Away We Go!

I taught my first two classes yesterday; I think they went well, and I'm looking forward to the semester.

On Tuesday, one of my grad students handed in her 193-page thesis and 19-page annotated bibliography, along with a portfolio that's forty pages or so. And yesterday, I received the sixty-plus essays resulting from the med-school class I taught last week (I graded twenty-two of those last night). So even though the students in my two undergrad classes haven't started handing in work yet, this weekend will actually be one of my heavier grading sprints; for various reasons, I'd like to have all this material read and evaluated by Monday, although that may well be overly optimistic. I'm kind of glad this is happening now, though, when I'm still in the flush of that beginning-of-the-semester burst of energy.

Today's open, so I'm trying to get a lot of work done. Tomorrow's so crammed with meetings that I can't even get to my lesson with Charlene; that's deferred until Saturday, when (with luck) I'll also get to the hospital.

I worked all morning doing class prep for Monday. After I finish this post, I'll go swimming. On the way home, I'm going to splurge and buy a new grade book, since I've been using my old one for nine years and it's gotten a bit grotty.

Heigh ho, heigh ho . . . .

Fun!

I just finished teaching a two-hour class on Narrative Medicine to the first-year medical students. I always enjoy this; I even enjoy reading the sixty-odd papers that result from the assignment. My regular classes won't start until next week, but now I feel like I'm warmed up. It's a great way to start the semester.

This week I have to prepare course materials for this semester and revise my essay on using Tolkien to teach trauma theory. On Saturday, instead of going to the hospital, I'll attend a two-hour presentation on mental-health issues in pastoral care, offered by a local priest who's also a psychologist. I think the audience is primarily clergy offering pastoral care in parish settings, but the information should help me at the hospital, too.

Saturday evening will be a real treat. Yesterday, Charlene sent e-mail to all her fiddle students saying that Vishten will be giving a concert in Minden, a small town about an hour south of here. She can't go, but urged all of us not to miss it. So Gary and I ordered tickets online and made a reservation at a restaurant a few blocks from the concert hall. I've driven through Minden several times, but I don't think I've ever stopped there. Maybe for a regional church meeting? I can't remember if that was in Minden or neighboring Gardnerville. Anyway, I like little towns, and it's a very pretty drive, so I'm looking forward to the trip.

Best of all, Minden has a yarn store I haven't visited yet. Bliss! I've told long-suffering Gary that we have to get there early so I can shop.

Today I saw the chiropractor for the first time. He's a nice guy, low-key and matter-of-fact, and what he said made sense to me. He did a physical exam and took x-rays; tomorrow I go back for a discussion of the test results and my first treatment. I'll be curious to see how this goes!

Cool Stuff/Warm Stuff

My friend Inez and I just chatted via video -- a first for both of us -- on Skype. It was great fun, and seems like a great way to stay in touch with people. I have to badger my sister into getting a webcam. (And Lee, do you have a webcam?)

In other news, yesterday I gave a brief presentation at the medical school and saw a friend who has a friend who's going into a surgery residency, and who did a fourth-year anatomy elective (which is, I believe, what Dad's body was used for). In addition to reviewing anatomy, the students prepare slides of delicate structures like nerves for study by the first-year class. So Dad may be immortalized in medical slides. I told my friend to try to find out, and if possible, to get pictures of his slides for me.

Inez groaned when I told her this. "Omigod! Susan's showing her slides again!"

"Look: Dad's ganglia! Isn't this thrilling?" We laughed, and I said, "Worse than vacation photos!"

As you can tell, we have similarly warped senses of humor.

And speaking of warped, I finished Gary's first sock, which is -- alas! -- a bit too loose. I was so scared that the sock would be too tight that I overcompensated. I've just started the second one, and when the pair's done, we'll try shrinking them in warm water, although since the yarn's superwash wool, it probably won't work. I'm sad, but resigned. This is a learning process, and the next pair will be better.

And now back to class prep.

Counting Down

A year ago today, we learned that Dad and Fran had the apartment in Reno. At least this year I'm not running around making moving arrangements and comparison shopping cellphones suitable for the elderly.

And that's a good thing, since I'm quite busy prepping for classes, which begin -- eeep! -- Monday. The med school's started already; I've taught two classes for them (one an hour, one two hours), and I'll be giving a brief presentation up there tomorrow. In the meantime, today I proofread and photocopied the syllabus and handouts for my fiction workshop. Tomorrow I need to finish my freshman-comp syllabus. I try not to be one of those panicky people who photocopies reams of material ten minutes before the first class begins, especially since the photocopier can smell fear and inevitably chooses such moments to break. My stress level's high enough as it is!

I haven't been writing, but really really really want, and intend, to get back to it.

I have been knitting, though. I know: it takes time away from writing, but feels almost as necessary as breathing in through here. Steadies the nerves wonderfully, knitting does. And as addictions go, things could be a lot worse. Yarn's expensive, but at least I get wonderful handmade goodies out of it, and as far as I know, my knitting habit isn't damaging any internal organs.

Gary's first super-hefty hiking sock is almost done. He thought it looked too long, but last night I slipped it off the DPNs onto circulars so he could try it on, and it fits perfectly. I was quite thrilled. This will be one fine pair of socks, if I say so myself.

I'll post photos when I'm done. I'm already planning other socks; I have a bunch of patterns, but it's more fun to browse through my stitch-a-day calendar and figure out my own designs. They're incredibly simple, but they're mine.

The only problem with socks is that you can't spontaneously knit them for gifts, because making them requires measurements: shoe size or (preferably) length of foot, plus circumference of the largest part of the foot, and maybe ankle and calf circumferences too. And I haven't yet figured out a sneaky way to measure the feet of friends and family . . . although my mother, when I told her I was making socks, said, "We don't need socks for Christmas. Socks are a useless gift, unless you're really into socks." C'mon: who doesn't need socks? Especially comfy handknit ones? But I don't have time to knit Christmas gifts this year, so it's a moot point. Plus, my sister's crocheting socks now, so I'm sure she'll take care of the Philly family.

Speaking of Mom and knitting, I made a point of telling her how much more I value her knitting skills now that I knit myself. She made astonishingly skilled and beautiful things for me when I was a kid, and I never properly appreciated them. I wanted her to know that I do now.

Good News

Here's the e-mail I sent the Anatomical Donations Coordinator on Monday:

I just picked up my father's cremains from Mountain View Mortuary. My sister and I were wondering what use the medical school made of his body. Given the timing, he obviously wasn't used as a medical-school cadaver -- after my phone conversation with you last March, I know that was doubtful anyway -- but was he indeed used to help train flight surgeons, as you had said he might be?

Any information you can give us would be most appreciated. We miss our father very much, and it would be healing for us to know how his donation was used, so we can more precisely picture how he will help others after his death.

And here's the response I got today:

Thank you for your e-mail. Your father's remains were utilized during a summer session by 4th year medical students who will be going into surgery. Please know that his unselfish gift will indeed further medical education in a most significant manner.

Our annual memorial service will be in the spring 2010 and I will be sending out invitations in late March with the details. I encourage you and your sister to attend as it is a lovely event that helps family members with closure in the death of their loved one.

This is a huge relief to me. Dad did some good even after his death, which would have pleased him, and I'll get to go to the med school memorial service. I hope Liz will be able to make it out too, but since she teaches until late June, that's probably not possible.

I'd had a horrible vision of their not being able to use Dad at all, of his body just going to waste. I'm so glad that didn't happen.

Picking Up Dad

I ran a bunch of errands today: went to the eye doctor, dashed by the yarn store for a sock book and a new tape measure (Bali ate about three inches of the old one), got a haircut, swam, and went to the DMV to get my license renewed, since I needed a new photo this time. I had to wait about forty-five minutes -- not too unpleasant, since I had knitting with me -- and had just gotten up to a window when my phone rang.

It was the mortuary, telling me that Dad's cremains were ready.

I almost started crying right there in the DMV. We hadn't expected the remains back for months. The timing means that Dad definitely wasn't used as a medical-school cadaver, which had been what I'd wanted. (He wouldn't care; he just didn't want me and my sister to have to pay funeral expenses.) The mortuary couldn't tell me how he'd been used, although they know the med school did something with him. Maybe training flight surgeons to put in chest tubes, which was the original plan?

Anyway, I was in semi-shock, and babbled at the DMV clerk a bit. She was quite young and evidently didn't know what to make of this; she was pleasant enough, but didn't offer any kind of sympathy.

Right afterwards, I had to get my photo taken for the new license. I haven't seen it yet -- the license will arrive in the mail in about a week -- and I suspect it's even more dreadful than most such photos, given the circumstances.

From the DMV, I drove straight to the funeral home, crying as I drove. When I got there, the funeral director waved hello and said, "You didn't have to rush right down here!"

"I wanted to," I said shakily.

No sympathy from him or his assistant, either, although they were perfectly pleasant too. To them, this is just business. The assistant brought out Dad in a box, and nodded when I exclaimed at how small it was, and then they gave me copies of various permits which will, for instance, allow me to transport Dad across state lines or take him on an airplane.

The box is white cardboard. Inside, there's a brown plastic box, and inside that, I'm told there's a plastic bag containing the ashes. I haven't opened it yet. The entire package measures 9" long by 7" deep by 5" high, and weighs eight pounds.

When I left the mortuary I called my sister, who sounded even more shocked and upset than I'd been. "But what happened? Weren't the medical students going to work on him?"

"The body might not have been in good enough shape for that. They almost didn't accept it at all. Listen, I'll call the anatomical donation coordinator when I get home and get some information."

But it's the end of the day, and the anatomical donation coordinator wasn't in. I left a voicemail message, and I'll follow up with an e-mail. Liz and I now have to figure out what to do about memorial arrangements. If this had happened a few weeks earlier, we could have flown down to the Gulf this summer to scatter the ashes, but now there's no time before school starts. So it will probably be next summer.

In the meantime, Dad's resting on the red bookcase he built, which is now in our upstairs hallway. He's surrounded by things he had with him when he was alive. Someone gave him a Santa doll one Christmas, and though he wasn't big on holidays, he always kept gifts like that (he also kept a stuffed animal I gave him, which is now on my study sofa), so the Santa stayed with him to the end. There's another Christmas gift: a green vase with some decorative branches in it and a stuffed cat wrapped around the vase. Dad's friend Kathy gave him that. The branches have now been mostly gnawed and snapped off by our own cats, so I'll have to replace them at some point.

On top of the box are the sunglasses Gary and I got for Dad when he was in the San Francisco VA last November, in that gloriously sunny room overlooking Ocean Beach. In a lot of ways, that was the high point of his five months here in the West: he was still hopeful that he could get medical help, he had a gorgeous view, he was feeling quite well (largely because he was at sea level) and Gary and I got to wander around one of the loveliest sections of one of our favorite cities. At the time, having him there seemed like a crisis, but now I'm nostalgic for that week.

At least now I don't need to wonder when he'll be coming home.

Hodge-Podge

In no particular order:

* Today's another anniversary! Harley came home with me from the pound ten years ago today, and a mighty cute kitten he was, too. And now he's a mighty handsome senior cat. (I tried to take his picture today, but he wasn't having any.)

* The rheumatologist called. I don't have Sjogren's antibodies and, this time, my ANA was negative. Go figure. So, anyway, I'm fine, except that I still have all the symptoms that Sjogren's would have tied up into a neat little package. Oh well. Better to be ruled healthy, I guess!

* I paid some of Dad's bills this morning. Just in case you wanted to know, a four-mile ambulance ride in Reno costs $891. An ambulance ride of the same distance in Palo Alto costs $1,727.10. Fortunately, Dad had enough money left to cover these expenses, although his balance is dwindling fast.

* Along the same lines, an emergency admission to a Philadelphia hospital in which the patient stays one night (this happened the night before Dad moved West), costs more than $11,000, although it turns out that the VA's paying that one. Thank God!

* Today I was going back to my car, which was parked near a large medical building, and I saw a woman about to put a folding wheelchair in her trunk. A much older woman, I'm guessing her mom, sat in the car. I walked over and asked the younger woman if she needed help, explaining that when I was taking care of my Dad, I could get the wheelchair out of the trunk easily, but had a devil of a time getting it in. She thanked me profusely, almost weeping, and said that she didn't need help with the wheelchair, but was so grateful to me for noticing her and speaking up. She'd had a hard time in the medical building, where she'd been struggling with doors and where people had been very rude. I made sympathetic noises about how difficult caregiving is, and she thanked me again, even more fervently this time, for knowing that. "People can't know who haven't done it." I told her that there are caregiver support groups, although I didn't have specific information to offer. She seemed very fragile. I hope she'll be okay.

* That incident occured after lunch with a med-school colleague, who told me a story about a friend of hers who was so stressed out and isolated after years of caring for a dying brother that his entire personality changed. Moral of these two stories: If you know somebody who's taking care of an ailing loved one, please offer whatever help you can!

* Last night, Katharine coached me through the beginning of my first sock, using a toe-up pattern with such a complicated beginning that I'll never get through the second one without her guidance. Because worsted yarn and size 5 DPNs were the only materials I had with me, I'm now knitting the Sock that Ate Reno. This sock looks more like a hat. Gary thinks it will fit him; if not, I'll have to donate the pair to Bigfoot, or possibly knit just one sock and use it as a smallish Christmas stocking. This will also be one warm pair of socks, let me tell you. When I was in graduate school, my mother gave me a thick, handknit woolen sweater from South America. This sweater was rated down to minus-50 Fahrenheit. Gary and I called it the Bulletproof Sweater. Now I'm making Bulletproof Socks.

Enjoy the holiday weekend, everybody!

Alternative Medicine

Here's this morning's homily. In addition to red Pentecost balloons -- I don't know if there will be party hats and noiseblowers -- we're also baptizing a young man named David.

I love Pentecost, when I was baptized myself, so I'm always happy to preach about it. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, the essential reading is Acts 2:1-21.

*

In his book The Prophetic Imagination, theologian Walter Brueggemann says that churches exist to provide an alternative to the dominant culture. We’re not supposed to fit in with the rest of society: we’re supposed to offer gentle, but pointed, critiques of business-as-usual, to model a more loving way of life. That is, after all, what Jesus did, and what he commanded his followers to do.

Today we celebrate Pentecost, the birthday of the church. Jesus has ascended into heaven, telling his followers that he’ll send the Holy Spirit to guide them. In this morning’s reading from Acts, the Holy Spirit finally arrives, with rushing wind and tongues of flame, giving everyone gathered in that place the ability to understand any language spoken by anyone else.

This scene was most certainly not business as usual. The witnesses were “amazed and perplexed,” and some suspected that many in the crowd had been drinking, until Peter set them straight. If we read more of Acts, we learn that three thousand people were baptized that day. That’s why Pentecost is one of our traditional church dates for baptism. I was baptized on Pentecost in 2000, and today we welcome David to the Body of Christ. As we heard in this morning’s Collect, Pentecost is also the day when God “opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation.” Pentecost is when everyone is welcomed into the church.

The early church, though, didn’t look much like what we know today. “All who believed were together and had all things in common,” Acts tells us; “they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” These first church folk “ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”

The early church was endlessly joyful and hugely successful at attracting newcomers, but it also operated on economic principles that alarm many Americans. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is a sentiment we associate with Karl Marx, not with Jesus. According to the Book of Acts, though, this is exactly how the early church functioned.

There have been similar arrangements throughout American history. In the 1960s, we called them communes, and the people who lived there -- and who also tended to be active in civil-rights and anti-war movements -- were often criticized by mainstream churches, not to mention the government. People in the dominant culture often feel threatened by alternative visions of how the world might work, by any change that might hurt their own interests. Just look at what happened to Jesus.

The college students I teach use the word “hippie” as an insult. Nonetheless, the Book of Acts invites us to view the early church, the post-Pentecost church, as a bunch of hippies: people in sandals and robes, blissed-out on the Holy Spirit, preaching universal love and peace and sharing anything they had with anyone who needed it.

Is that what our church looks like today? Is it what it should look like? If not, why not? The church is 2,000 years older than it was on that first Pentecost. Do we still challenge the dominant culture, or have we become part of it, just another piece of business-as-usual, blending in instead of standing out?

In mid-April, I got to spend a few days in a place that looks a little like the early church. A medical student I was working with at UNR invited me to lead a writing workshop at HEART, the Humanistic Elective in Alternative Medicine, Activism, and Reflective Transformation. This one-month, fully accredited elective for fourth-year medical students takes place at a secluded retreat center nestled among towering redwoods. The elective focuses on “intentional community building, complementary, alternative, holistic and integrative medicine, social justice and activism, reflective transformation including meditative practices, and personal growth.”

Traditional physicians might roll their eyes at this description, and HEART has a keen sense of humor about itself. Their website includes a photograph of a medical student hugging a tree. While the twenty-five medical students who attend, and their teachers, are serious about transforming the culture of medicine, the whole project can indeed look a little kooky from the outside. When I arrived, I found twenty-five barefoot medical students, blissed out after sesame-oil massages, sprawled on yoga mats in the main meeting space. I felt acutely out of place.

The teacher that afternoon was a western-trained MD, a family-practice doctor, who also practices Ayurvedic medicine, the ancient healing system from India. She taught the students a bit about Ayurveda and then led a lively discussion of the challenges they’d face during their upcoming residencies. Fascinated, I offered a few of my own comments, although each time I apologized for doing so. After all, I have no medical credentials, alternative or otherwise.

Afterwards, my student came up and scolded me. “Susan, you have to stop doing that! You have as much right to speak as anyone does. You aren’t an outsider here.”

The teacher added, more gently, “HEART wants to change how medicine works. We’re here to do things differently. If you aren’t welcome here, no one is welcome here.”

“If you aren’t welcome here, no one is welcome here.” As soon as I heard that sentence, I felt like the universe had turned upside down, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Every group I’ve ever been part of, including the church, has considered welcome a privilege it could grant or withhold. “We were here before you came,” such groups might say, “and we’ll be here after you leave. We decide whether to open our doors to you.” The HEART model doesn’t work that way. The HEART model says, “If we do not welcome you, we will not exist as a group. If you are not part of the group, there is no group.” Followed to its logical conclusion, this means that the group embraces the entire world, the entire universe. No one can be left out. No welcome can be withheld. Everyone and everything is connected and beloved.

I’m not sure what that model would look like in practice at St. Stephen’s, or any other congregation, but I have a hunch that it would look a lot like those early church communities. The HEART philosophy certainly offers a provocative alternative to a business-as-usual culture obsessed with competition, consumerism, and exclusivity.

Peter, and Walter Brueggeman, both describe one of the main effects of the Holy Spirit as the gift of imagination. We can only work towards change we have first imagined. “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,” Peter says, quoting Joel, “and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”

This Pentecost, let us rejoice in the power of the Spirit, and dream our own dreams of how we can offer God’s alternative medicine -- love and peace and social justice -- to the people around us, to everyone who is lost and hurting and needs healing and welcome. Let us imagine what it would be like to say to everyone we meet, “If you aren’t welcome here, no one is welcome here.” Let us imagine the entire cosmos as the Body of Christ, in which everyone and everything is connected and beloved. And as symbol and token of that welcome, let us joyously welcome David into that body, and into our St. Stephen’s family.

Amen.

Teaching Progress

My grades are in! Yay! After we turn in grades, we get to read our course evaluations, so I did that, too. They were very strong in both classes; in fact, my 101 evals were the best I've ever gotten for a freshman comp course.

Although I'm happy about this, it's also puzzling, given what a basket case I was this semester because of Dad. (One of my colleagues said that she was amazed I was able to teach at all, at least while he was still alive and I was running around taking care of him.) I'm not sure how to apply this to future teaching, since I neither expect nor want to undergo a major loss every semester. On the other hand, evaluations often have more to do with the personalities of the students than with the performance of the professor, and this was a pleasant, laid-back group. And they knew what was going on in my life -- one student included a very sweet note with her final portfolio, telling me that I was a role model for her in dealing with grief -- so maybe that had something to do with the evals, too.

Meanwhile, yesterday I wrote the syllabus for my summer Tolkien course, and today I hope to get started on my narrative-medicine freshman comp class for the fall. My goal's to have both fall classes prepped before I leave to go back East on June 10. That's a little ambitious, but any progress I make will be A Good Thing.

I don't usually remember my dreams, but the last two nights, I've had very vivid dreams about narrative medicine. In the first, two English Department colleagues were ragging on me about how it's not a real intellectual discipline: classic academic anxiety dream! In the second dream, I was at the hospital, having a long conversation about Langston Hughes with one of the ER docs. I'm not sure what to make of these, except that my unconscious seems to be working on integrating these two aspects of my life.

Today's the med school graduation, and I'll be going to wish my student well as she heads off to residency. On Monday, my three first-year NM students are leaving for Ecuador, where they'll be helping out in a hospital for a few weeks. I can't wait to read their writing about it!

Blessing the Garden

Here's my Mother's Day homily. It's not one of my favorites, but it does what it has to do. My primary goal when I preach on Mother's Day (which I've done a lot) is to reach out to people for whom the holiday's painful, to get past the Hallmark pieties that can be so grating to those of us who have complicated family relationships. And, really, who doesn't?

My relationship with my father was very difficult for decades, and I used to have a devil of a time finding a Father's Day card that reflected any recognizable form of what I felt for him. Hallmark just didn't sell cards that said, "I love you even though you're the reason I've been in therapy half my life." (A lot of the time, I went with blank cards.) It got much easier over the years, and finding a Mother's Day card was always a snap, but I know that for a lot of people, it's not.

And don't even get me started on the various insults, subtle and otherwise, Mother's Day dishes out to those of us who've chosen not to have kids. I am, of course, talking about the sentimental fluff-fest Mother's Day has become in contemporary America, not the rousing peace proclamation issued by Julia Ward Howe in 1870.

So, yeah, anyway. It's an annoying little holiday, but one that preachers ignore at their peril.

The readings are Acts 8:26-40, 1 John 4:7-21, and John 15:1-8.

*

About a month ago, I sat in on a workshop for medical students about to begin their residencies. The workshop facilitator asked them to draw a tree with their non-dominant hand; in other words, to draw with their left hand if they usually wrote with their right, or vice versa. Afterwards, we put the trees in a circle and admired them. There were short trees, tall trees, bushy trees, elegant willows, trees laden with fruit and trees whose branches sheltered birds. The facilitator lavishly praised each tree. Only afterwards did she say, very gently, “Have all of you noticed something? None of these trees have roots. They only exist from the ground up.”

She proceeded to remind the students that to get through the infamously brutal process of residency, they’ll need to remain grounded. “Remember your roots,” she told them. “Protect and nurture what feeds you, even when other people can’t see it.”

This past Thursday, I helped my friends Katharine and Pamela bless Katharine’s garden. Katharine scattered dried flowers on the soil around the plants, while Pamela sprinkled them with fertilizing ash and I gave them water. We made our way from potted shrubs, to bright blossoms, to the two saplings Katharine planted when her granddaughters were born, to the vegetable garden she’s just planted. Each plot of earth received the same blessing, even if no growth was visible. The vegetable garden looked like mere dirt, but Katharine has faith that in a few months, it will produce delicious food. She loves her vegetables even though she can’t see them yet.

To paraphrase -- very broadly! -- today’s lesson from 1 John, Katharine learned to love vegetables she can’t see by loving vegetables she can. And she learned to love vegetables in the first place because God first loved her, and all of us, by creating the fertile earth and the countless things that grow on it: carrots and eggplant and tomatoes, not to mention flowers and trees.

This is the progression described in the Epistle: God loves us into being, and we learn to love the people we know. If we’ve mastered that first lesson, we can then begin to love people we can’t see and don’t yet know, including God, and far-flung neighbors, and maybe future versions of ourselves, grown from humble sprouts into the fruitful branches Jesus admonishes us to be. None of this would be possible, though, if God hadn’t first loved us.

When I was researching this homily, I learned an interesting fact about vines. In the 19th century, a plague of insects called phylloxera decimated the vines used to grow wine grapes in Europe. American vines were immune to the pests, but the wine made from their grapes wasn’t nearly as good. Someone solved the problem by growing American vines and grafting the European plants onto them. The European vines produced excellent fruit, but only because the American roots remained untouched by the phylloxera.

“I am the vine and you are the branches,” Jesus tells us. “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.” We are charged to bear good grapes, but we must also remember and honor our roots, the God who nourishes us even when others can’t see him, and without whom we would wither and die. Prone to countless pests and plagues, we need God to nourish us into fruitfulness. But God needs us to bear fruit.

Because today is Mother’s Day, it’s easy to think about these ideas in terms of parents and children. Parents, and other caring adults, love children into being. Unloved children all too often wither as adults; loved children are much more likely to become loving, fruitful people themselves. Most mothers love their children even before they’re born, and continue to love them when they’re out of physical sight. By the same token, if we have loving relationships with our mothers, we continue to love them long after we can no longer see them.

On Friday, I went to the Post Office to Express-Mail a Mother’s Day card to my mother in Philadelphia. “I always send cards late,” I told the clerk, “and I want this one to get there on time. This may be my mom’s last Mother’s Day, and I don’t want to regret a late card.”

I was embarrassed at paying the outrageous $17.50 Express Mail charge to send a measly greeting card, but the clerk nodded. “I understand completely,” she said. “This is my first Mother’s Day without my mother. I don’t need to send a card, though, because I think about her every day, whether it’s Mother’s Day or not.”

Another clerk, this time at the grocery store, told me that every Mother’s Day, she releases a balloon to float up to heaven. “I know mom’s in a better place,” she told me simply.

This can be a very painful day for people who have lost, or who have strained relationships, with mothers or children. Sometimes it feels as if those branches have been thrown away and withered. Faith that our dead loved ones are in a better place doesn’t change our yearning to have them with us here and now, where we can see and hear them. Sometimes the pain from broken relationships -- with loved ones who could see and speak to us, but don’t -- can be even more difficult. But we are an Easter people. We need to remember that God will always nourish us. We need to remember that seeds can sprout from seemingly barren ground.

And we need to remember that there are many ways to bear fruit. The famous verse from Galatians tells us that “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” On Mother’s Day, this may be especially reassuring to those of us who, either by choice or necessity, have no children. Galatians reminds us that we don’t need to have biological offspring to be fruitful and multiply. We don’t even need to be gardeners: a great comfort to me, since I’ve always had a black thumb.

Galatians doesn’t include hope or imagination on the list, but it seems to me that those gifts are Fruit of the Spirit too, and that the Ethiopian eunuch from Acts illustrates them admirably. Physically unable to have children, he is nonetheless a man of great faith. He invites a stranger, someone he has never seen before, into his chariot to guide him through the Scriptures. He questions what he reads, and when Philip explains the passage to him, the eunuch says, “Look, here is water! What is to stop me from being baptized?”

The eunuch moves gracefully from something he can see -- the water by the road -- to something he has only just imagined, his own baptism. He moves from what is real to what is possible, and then, in turn, makes that possibility fact, stopping the chariot so he can be baptized right there and then. He becomes one of Jesus’ branches, a grafted limb ready to produce wonderful fruit. The eunuch reminds us that questions can be a sacrament, the first step to making God visible in the world. We follow his example when we pay attention and take action.

“Look, here are my neighbors! What is to keep me from loving them?”

“Look, here is injustice! What is to keep me from correcting it?”

“Look, here is the Kingdom of God! What is to keep me from sharing it with the world?”

This Mother’s Day, may we bless all our gardens: those we can see and those we can only, as yet, imagine. And may we always remember, and rejoice in, the roots that ground and nourish us.

Amen.

Welcomed

This afternoon was a lot more intense than I expected. The woman who taught us about Ayurvedic medicine -- she's also a Western-trained physician -- was terrific, very down to earth and realistic when telling the students what to expect during their residencies, which will begin July 1. She told them, for instance, that there's pretty much no way to avoid being sleep-deprived. She split the students into five small groups to discuss different scenarios that might come up in residency: the one in the group I sat in on involved an exhausted resident ordering a drug to which the patient was allergic, and being caught in the error by a nurse.

I'd told myself I was just going to sit, listen and knit, but I wound up making comments in the small group, and then, later, in the large group. One of the scenarios involved a pregnant resident fearing for her baby's safety during a swarm of hectic admissions, and that led into a discussion of maternity leave (or lack thereof) in residency. I spoke up, mentioned that my father had just died, and said, "How do residencies handle bereavement leave?"

People blinked at me. "They don't," one of the faculty said. "I've never heard of it."

I was already feeling a little shaky from having talked about Dad -- I'd prefaced my comments with, "I know I'm the outsider here, but I'm wondering . . . " -- and after the discussion, I went to talk to the instructor to tell her how much I was enjoying her presentation. I asked her if I'd been talking too much, and she said no, and Jillian came up and said sternly, "Susan, you have to stop this! You aren't an outsider!"

The instructor told me that the entire elective is indebted to everyone who works in medical humanities, and furthermore that the philosophy of HEART is to welcome everyone. "If you aren't welcome here, none of us is welcome," she told me.

We'd been sitting outside for the small-group exercise. Back inside, everyone settled into a circle. My chair was behind the circle, where I could watch, listen and knit comfortably. The instructor looked at me and said, "Susan, please join the circle!" Then she said, "As a matter of fact, there's something I want to do. We're going to do an exercise with you. Come here, in the middle. We're going to do an exercise called a HEART attack."

Slightly nervous, I stood in the middle of the circle. Everyone else got up and stood around me. The instructor said, "Okay, everybody, HEART attack!" and they all rushed forward and hugged me.

All of this left me feeling acutely self-conscious and as if I was about three years old; at the same time, though, it brought up powerful and painful memories of all the other places where I haven't been welcomed unconditionally, or where I've thought that I was, only to fall into the same old pattern of being told to shut up, be quiet, stop talking so much. This has been especially true of my church relationships over the last five years or so, and all of that got retriggered (although in a minor way) by something that happened last week.

I realized that in most of the environments where I operate, I'm suffering from some form of "impostor syndrome:" I'm not smart or critical or productive enough as an English academic, I'm not really a chaplain, I've foresworn ordination in a church setting where Total Ministry's becoming a thing of the past, I can't possibly claim to be a real member of a medical faculty because I'm only adjunct and teach a subject perceived as "soft," even though I fervently believe otherwise, and so forth and so on.

Intellectually, I know that none of this is true, that I'm fine the way I am (although I have plenty of room to grow!), that I do a lot of good work in a lot of places, and that my lack of "official" credentials in various settings, especially the hospital, often makes me more effective in my work, not less. Intellectually, I know that the "shut up" messages I get are usually because I've touched on some truth that other people don't want to think about. But for all my intellectual understanding of these dynamics, I'm carrying around a lot of emotional baggage -- who isn't? -- and that got triggered today.

I'm trying to think of any other setting where I've been told, "If you aren't welcome here, none of us is welcome." I can't think of one. Church comes cloest, at least in theory, but too much of it is still hierarchical and credential-based. Various therapy groups I've been in have come close, but there are always power dynamics operating there, too.

Of course, I've been at HEART less than a day, and I'm sure it would look less utopian over time. But still, there's just something about that formulation -- "If you aren't welcome here, none of us is welcome" -- that haunts me, especially in a setting based on a shared professional background I don't share.

I'm sure I'll be processing this more over the next few days. Time to go eat dinner now, and then go to bed early, I hope. We're all staying in cabins perched among the trees. The cabins are accessible via narrow dirt paths, and we need flashlights at night. The cabins are tiny, but luckily my roommate's very nice. I hope I can get my CPAP to work, so my snoring won't bother her!

I didn't get to the waterfall today. Maybe tomorrow.

Getaway

Tomorrow morning, I'll be attending a dissertation defense in another department (I'm the outside committee member). Tomorrow afternoon, I'm leaving for a weekend in California. My ultimate destination is Ben Lomond, where I'll be presenting a Narrative Medicine workshop at the HEART elective for medical students. (I love the photo on their homepage of the medical student hugging a tree!) Tomorrow night, though, I've reserved a hotel room in Berkeley. I hope to get there early enough to hit some of my favorite stores and galleries before closing time.

Friday I'll drive down to Ben Lomond, arriving around lunchtime. I'll spend the rest of the day getting acclimated and catching up with my student Jillian, who very kindly got me invited down there. Saturday's the two-hour workshop. I'll probably stay over until Sunday morning, when I plan to leave early and drive straight home to Reno, weather permitting. The weather's supposed to be better than it has been, though, so I hope to avoid trouble in the mountains.

I have to lug a ridiculous amount of stuff along with me: my laptop, since Jillian says that cell reception's iffy down there and I need e-mail access for work, piles of grading (I got a bunch done this morning, but it just keeps coming in again), my CPAP, my teaching stuff for the workshop, knitting, a pillow and towel for Ben Lomond (since Jillian advised me to bring my own), and, of course, clothing. I calculate that I'll have to bring three bags for four days. Oy! And, of course, we'll see how much grading I actually get done. I don't feel safe leaving it behind, though.

In any case, both Berkeley and Ben Lomond should be fun and relaxing, which I sorely need right now. I wish Gary could come, but he abhors long car rides and also wants to go to a concert tomorrow night, since two of our good friends are performing. I'd ordinarily want to go to the concert too, but right now, getting out of town takes priority.

Saturday evening will be four weeks since Dad died. I suspect HEART will be a good place to be for that particular anniversary. Jillian's been following the Dad saga from the beginning, and has been very understanding and sympathetic. She's going to be a fabulous physician.

This afternoon, a former student stopped by my office hours to give me his condolences. He's been reading the blog! (Hi, Charles!) And this morning before I left for work, the hospice chaplain called me to see how I was. I explained that I was frantically grading, and that while I'd love to talk to him, I really won't have time until May. He said that he won't pester me, that he'll let me call him when I'm ready. Nice guy.

I can't wait until classes are over. It's been a brutal semester. Right now, though, I'm still in miles-to-go-before-I-sleep mode.

Ben Lomond's supposed to be gorgeous, so I'll post photos if my BlackBerry cooperates.

Adventures in Oxygen Meets Godzilla

Well, yesterday Gary and I did something that may have been foolish -- and that was certainly extravagant -- and bought Dad the same kind of oxygen concentrator he's renting. We found a new one on the internet for a mere (haHAhaHAhaHAha) $2,995; because it's new, it comes with all the gadgets and warranties. A used one would cost $2,700 without a warranty, and a very used one would cost $2,400 without a warranty, so it seemed better to go with the new equipment.

Luckily, we can take the money out of savings and don't have to take out a second mortgage on the house. I feel like I've bought a car. Dad is, of course, very grateful, and is trying to be good about learning to use the machine and becoming more independent (since if he needs to be escorted to every meal, the assisted-living cost goes up $495 -- haHAhaHAhaHAha -- a month).

Just doing our part to stimulate the economy.

The new machine should arrive sometime next week, if Dad's doctor faxed the O2 prescription to the company on Friday as I requested(they're in Colorado). I just hope Dad gets a good long period of use out of it.

Meanwhile, road conditions on 80 seem to be justifying our decision not to go to Palo Alto this weekend. Lotsa snow up there!

In other news, I volunteered at the hospital today for the first time since late October. I've never worked a morning shift before, and I'm not a morning person, but it went okay. It was a pretty quiet shift, but I had lots of requests for prayer and handed out lots of blankets, so I stayed busy. I also ran into someone I knew from church and someone who recognized me from a lecture I gave at the med school. Two nurses and one PA seemed actively glad to see me; the other folks I knew either didn't remember that I'd ever been there or didn't realize that I'd ever left.

At the end of the shift, I bumped heads with a social worker who was less than sympathetic to a homeless patient. She was doing that "Oh, he just wants to get a place to stay" routine, and I pointed out that in the winter, this is entirely reasonable (it's entirely reasonable anytime, but especially in the winter). I'd already given him a list of shelters, but I was hoping that she'd help with a shelter referral; it's not like I was trying to get him admitted to the hospital. I was annoyed by her automatic assumption that he was trying to play us, especially since I'd talked to the guy and she hadn't even met him yet.

Part of the problem may have been resistance on the part of a paid professional to being asked by a volunteer to see a patient. I've run into this before. One social worker, years ago, flat-out told me that she'd only take referrals from doctors, who often don't know crucial things about the patients' living situations. Physicians, oddly enough, have usually been very open to my giving them information, if I can catch them for three seconds. There's weird social-class/workplace-hierarchy stuff going on here that I can't even try to decode, although I might be more effective if I could. But hey, it's supposed to be about the patients, not about the rest of us.

Anyway, having pissed off a member of the staff, I seem to be back in the swing of things. PITA for Christ! PITA for Christ! Yeee-hah!

Thanks, Doc!

I talked to Dad last night, and he sounded better. This morning I left a message with his primary-care doctor at the VA about getting him in to see someone about his depression. The PCP called me back around noon, and when I explained what was going on, he said he'd work on a referral.

Ten minutes later, a VA psychologist called me, and shortly thereafter, she'd set up two appointments for Dad for tomorrow: he's seeing a psychiatrist at 3:00, and her after that. This isn't the usual order, but it's what was open for tomorrow.

Nice to see that government bureaucracy can move quickly on occasion! Dad and I are both very grateful that he has such a proactive primary-care doc. The PCP had evidently walked into the psychologist's office to explain the situation, rather than relying on phone or e-mail. Thank you, doctor!

I can't be with Dad tomorrow, because I'll be teaching at the med school, but he's arranged for the paratransit van to pick him up and bring him back home, and someone from his assisted-living facility will go with him. Gary and I have to pay for that -- I think it's $20/hour -- but I want Dad to be seen quickly, and this is the only way it will happen.

Meanwhile, we're waiting to see if the weather will permit us to travel to Palo Alto on Thursday. If not, some of the tests Dad would have had there can be done at the VA here, although his echocardiogram has to be done at Stanford. We could drive him down the following week for that, although the long weekend this week would give us more wiggle room.

Today Dad asked when he's going to see me next. Tomorrow I'm busy all day with class prep for Wednesday, teaching a narrative medicine class at the med school in the afternoon, and facilitating the hospital Lit & Med discussion group in the evening. Wednesday I'm busy with teaching, so Dad probably won't see me until Thursday. Although he's been interested in and proud of my medical-school projects in the past, Dad grumbled this time. "Why do you do all this extra work?"

"Because I enjoy it," I told him. (The med-school stuff also gives me service points for my annual review.) The implication, though, was clearly that I should devote every spare moment to him.

Sigh.

A speech therapist is going to visit him tomorrow morning to work on his swallowing; his occupational therapist was there today, and patiently led him through the oxygen drill again. She also reminded him that having people transport him to and from meals raises his bill, which is good motivation to get him walking, or at least using his scooter. I haven't wanted to emphasize that because I don't want him to feel guilty about money (my sister and I have to pay any extra expenses), but I'm glad the therapist mentioned it.

If nothing else, he's getting lots of attention from lots of people. I just pray that it eventually helps him feel better.

Slow-Moving Week

Thanks for all the comments asking if I'm all right, everybody! I am all right, more or less; I've just been over-busy and under-efficient this week. My back still hurts. Yesterday I went to the doctor, who assured me briskly that I'm only having muscle spasms (not a slipped disk or anything of the sort). He put me on Celebrex instead of ibuprofen, to spare my stomach, and ordered physical therapy. I have no idea when I'll have time for that, especially since we're driving back to Palo Alto next Thursday. I'm also supposed to take muscle relaxants whenever I don't have to drive, which basically means that I take one at bedtime.

I also saw my shrink this week. She wants to see me again in a month and gave me stern orders to keep up my exercise regimen (which I've been doing as best I can, given the back pain).

Dad's having a tough time adjusting to assisted living. His memory's worse than usual, and he has no energy, and even small tasks seem to overwhelm him. Today he, I, and the sales director (more or less independently) all arrived at the conclusion that he's depressed, so I'm going to talk to his doctor on Monday about getting him back on meds. He's been through so much lately, and he's really hurt that Fran took off without even saying goodbye to any of us, and hasn't called him since she's been back in Chicago (we know that she arrived safely, at least, because we called a friend of hers). He and Fran have been best friends for twenty years, and he used to talk to her every night. No wonder he's depressed!

I'm trying to get him to exercise more, encouraging him to follow his PT instructions to walk a little bit with his walker every hour. A nurse, a caregiver and I are also trying to get him to go on the "scenic drive" the facility offers tomorrow. Right now, he only leaves his room for meals, and sometimes not even then, and that's no good.

Gary and I are getting the room set up, though: it already looks better than the apartment ever did (partly because there's a bunch of stuff still in the apartment we'll have to toss), and I think Dad will like it if he can get out of his funk.

Meanwhile, I need to talk to the nursing director about whether they're going to be charging us more to help him with his oxygen ($255/month, to be precise). I asked about this before we signed the contract and was assured by the sales director and the nursing director that helping people change tanks was included, but now one of the nurses has decided that he needs too much help for it to be free. She and the director were supposed to discuss this and get back to me, but I haven't heard anything yet.

Mom's more with it than she was, although she still has some odd ideas. She's convinced that the nursing home kitchen shuts down every weekend, which it certainly doesn't, and is also looking forward to driving again -- which, of course, isn't going to happen -- so she can travel along the coast. She knows who I am when I call, though, and she's fairly cheerful, which is a nice contrast with Dad.

My sister and I are sad and exhausted. I've been very cranky with people at work and at church (probably a depression symptom too), and I owe lots of people apologies, although I think everybody understands that the last few months have been difficult.

Part of my own funk has come from not being able to look forward to some of my usual escapes. We aren't going to Hawai'i for spring break this year; we probably aren't leaving town at all, although the medical student I'm working with has very kindly offered to let us stay in her condo (ten miles from here in the mountains) for part of break, just for a change of scenery. I've also decided to save money by not going to WisCon this year. This is hard -- especially since two of my favorite writers, Ellen Klages and Geoff Ryman, are the guests of honor -- but seems prudent.

Today, though, I started planning my trip back East in June for the Narrative Medicine Workshop offered at Columbia. The med school is underwriting the trip (amazing in these days of financial crisis), and while I'm back there, I'm going to visit family in Philly and then head up to Amherst to visit my cousin Val and my friend Deirdre. I'm really looking forward to this, and since I've now booked my flights (flying into Philly and out of Boston), it feels like it's really going to happen. But when I told Dad about it, he said, "You're going away for two and a half weeks?"

Gary pointed out later that I shouldn't have told him about it so soon. But the way things have been going, he'll forget again soon enough.

Sigh.

All Kinds of Stuff, In No Particular Order

1. My father and Fran got the apartment! Now we begin the nerve-wracking process of two people moving from two different states into the same small space. They probably won't be here for about two months, but there are lots of logistics to be worked out in the meantime.

2. This week's edition of Grand Rounds is up. Happy reading!

3. Speaking of medicine, yesterday I flew down to Vegas to teach my narrative-medicine class to some third-year students. It was great fun, and two of them are now interested in my fourth-year NM elective (and one person came away from the class with an interesting idea for a research project). So I'm pleased with how it went.

4. Also speaking of medicine -- veterinary, this time -- Harley had bloodwork this morning to see if he's developing kidney disease (his bloodwork has seemed to indicate that he might be, but it's borderline and might just be normal for him, so they've been rechecking his blood every six months). Please keep your fingers crossed for good results!

5. Yesterday in Vegas, my friend Marin showed me her iPhone, which is a thing of beauty and splendor, and for which I developed instant and total technolust. Gary and I talked about my getting myself one for my birthday, but reality set in when I started checking the numbers: on top of the hefty purchase price for the unit, the monthly charge ranges from $70 to $130, and that's way too much to pay on top of our other bills. (Plus, battery life seems to be a problem with these gizmos.) So I'll stick with my modest little cellphone for now. I'm sure that the units will become more reliable and that prices will come down, but I can wait until that happens.

6. Tomorrow we leave for the wedding in San Francisco. It should be a fun trip!

7. Classes start Monday. Eeeep! I think I'm ready, but I suspect I'll have my share of teaching-anxiety dreams this weekend.

I think that's all the news. I may blog over the weekend -- I'm certainly taking the laptop -- but if I don't, I hope everyone has a great few days!

Score One for Narrative Medicine!

I recently got some nice news from my friend Marin Gillis, who's the Director of Medical Ethics and Humanities at our medical school, and who's been a steadfast champion both of narrative medicine and of my work with it. She was the person who asked me to teach a class on narrative medicine as part of the third-year Clinical Reasoning in Medicine course.

Some of the medical students are more than a little skeptical about this, for obvious reasons. They have gobs of hard science to learn, and they aren't getting enough sleep, and many of them are scientists by inclination as well as training. In this setting, narrative medicine, and other work in the humanities, often feels fluffy and extraneous. Although the students have always been polite to me and done the work I asked of them -- often very well -- there's also been some unspoken resistance. I could often sense the "this is bs" current in the room, although no one ever said it aloud. (I should add that this mindset isn't limited to medical students, and is often much stronger in freshman comp classes, where students can be much less polite about it!) But as a med school faculty member told me, "They'll get in five years, you know? When they're in actual practice, something's going to happen in a patient interaction, and they'll look back and say, 'Ooooh! That's why she wanted us to learn this!'"

For at least one student, it didn't take five years.

When I saw Marin last week, she told me that one of the medical students who'd been in the CRIM class told her a story about another student in the class, who'd been very resistant to the material. I'd given them a published case about a fourteen year old boy dying of cancer; I had the students write a letter from one of the people described in the case (the boy, one of his parents, one of his doctors, his beloved neighbor, the beloved neighbor's beloved dog, the girl in his class he wanted to kiss) to someone else on the list of characters. The students paired up and swapped letters; each then wrote a response to the other's letter. So if one student wrote from the boy to his doctor, the second wrote from the doctor to the boy.

This one student, evidently, thought the whole exercise was complete and utter hooey. Why were they spending time on this garbage? How was this ever going to be useful?

Two weeks later, he told his friend, something happened at the hospital, and he suddenly understood why it was important. He had the aha moment. "Ooooh! That's why she wanted us to learn this!"

I don't know what happened, although I'd love to know. Marin's trying to get the student to write me a note about it, but apparently he's too embarrassed. (Dear med student: If you're reading this, you don't need to be embarrassed. Believe me, I know the material can seem irrelevant at first! I'm just glad it didn't take you five years to change your mind.)

In any event, this is an invaluable affirmation of the work I've been doing. Marin and other med school faculty have been very positive all along, but the opinions that matter the most are those of the students.

In other medical-humanities news, we'll be starting up the Literature & Medicine program in August, and Marin recently met with the staff of a care facility where there's strong interest in a writing and healing group. So I may be doing that work sooner than I expected. And we also have our first student in a narrative-medicine elective, and she may be able to get me invited to teach a narrative medicine or reflective writing session at the HEART elective in Santa Cruz next April.

I'm excited!

Random Ups and Downs

Today started off very well, with a breakfast meeting about the Literature & Medicine program in Reno. We have a schedule now, and a partial list of people we want to invite. My job by the end of the week is to finalize the syllabus, which will be easier now that my books have arrived from Chicago.

I decided to celebrate by buying a new bookcase for my office at school, to be devoted to Lit&Med books. (I also framed my Certificate of Appointment to the medical school -- the one with everything spelled right -- because it makes me happy.) Gary and I went to my office, measured, went to Office Depot, found something the right size, and went back to my office, where Gary began the long, tedious job of assembly.

In the meantime, I'd learned from the department secretary that my fall grad seminar's been canceled because it didn't get enough students. That's the second time in two years this has happened to me. This time around, I polled the grad students to see which topic they were most interested in, and went with the one that got the most votes, but it still didn't work.

Drat.

Instead, I'll be teaching Women & Literature, which is always a fun course. But I have to get that syllabus into working shape soon, too, so I can order the books.

By the time we got the bookcase assembled and moved into the office, it was 6:00. We went out to eat so Gary wouldn't have to cook after fighting with cryptic assembly instructions. Then we came back home, where I stared mournfully at my third chapter and fiddled with it a bit. In the process, I figured out what comes next (this showing up at the computer really does seem to work!), but I didn't actually write it. I knitted instead, catching and repairing two potentially disastrous dropped stitches in my current project.

I'd hoped to have the third chapter done today, but instead, I'm giving myself until the end of the week. And I'm going to bed early tonight, because I got up at 6:00 for the meeting.

Both of my offices, at home and school, are in utter chaos right now, which isn't helping anything. I need to make time to straighten them up. Gahhhh.

I didn't read today. Mea culpa. I did swim, though.

Book Pigout, With Knitting

I'm currently indulging in a medical non-fiction orgy, which I figure I can justify because of my med-school work. Yesterday I finished devouring Pauline Chen's Final Exam, an uncommonly moving exploration of physicians' difficult relationship to death. During my Tolkien exam this afternoon, I inhaled half of Atul Gawande's Better, a wide-ranging collection of essays about improvements in medical performance, and then promptly came home and ordered his first book, Complications. While I was at it, I also bought Jerome Groopman's How Doctors Think, recommended both by Gary's mom and by med-school colleagues, along with my college classmate Lisa Belkin's book about medical ethics, First, Do No Harm.

And then I looked at all of the books by one of my favorite medical writers, Perri Klass, to see if I'd missed any . . . and discovered that she's published a collection of knitting columns! So of course I had to order that, too, even though it's not related to med-school work.

Perri Klass knits! Squeeeee! (I gather that if I read Knitter's Magazine, where she's a columnist, I'd already have known this, but I don't and I didn't.)

I'm already thinking of other books I wish I'd ordered, but they'll have to wait! Anyway, if anyone out there has recommendations for great medical nonfiction, please let me know.

Chicago, Here I Come! With a Rare Family Find!

In June, I'll be going to Chicago for a training institute in the Literature & Medicine program, which a med-school colleague and I will be trying to start here within the next year. It's an exciting idea, and I really hope we can get it off the ground.

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to the conference. I have to say that part of the draw is that the conference accomodations are less than a mile from The Art Institute of Chicago. My grandfather, Jerome Rozen, and his twin brother George were both students there, and later taught there. The school's where they met their wives, who were also both artists. So it's a big piece of family history, but I've never been. I can't wait to go!

Doing a search on Jerome, I just found this picture of him, taken in 1985, two years before he died. He and George painted a lot of covers for magazines like The Shadow; late in life, he was commissioned to recreate some of his and George's covers by Anthony Tollin, who took this photo. In the picture, Jerome's holding up a Shadow cover painting and another for Doc Savage.

I'd never seen this photo before, and it moves me very much. I remember watching Jerome painting the recreations in his garage, and I remember meeting the Tollins at his funeral. I miss Jerome, as I suspect everyone does who knew him. He was an incredibly sweet and generous man, and very much the patriarch of our extended family.

Wow. What a wonderful find!