiming next for his red belt. He goes four nights a week, and practices forms out in the yard, shouting things in Korean which translate to “Slinking imperialist dog-bastard!”, and “Devious thieving rat-scum!” He needs all that and more at his new high school where there is a bitch-slappin’ chick fight daily, and a full-time state trooper on site to pat them down for weapons and saleable quantities of drugs. Ev worried me one week when he come home in a necklace with his name molded into it in large gold letters and a gold playboy outline on his front tooth. And We are beginning to figure out who he means when he addresses us collectively as “YO”. I did get his attention when I held a hand-mirror up to his face and said, “Bad news, Dude, you’re White!” Hey, I figure it is just a phase. He’ll get over it.
We also have a new Boxer pup at home after Darwin caught some gawdawful cancer and faded away. Catherine swore we would never again have another puppy, but that lasted about as long as “Read my lips, NO NEW TAXES!” Rudy was born on 9-11-2002, named for Hizzoner Rudy Giuliani. I won’t bore you with tales of chewed up valuables and excrement booby traps except to note that he did get Catherine’s 2 favorite credit cards out of her purse, and destroyed them. He got nothing else but the cards. I had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with that.
And what of the world? We have already taken the platinum tiara in the World’s Most Despised Countries Competition, handily defeating Yemen, North Korea, Russia, Israel, and Zimbabwe for the title. Israel got Miss Congeniality. The brief, sorry honeymoon after 9-11 hasn’t even kept us in the hearts of Europeans, and now the South Koreans want us out. Only the Somalis want us back. (“All is forgiven…please come back, and bring money!”) On the home front, we have beaten and smothered all political dissent into a fine, flavorless paste. Only the “race card” generates any excitement anymore. Imagine that… Trent Lott a bigot?? Who could have known?
And so, fellow strugglers, and stragglers, as we careen at 19 miles a second around our star, and respond blindly to the celestial rhythm that has shaped us and our culture since the beginning of time, let us gather to ourselves the ones we love, and cling to the “better angels of our nature”, which will make us better individuals of a savage species. Let us pause to salute the passage of a few bright lights from among their midst, including Steven Jay Gould, Ann Landers, Milton Berle, Justice Byron “Whizzer” White and Linda Lovelace. Let us struggle with our own demons and at least get a good kick in sometimes. May we refuse to accept the proposition that you must be a liar and panderer to hold political office. May we be successful in simplifying our lives, downsizing our consumer needs, refinancing while the rates are low, and reducing our impact on the fragile bubble we inhabit. I wish each of you a year of hope, freedom from fear and anxiety, and many instances of individually doing the right thing just because it is the right thing. Call, write, heckle, or visit. Until I burden you again next year-
Peace out, my dawgs