Triblog

!!!!1*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

After we hung up, I wondered, as I had several times before, if those were the last words we’d say to each other. Images flooded my memory, and I knew I had to turn them off, or at least turn away from them. With Howard gone, I’d have to face it on my own. A growth opportunity, I decided.

Grabbing a piece of stationary, I began to write whatever random thought angled through my mind. “Everything that happened was supposed to happen.” And, “Everything that was supposed to happen, did.” A start, I thought, but what am I supposed to learn from this, from Howard leaving, from Michael Harrison poised towards an unknown future, a continent away? Someone down the hall put on a Rolling Stones record from long ago. After a primitive 3-note riff from Keith Richards, Mick Jagger’s 21-year old voice, muffled by the walls between us, began to sing. Whoever had put on this scratchy old album turned up the volume, just in time  for me to hear, “Well, this could be the last time, this could be the last time…”

Oh, right, I thought. That’s all I need. I grabbed my coat, stormed out of the house, and walked the 20 minutes to Marcia’s. Along the way, Mick’s refrain morphed into my own inner drumbeat. Left foot, Howard; right foot, Michael. I almost saw their faces in the jagged concrete sidewalk as I marched along. My own face must have frozen into a mask of determination, as Marcia said when I barged in on her, “Whoa! What fired you up? What’s going on?”

I had my speech ready. “Marcia, that’s the last time I let a man, let love or sex, or feeling safe, protected, try and meld with me. Let one rule my feelings or my life. They get to to do what they want, go wherever. Why not me? Why not us?”

“What brought this on?”

I fumed, “I called him up.”

“Mike? You didn’t call him up, after I told you not to…?”

I clenched my jaw, and said, “Sorry, but I had to. I had to find where he’s at.”

“So how’d it go?” she asked

“During the call, pretty good. Not scary. It was like we fell right into to talking, sharing. It was like we were trying to rhyme with some other time.”

“Rhyme with another time? Past, or future?”

I frowned, “I’m pretty it’s not the future. He’s staying in LA, four more years.” I sat down disgustedly. She disappeared into her tiny kitchen, returning with two glasses and a half-full bottle of Pinot noir.

“I know you don’t drink, but, Sarah, you need to drink. Here.”

I didn’t question the suggestion. After the initial fire going down, an after-taste remained, soothing both my tongue and nose. Within minutes, my head felt light, my shoulders lost their tension, and I fell back into the easy chair. Marcia smiled. “Thanks,” was all I said.

Three weeks later, Marcia called, saying, “Sarah, how’ve you been?”

“Oh, all right I guess.”

“Getting out at all?”

“Honestly, no. But it’s good, I’ve gotten all caught up on classes. Even found out where I’ll be for clinical. Beth Israel.”

“Yay?” Marcia asked.

“Yay,” I answered. “The best place. I’m ready for the next steps.”

“Well, listen, I think you should get out…”

“I told you, Marcia, I’m done. For now any way…”

She interrupted, “No, not that. Girls’ night out. Remember that girl, freshman year, Bonnie, always playing the guitar and signing in the lounge? Well, apparently, she’s making records now. On tour. She’s going to be at the Harvard Square Theater next Thursday. Let’s go see her, OK? It’s $4, I think they still have tickets.”

“When?”

“Seven for the first show, then another one at 10, I think.”

We got there in time to see the opening act, a scruffy-looking multi-racial crew who opened with an extended piano solo, almost classical, by the suave, be-spectacled black piano player, backed by a long-haired white bassist. The black drummer hunched over bongos, softly underscoring the quiet but insistent beat. Off to one side, the white organist dreamily filled in with ethereal chords, while a large black man nodded his head, his saxophone appearing impossibly small in his giant hands. Then, the spotlight followed a skinny dark-haired boy, sporting a scruffy beard, who carried a worn electric guitar over his shoulder. For the next ten minutes or so, he hummed and sang his way through lyrical images about Sandy, a fish-lady, and some junkman.

At the end, puzzled, I turned to Marcia, asking, “I thought this was a rock and roll show?” Before she could answer, the singer broke into a self-satisfied grin, saying, “How you all doin’ out there? These guys, they’re my E Street Band, and I’m here to tell you a little story, about a girl I went out with a while ago. She took my heart, for a month or so, and then gave it back to me, all battered and bruised. Right, fellows?” The rest of the band murmured assent, not unlike a congregation doing a call-and-response with a gospel preacher. He launched into a ’50’s do-wop number, called I Sold My Heart To The Junkman. The show went on like that for 90 minutes, see-sawing between gritty urban vignettes and rousing, foot-stomping odes to the vicissitudes of youth, ending with a tribute to “a girl I once knew,” Rosalita.

Bonnie’s set was more straightforward, bottleneck blues, country-tinged laments, tight, professional, ending with the complaint, “how the hell can a person go to work in the morning, come home in the evening with nothing to say?”

When the applause died down, I asked Marcia, “She was good, sounds better than when we heard her out in the quad. But that first guy – what was his name?”

“Bruce-something, I think.” Marcia responded.

“Anyway, he’s intriguing.” I looked around, trying to see if we could avoid leaving, and found a hidden nook near the back. “Let’s stay, and see the second show, OK?”

Marcia shrugged, saying, “What else do I have to do, except get up at 5:30 to go to the hospital?” We both laughed.

Bruce-something played for two hours in the late show, packing even more energy into his songs. Half-way through, he said, “Here’s a new one, if you wanna get up and stomp your feet…” The drummer started off with a blazing tom-tom riff, arms moving faster than a hummingbird’s wings. The entire ensemble played at full throttle all the way through, a working class paean to cars, amusement park rides, chilly nights on the beach, and romance – “I wanna die with you, Wendy, on the street tonight, in an everlasting kiss…together we can live with the sadness, I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul…someday we’ll get to that place…” By the time he got to Rosalita again, the whole crowd was swaying, clapping, insisting he continue. So he came back out and did Twist and Shout, saying, “my doctor told me not to sing this song again, my heart can’t stand it. But you guys are worth it!”

Finally, outside, Marcia asked, “What did you think?”

“I liked him, I really did.”

“Why?”

“He gives me hope. For the future.”

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

xv

Marcia and I met for dinner the last Friday in March, at one of my favorite spots in Porter Square.

“I don’t suppose they’ll be setting up out on the sidewalk any time soon, not after last night,” she observed. “That was a cold one. Did you sleep OK? Your boiler ever get fixed? Or is it still down jacket weather inside your place at night?”

“It was cold – I was cold – last night.” I dropped my head dejectedly, trying hard not to cry. Marcia had known me too long, though.

“Howard?”

“Uh-hum,” I mumbled. Lifting my head up towards her, I flippantly offered, “Howard may not have been good for much at the end, but at least he kept me warm at night.”

“He’s really gone? To Israel?”

We found a table at a window looking out on Mass Ave. “He’s gone. Over a week now,” I returned. “I don’t know why I feel so cliche – ‘can’t live with him, can’t live without him.’ He got a one-way ticket. And even if he did come back, those feelings – my feelings, whatever they were – have disappeared. Not gone with him, simply gone.”

“What do you mean, ‘Whatever they were’, your feelings?”

Composed again, I managed to look straight at her. “We worked so well together, a regular team, Howard and I. And I’ve never had a closer friend, or someone I admired so much. ‘Admired’, past tense. He used to be so…committed, driven, to setting things right. But once he actually got out into the fight, at the law clinic, it was if he were cast adrift, no ambition.” I frowned at the menu, full of burgers and beers. “It got a little awkward at the end, to tell the truth, the way he adored me, always insisting I tell him ‘I love you.’ Even when he knew I didn’t feel it, like he was insecure?”

“Sometimes you didn’t feel it, or always? At least the last couple of years, when I’ve been around you, it wasn’t the same as…” She caught herself, as if afraid to say the wrong thing.

“The same as what? I don’t know if I ever felt about Howard the way I did with…”

Marci said, as if shifting topics, “You said you wrote to Mike Harrison?”

“Three weeks ago. It was Matching Day for med students, and I got curious, what he’d decided, where he’d go this summer, for internship and all.” I tried to switch to safer ground. “It’s a year away for you, have you figured it out yet?”

“Psychiatry for sure, and New York or here, but of course, no idea yet until I interview places.” Now it was her turn to frown at the menu. “I don’t feel like eating here, do you?”

“Not any more”, I laughed. “Let’s go back, see what’s in the cupboards, OK?”

On the way over to Orchard Street, I took her arm, and said, “Marcia, what do you think? I feel like calling Mike…”

“He hasn’t written back yet?”

“He can go months or more to send me a letter. It’s his birthday soon, something’s telling me I need to find out about where he’s going next year.”

“Are you sure, Janie – Sarah? You don’t need to go there. I mean, not after Howard’s just left. Don’t you think that’s a little obvious, looking back to your ex for comfort?”

But I couldn’t help myself. A week later, on the night before his birthday, I called at 9 PM, hoping he’d be home in LA.

“Hello?” his familiar baritone greeted me. I was grateful I didn’t have to go through one of his roommates.

“Mike? It’s Sarah – Janie – Sarah Stein.”

“Hi!” He sounded pleased. “I got your letter. Been meaning to write, but we’ve been going skiing the past couple of weekends, up at Mammoth, and that’s a 12 hour round trip just to get there and back…”

Quickly, I said, “Skiing. I understand. Listen, it’s your birthday tomorrow – Happy 25 – and I was thinking about you, so I decided to call. I got curious, where are you going, for internship?” I got that all out in one gulp, and hoped he’d launch into one of his extended explanations.

“Oh, right. I’m staying here! In OB, you know.”

“Ob? Why?”

He sighed, sounding hesitant. “Yeah, you kind of pooh-pooh’d that, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t really mean to make you feel weird about it, Mike.”

“Well, you did. But it just feels so right, for me. There’s a little bit of everything. Surgery, office work, even a little bit of counseling. The big thing for me, what really draws me, is the babies. To be around that happiness…the smile on a new mother’s face, after she’s worked so hard, hurt so much, it all melts away when she sees, feels that little one fresh in her arms. Being around that everyday, it melts every thing else away. I learned the past four years, that illness, sickness, is not exciting to me. I mean, my roommates, who are going into Internal Medicine? They get so excited dealing with intractable problems, always another question to ask, another test to order. All I feel about that is, I’ll never know enough to do a good job there. OB, it’s different pretty unchanging as a process, you know? Your is to make sure everything stays safe, so the mother and her family can have the birth they want. Some OBs, if they don’t see a problem, they go out of their way to find one, maybe so they can be a hero. Me, I only want to be around that happiness, be there at the start of so many stories. Every now and then, I get to use a little skill, use my hands to help the baby out. It’s like being a music teacher, sometimes – I know what needs to happen, and I help her figure out how to play her instrument.”

He’d paused for breath, so I inserted, “Where? Which program?”

“I said, here. My first choice, and I didn’t really have a second one.”

“Why there? What’s so good about LA?” [MAYBE WE NEED TO KNOW WHAT SHE’S FEELING HERE?]

“Couple of things, It’s so busy here, I know it’s the kind of place where I’ll be able to learn, by doing. I’m not the kind of person who does I don’t do well sitting in a lecture, taking notes, and then putting that to use. I have to deal with the actual problem, get my hands messy, so to speak. And here, the attendings, they simply aren’t around. So the residents, they’re in charge, the senior resident, he’s the last line of defense..”
My feminist antennae instantly went up. “He?”

“Well, yeah, you’re right, they’re all men, at least up to now. But in my class, the ones coming in, there are three women out of twelve. And seeing how things are going in med schools, I bet the balance will tip soon enough. I may become a dinosaur, some day. But I really don’t see why it should be an issue though. If only male doctors could take care of men, and only female doctors, women, is that right?  What kind of a world is that, segregated by sex, by gender?”

I stayed silent, so he went on. “And the other thing, this is not only the largest program in the country, it’s also the best.”

“Really? Better than Harvard.”

He laughed. “Yeah. Four or five years ago, USC decided to make their Women’s Hospital a Mecca, a magnet for clinical and academic medicine. So they went and hired Dr. Q, the editor of the most prestigious journal, and he started stealing people from all the programs, in New England, and New York. He took practically the entire OB department from Yale, that’s the place where they literally invented fetal monitoring. even the guy who has all the patents on the systems, and brought them out. If you want to learn how to manage labor using that, well, we’ve got a lock on the experts. Same thing with Gyn Oncology, cancer surgery. I don’t want to be some hot shot in a University department somewhere. I’m not someone who has an ambition to be a professor or department chair, I want to actually help people, help women, directly. That’s why I became a doctor to begin with, one of the reasons, and this is the best place in the country learn how to do that.”

“I’m a little sorry, I guess, that you’re not going to be a shrink.”

“I told you, didn’t I, that I decided I didn’t want to sit around on my rear end eight hours a day, listening to people tell me how bad the world is. And if I weren’t a talk therapist, well, dealing with crazier people, we still don’t know what causes psychosis, or what works with it. We can tamp it down, make people zombies with drugs, but curing them? No.”

Finally, he seemed finished, so I said, “You know, I was in LA last Christmas. You were back in Cincinnati, they said. Seeing your parents?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s your mother?”

“She has a clinical practice going now, seeing patients and all. That cancer, the stroke, it took a while, but she did not give up.’

“Anything else? How long were you there for?”

He hesitated. “Actually…I went back for a six week rotation in urgent care at Cincinnati General.”

“Why on earth would you go back there for something like that?”

Again, the line went silent for a few seconds. “OK, I guess it can’t hurt me now. It was Molly. I had this stupid idea we  could get together…”

“Sounds like a ‘but…’,” I offered.

“But…yeah, it just wasn’t there, you know.”

Boy did I ever. Now it was my time to be silent. Finally, “Howard’s gone. For good, I think.”

“Oh?”

“He’s gone to Israel, to live, work on a kibbutz. I don’t know…No, I don’t care…if he ever comes back.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike said with an actual hint of concern in his voice.

“It’s OK, I think. I mean, the next 5 years, I expect I will be totally enmeshed in this program at BU. That’s where I want to put my energy, my commitment.” 

There was another awkward pause during which I heard my therapist in my head, telling me, “You have to ask him…” so I ventured, with a lilt, “So, how’s your sex life?
Thankfully he returned the laugh, saying, “Hah! Not so much now-a-days.” He paused. I could almost see him chewing over the next thing before he came out with, “But I did meet someone, last night in fact.”

Surprised to feel genuinely interested, I asked, “Who? Where?”

“It was at the hospital – where else? April – funny name, huh? We were both in the lab, waiting to spin a hematocrit, and kind of fake-fought over who got to use the machine next. She’s a new nurse, an RN waiting for her license to come through, and of course, I’m still a medical student for a couple more months. So we wondered about protocol, who had priority.”

“Who won?”

“She let me go first.”

Curious, I asked, “Is she younger than you?”

“That’s funny – her birthday is two days after mine, we found out, so we’re both still 25, for a few more days. She said, ‘Be sure and tell me what 26 is like, next time you’re on call’.”

“Cute…”

“Uh, I took that as a good sign, so I said, why don’t we just go celebrate our birthdays when we get off the morning after.”

“So you asked her out?”

Surprised, he answered, “Yeah, I guess I did.” He chuckled, “We’ll see how that goes.”

Feeling bold, I asked, “What’s she like, look like I mean? Her hair?”

“Don’t know, she had on one of those bonnets we have to wear in the delivery room. Blonde, maybe?”

We both fell silent for a few seconds, and I could sense the call coming to an end. Still, the therapist-in-my-head made me say, “Mike, I am…” I worried over the next word. Happy was not right, not honest. Still, I did want his life to go well, so I tried, “…I’m glad you’ve found your calling. Be careful with the women you see, you take care of – they’ll need a good doctor, a caring doctor, I know you can do that for them, OK?”

He said, in a serious tone, “All right. OK.”

“Oh, and Mike? This nurse? Please don’t try to win her with any fake charm. Just be yourself. If that doesn’t work, she’s not good enough for you. Hear me?”

He sighed, saying simply, “Uh-huh…”

The line between us sounded dead, so I tried, “And, Mike, please write. I really do want to hear, to know who you are and what happens to you, no matter where, no matter when.”

“I will, I really will. I promise.”

xv

Marcia and I met for dinner the last Friday in March, at one of my favorite spots in Porter Square.

“I don’t suppose they’ll be setting up out on the sidewalk any time soon, not after last night,” she observed. “That was a cold one. Did you sleep OK? Your boiler ever get fixed? Or is it still down jacket weather inside your place at night?”

“It was cold – I was cold – last night.” I dropped my head dejectedly, trying hard not to cry. Marcia had known me too long, though.

“Howard?”

“Uh-hum,” I mumbled. Lifting my head up towards her, I flippantly offered, “Howard may not have been good for much at the end, but at least he kept me warm at night.”

“He’s really gone? To Israel?”

We found a table at a window looking out on Mass Ave. “He’s gone. Over a week now,” I returned. “I don’t know why I feel so cliche – ‘can’t live with him, can’t live without him.’ He got a one-way ticket. And even if he did come back, those feelings – my feelings, whatever they were – have disappeared. Not gone with him, simply gone.”

“What do you mean, ‘Whatever they were’, your feelings?”

Composed again, I managed to look straight at her. “We worked so well together, a regular team, Howard and I. And I’ve never had a closer friend, or someone I admired so much. ‘Admired’, past tense. He used to be so…committed, driven, to setting things right. But once he actually got out into the fight, at the law clinic, it was if he were cast adrift, no ambition.” I frowned at the menu, full of burgers and beers. “It got a little awkward at the end, to tell the truth, the way he adored me, always insisting I tell him ‘I love you.’ Even when he knew I didn’t feel it, like he was insecure?”

“Sometimes you didn’t feel it, or always? At least the last couple of years, when I’ve been around you, it wasn’t the same as…” She caught herself, as if afraid to say the wrong thing.

“The same as what? I don’t know if I ever felt about Howard the way I did with…”

Marci said, as if shifting topics, “You said you wrote to Mike Harrison?”

“Three weeks ago. It was Matching Day for med students, and I got curious, what he’d decided, where he’d go this summer, for internship and all.” I tried to switch to safer ground. “It’s a year away for you, have you figured it out yet?”

“Psychiatry for sure, and New York or here, but of course, no idea yet until I interview places.” Now it was her turn to frown at the menu. “I don’t feel like eating here, do you?”

“Not any more”, I laughed. “Let’s go back, see what’s in the cupboards, OK?”

On the way over to Orchard Street, I took her arm, and said, “Marcia, what do you think? I feel like calling Mike…”

“He hasn’t written back yet?”

“He can go months or more to send me a letter. It’s his birthday soon, something’s telling me I need to find out about where he’s going next year.”

“Are you sure, Janie – Sarah? You don’t need to go there. I mean, not after Howard’s just left. Don’t you think that’s a little obvious, looking back to your ex for comfort?”

But I couldn’t help myself. A week later, on the night before his birthday, I called at 9 PM, hoping he’d be home in LA.

“Hello?” his familiar baritone greeted me. I was grateful I didn’t have to go through one of his roommates.

“Mike? It’s Sarah – Janie – Sarah Stein.”

“Hi!” He sounded pleased. “I got your letter. Been meaning to write, but we’ve been going skiing the past couple of weekends, up at Mammoth, and that’s a 12 hour round trip just to get there and back…”

Quickly, I said, “Skiing. I understand. Listen, it’s your birthday tomorrow – Happy 25 – and I was thinking about you, so I decided to call. I got curious, where are you going, for internship?” I got that all out in one gulp, and hoped he’d launch into one of his extended explanations.

“Oh, right. I’m staying here! In OB, you know.”

“Ob? Why?”

He sighed, sounding hesitant. “Yeah, you kind of pooh-pooh’d that, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t really mean to make you feel weird about it, Mike.”

“Well, you did. But it just feels so right, for me. There’s a little bit of everything. Surgery, office work, even a little bit of counseling. The big thing for me, what really draws me, is the babies. To be around that happiness…the smile on a new mother’s face, after she’s worked so hard, hurt so much, it all melts away when she sees, feels that little one fresh in her arms. Being around that everyday, it melts every thing else away. I learned the past four years, that illness, sickness, is not exciting to me. I mean, my roommates, who are going into Internal Medicine? They get so excited dealing with intractable problems, always another question to ask, another test to order. All I feel about that is, I’ll never know enough to do a good job there. OB, it’s different pretty unchanging as a process, you know? Your is to make sure everything stays safe, so the mother and her family can have the birth they want. Some OBs, if they don’t see a problem, they go out of their way to find one, maybe so they can be a hero. Me, I only want to be around that happiness, be there at the start of so many stories. Every now and then, I get to use a little skill, use my hands to help the baby out. It’s like being a music teacher, sometimes – I know what needs to happen, and I help her figure out how to play her instrument.”

He’d paused for breath, so I inserted, “Where? Which program?”

“I said, here. My first choice, and I didn’t really have a second one.”

“Why there? What’s so good about LA?” [MAYBE WE NEED TO KNOW WHAT SHE’S FEELING HERE?]

“Couple of things, It’s so busy here, I know it’s the kind of place where I’ll be able to learn, by doing. I’m not the kind of person who does I don’t do well sitting in a lecture, taking notes, and then putting that to use. I have to deal with the actual problem, get my hands messy, so to speak. And here, the attendings, they simply aren’t around. So the residents, they’re in charge, the senior resident, he’s the last line of defense..”
My feminist antennae instantly went up. “He?”

“Well, yeah, you’re right, they’re all men, at least up to now. But in my class, the ones coming in, there are three women out of twelve. And seeing how things are going in med schools, I bet the balance will tip soon enough. I may become a dinosaur, some day. But I really don’t see why it should be an issue though. If only male doctors could take care of men, and only female doctors, women, is that right?  What kind of a world is that, segregated by sex, by gender?”

I stayed silent, so he went on. “And the other thing, this is not only the largest program in the country, it’s also the best.”

“Really? Better than Harvard.”

He laughed. “Yeah. Four or five years ago, USC decided to make their Women’s Hospital a Mecca, a magnet for clinical and academic medicine. So they went and hired Dr. Q, the editor of the most prestigious journal, and he started stealing people from all the programs, in New England, and New York. He took practically the entire OB department from Yale, that’s the place where they literally invented fetal monitoring. even the guy who has all the patents on the systems, and brought them out. If you want to learn how to manage labor using that, well, we’ve got a lock on the experts. Same thing with Gyn Oncology, cancer surgery. I don’t want to be some hot shot in a University department somewhere. I’m not someone who has an ambition to be a professor or department chair, I want to actually help people, help women, directly. That’s why I became a doctor to begin with, one of the reasons, and this is the best place in the country learn how to do that.”

“I’m a little sorry, I guess, that you’re not going to be a shrink.”

“I told you, didn’t I, that I decided I didn’t want to sit around on my rear end eight hours a day, listening to people tell me how bad the world is. And if I weren’t a talk therapist, well, dealing with crazier people, we still don’t know what causes psychosis, or what works with it. We can tamp it down, make people zombies with drugs, but curing them? No.”

Finally, he seemed finished, so I said, “You know, I was in LA last Christmas. You were back in Cincinnati, they said. Seeing your parents?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s your mother?”

“She has a clinical practice going now, seeing patients and all. That cancer, the stroke, it took a while, but she did not give up.’

“Anything else? How long were you there for?”

He hesitated. “Actually…I went back for a six week rotation in urgent care at Cincinnati General.”

“Why on earth would you go back there for something like that?”

Again, the line went silent for a few seconds. “OK, I guess it can’t hurt me now. It was Molly. I had this stupid idea we  could get together…”

“Sounds like a ‘but…’,” I offered.

“But…yeah, it just wasn’t there, you know.”

Boy did I ever. Now it was my time to be silent. Finally, “Howard’s gone. For good, I think.”

“Oh?”

“He’s gone to Israel, to live, work on a kibbutz. I don’t know…No, I don’t care…if he ever comes back.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike said with an actual hint of concern in his voice.

“It’s OK, I think. I mean, the next 5 years, I expect I will be totally enmeshed in this program at BU. That’s where I want to put my energy, my commitment.” 

There was another awkward pause during which I heard my therapist in my head, telling me, “You have to ask him…” so I ventured, with a lilt, “So, how’s your sex life?
Thankfully he returned the laugh, saying, “Hah! Not so much now-a-days.” He paused. I could almost see him chewing over the next thing before he came out with, “But I did meet someone, last night in fact.”

Surprised to feel genuinely interested, I asked, “Who? Where?”

“It was at the hospital – where else? April – funny name, huh? We were both in the lab, waiting to spin a hematocrit, and kind of fake-fought over who got to use the machine next. She’s a new nurse, an RN waiting for her license to come through, and of course, I’m still a medical student for a couple more months. So we wondered about protocol, who had priority.”

“Who won?”

“She let me go first.”

Curious, I asked, “Is she younger than you?”

“That’s funny – her birthday is two days after mine, we found out, so we’re both still 25, for a few more days. She said, ‘Be sure and tell me what 26 is like, next time you’re on call’.”

“Cute…”

“Uh, I took that as a good sign, so I said, why don’t we just go celebrate our birthdays when we get off the morning after.”

“So you asked her out?”

Surprised, he answered, “Yeah, I guess I did.” He chuckled, “We’ll see how that goes.”

Feeling bold, I asked, “What’s she like, look like I mean? Her hair?”

“Don’t know, she had on one of those bonnets we have to wear in the delivery room. Blonde, maybe?”

We both fell silent for a few seconds, and I could sense the call coming to an end. Still, the therapist-in-my-head made me say, “Mike, I am…” I worried over the next word. Happy was not right, not honest. Still, I did want his life to go well, so I tried, “…I’m glad you’ve found your calling. Be careful with the women you see, you take care of – they’ll need a good doctor, a caring doctor, I know you can do that for them, OK?”

He said, in a serious tone, “All right. OK.”

“Oh, and Mike? This nurse? Please don’t try to win her with any fake charm. Just be yourself. If that doesn’t work, she’s not good enough for you. Hear me?”

He sighed, saying simply, “Uh-huh…”

The line between us sounded dead, so I tried, “And, Mike, please write. I really do want to hear, to know who you are and what happens to you, no matter where, no matter when.”

“I will, I really will. I promise.”

xv

Marcia and I met for dinner the last Friday in March, at one of my favorite spots in Porter Square.

“I don’t suppose they’ll be setting up out on the sidewalk any time soon, not after last night,” she observed. “That was a cold one. Did you sleep OK? Your boiler ever get fixed? Or is it still down jacket weather inside your place at night?”

“It was cold – I was cold – last night.” I dropped my head dejectedly, trying hard not to cry. Marcia had known me too long, though.

“Howard?”

“Uh-hum,” I mumbled. Lifting my head up towards her, I flippantly offered, “Howard may not have been good for much at the end, but at least he kept me warm at night.”

“He’s really gone? To Israel?”

We found a table at a window looking out on Mass Ave. “He’s gone. Over a week now,” I returned. “I don’t know why I feel so cliche – ‘can’t live with him, can’t live without him.’ He got a one-way ticket. And even if he did come back, those feelings – my feelings, whatever they were – have disappeared. Not gone with him, simply gone.”

“What do you mean, ‘Whatever they were’, your feelings?”

Composed again, I managed to look straight at her. “We worked so well together, a regular team, Howard and I. And I’ve never had a closer friend, or someone I admired so much. ‘Admired’, past tense. He used to be so…committed, driven, to setting things right. But once he actually got out into the fight, at the law clinic, it was if he were cast adrift, no ambition.” I frowned at the menu, full of burgers and beers. “It got a little awkward at the end, to tell the truth, the way he adored me, always insisting I tell him ‘I love you.’ Even when he knew I didn’t feel it, like he was insecure?”

“Sometimes you didn’t feel it, or always? At least the last couple of years, when I’ve been around you, it wasn’t the same as…” She caught herself, as if afraid to say the wrong thing.

“The same as what? I don’t know if I ever felt about Howard the way I did with…”

Marci said, as if shifting topics, “You said you wrote to Mike Harrison?”

“Three weeks ago. It was Matching Day for med students, and I got curious, what he’d decided, where he’d go this summer, for internship and all.” I tried to switch to safer ground. “It’s a year away for you, have you figured it out yet?”

“Psychiatry for sure, and New York or here, but of course, no idea yet until I interview places.” Now it was her turn to frown at the menu. “I don’t feel like eating here, do you?”

“Not any more”, I laughed. “Let’s go back, see what’s in the cupboards, OK?”

On the way over to Orchard Street, I took her arm, and said, “Marcia, what do you think? I feel like calling Mike…”

“He hasn’t written back yet?”

“He can go months or more to send me a letter. It’s his birthday soon, something’s telling me I need to find out about where he’s going next year.”

“Are you sure, Janie – Sarah? You don’t need to go there. I mean, not after Howard’s just left. Don’t you think that’s a little obvious, looking back to your ex for comfort?”

But I couldn’t help myself. A week later, on the night before his birthday, I called at 9 PM, hoping he’d be home in LA.

“Hello?” his familiar baritone greeted me. I was grateful I didn’t have to go through one of his roommates.

“Mike? It’s Sarah – Janie – Sarah Stein.”

“Hi!” He sounded pleased. “I got your letter. Been meaning to write, but we’ve been going skiing the past couple of weekends, up at Mammoth, and that’s a 12 hour round trip just to get there and back…”

Quickly, I said, “Skiing. I understand. Listen, it’s your birthday tomorrow – Happy 25 – and I was thinking about you, so I decided to call. I got curious, where are you going, for internship?” I got that all out in one gulp, and hoped he’d launch into one of his extended explanations.

“Oh, right. I’m staying here! In OB, you know.”

“Ob? Why?”

He sighed, sounding hesitant. “Yeah, you kind of pooh-pooh’d that, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t really mean to make you feel weird about it, Mike.”

“Well, you did. But it just feels so right, for me. There’s a little bit of everything. Surgery, office work, even a little bit of counseling. The big thing for me, what really draws me, is the babies. To be around that happiness…the smile on a new mother’s face, after she’s worked so hard, hurt so much, it all melts away when she sees, feels that little one fresh in her arms. Being around that everyday, it melts every thing else away. I learned the past four years, that illness, sickness, is not exciting to me. I mean, my roommates, who are going into Internal Medicine? They get so excited dealing with intractable problems, always another question to ask, another test to order. All I feel about that is, I’ll never know enough to do a good job there. OB, it’s different pretty unchanging as a process, you know? Your is to make sure everything stays safe, so the mother and her family can have the birth they want. Some OBs, if they don’t see a problem, they go out of their way to find one, maybe so they can be a hero. Me, I only want to be around that happiness, be there at the start of so many stories. Every now and then, I get to use a little skill, use my hands to help the baby out. It’s like being a music teacher, sometimes – I know what needs to happen, and I help her figure out how to play her instrument.”

He’d paused for breath, so I inserted, “Where? Which program?”

“I said, here. My first choice, and I didn’t really have a second one.”

“Why there? What’s so good about LA?” [MAYBE WE NEED TO KNOW WHAT SHE’S FEELING HERE?]

“Couple of things, It’s so busy here, I know it’s the kind of place where I’ll be able to learn, by doing. I’m not the kind of person who does I don’t do well sitting in a lecture, taking notes, and then putting that to use. I have to deal with the actual problem, get my hands messy, so to speak. And here, the attendings, they simply aren’t around. So the residents, they’re in charge, the senior resident, he’s the last line of defense..”
My feminist antennae instantly went up. “He?”

“Well, yeah, you’re right, they’re all men, at least up to now. But in my class, the ones coming in, there are three women out of twelve. And seeing how things are going in med schools, I bet the balance will tip soon enough. I may become a dinosaur, some day. But I really don’t see why it should be an issue though. If only male doctors could take care of men, and only female doctors, women, is that right?  What kind of a world is that, segregated by sex, by gender?”

I stayed silent, so he went on. “And the other thing, this is not only the largest program in the country, it’s also the best.”

“Really? Better than Harvard.”

He laughed. “Yeah. Four or five years ago, USC decided to make their Women’s Hospital a Mecca, a magnet for clinical and academic medicine. So they went and hired Dr. Q, the editor of the most prestigious journal, and he started stealing people from all the programs, in New England, and New York. He took practically the entire OB department from Yale, that’s the place where they literally invented fetal monitoring. even the guy who has all the patents on the systems, and brought them out. If you want to learn how to manage labor using that, well, we’ve got a lock on the experts. Same thing with Gyn Oncology, cancer surgery. I don’t want to be some hot shot in a University department somewhere. I’m not someone who has an ambition to be a professor or department chair, I want to actually help people, help women, directly. That’s why I became a doctor to begin with, one of the reasons, and this is the best place in the country learn how to do that.”

“I’m a little sorry, I guess, that you’re not going to be a shrink.”

“I told you, didn’t I, that I decided I didn’t want to sit around on my rear end eight hours a day, listening to people tell me how bad the world is. And if I weren’t a talk therapist, well, dealing with crazier people, we still don’t know what causes psychosis, or what works with it. We can tamp it down, make people zombies with drugs, but curing them? No.”

Finally, he seemed finished, so I said, “You know, I was in LA last Christmas. You were back in Cincinnati, they said. Seeing your parents?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s your mother?”

“She has a clinical practice going now, seeing patients and all. That cancer, the stroke, it took a while, but she did not give up.’

“Anything else? How long were you there for?”

He hesitated. “Actually…I went back for a six week rotation in urgent care at Cincinnati General.”

“Why on earth would you go back there for something like that?”

Again, the line went silent for a few seconds. “OK, I guess it can’t hurt me now. It was Molly. I had this stupid idea we  could get together…”

“Sounds like a ‘but…’,” I offered.

“But…yeah, it just wasn’t there, you know.”

Boy did I ever. Now it was my time to be silent. Finally, “Howard’s gone. For good, I think.”

“Oh?”

“He’s gone to Israel, to live, work on a kibbutz. I don’t know…No, I don’t care…if he ever comes back.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike said with an actual hint of concern in his voice.

“It’s OK, I think. I mean, the next 5 years, I expect I will be totally enmeshed in this program at BU. That’s where I want to put my energy, my commitment.” 

There was another awkward pause during which I heard my therapist in my head, telling me, “You have to ask him…” so I ventured, with a lilt, “So, how’s your sex life?
Thankfully he returned the laugh, saying, “Hah! Not so much now-a-days.” He paused. I could almost see him chewing over the next thing before he came out with, “But I did meet someone, last night in fact.”

Surprised to feel genuinely interested, I asked, “Who? Where?”

“It was at the hospital – where else? April – funny name, huh? We were both in the lab, waiting to spin a hematocrit, and kind of fake-fought over who got to use the machine next. She’s a new nurse, an RN waiting for her license to come through, and of course, I’m still a medical student for a couple more months. So we wondered about protocol, who had priority.”

“Who won?”

“She let me go first.”

Curious, I asked, “Is she younger than you?”

“That’s funny – her birthday is two days after mine, we found out, so we’re both still 25, for a few more days. She said, ‘Be sure and tell me what 26 is like, next time you’re on call’.”

“Cute…”

“Uh, I took that as a good sign, so I said, why don’t we just go celebrate our birthdays when we get off the morning after.”

“So you asked her out?”

Surprised, he answered, “Yeah, I guess I did.” He chuckled, “We’ll see how that goes.”

Feeling bold, I asked, “What’s she like, look like I mean? Her hair?”

“Don’t know, she had on one of those bonnets we have to wear in the delivery room. Blonde, maybe?”

We both fell silent for a few seconds, and I could sense the call coming to an end. Still, the therapist-in-my-head made me say, “Mike, I am…” I worried over the next word. Happy was not right, not honest. Still, I did want his life to go well, so I tried, “…I’m glad you’ve found your calling. Be careful with the women you see, you take care of – they’ll need a good doctor, a caring doctor, I know you can do that for them, OK?”

He said, in a serious tone, “All right. OK.”

“Oh, and Mike? This nurse? Please don’t try to win her with any fake charm. Just be yourself. If that doesn’t work, she’s not good enough for you. Hear me?”

He sighed, saying simply, “Uh-huh…”

The line between us sounded dead, so I tried, “And, Mike, please write. I really do want to hear, to know who you are and what happens to you, no matter where, no matter when.”

“I will, I really will. I promise.”

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

That spring and summer, I worked furiously on the final draft of our study examining the effect of epidurals on newborn behavior. Since I’d done at least half the exams, as well as the initial draft, and liaison with the doctors involved at Brigham and Women’s, Ed let me pull together all of the threads. I’d read a number of scientific papers by then, but adopting the dry, detached, almost cryptic style proved a challenge.  And when it came to the statistics, I simply trusted Heidi when she placed the asterisks next to significant differences in the tables.

Then there were the results. It seemed simple at first. “Motor organization—Infants whose mothers received epidural anesthesia had poorer motor organization than either the analgesic groups or the minimal medication groups.” And, “Responsiveness to External Events—There were no significant differences among these groups on measures of their responsiveness to external events.” I felt quite pleased with that summary, until my first meeting with Ed and Dr. Brazelton.

“Sarah, don’t you think we should include results for each of the 26 assessments on the behavioral scale?” Ed asked.

Barry added, “It should be pretty simple. You did those exams, right? Remind me, how old were the babies?”

Either Lauren or I had examined each newborn at 12 hours of age, not knowing which regimen they had been exposed to. Then again 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 10 days after birth, dutifully recording how the babies moved and how they responded to all that poking and prodding, the pinpricks, rattle, light flashes, and foot tickling. I’d left the data with Heidi, who produced a beautifully succinct table summarizing it all.

“Isn’t that enough, what Heidi did?” I asked.

“No,” Ed chuckled. “The reviewers, they’ll expect each of those results to be written out in English, as well as simply listing the numbers in the table.”

Inwardly, I moaned. That afternoon, I sought out Lauren, who had supervised my work, and probably understood the nuances better than anyone.

“I don’t know how to do this! All those exams, and the stats…” I complained to her.

“I know, it was a lot of work. Remember what that was like?”

That question took me back to those frantic days. Over 250 exams in all, some in the middle of the night. Every time I got a call on my beeper that another subject had delivered, I’d drive in to the hospital, head for the nurses’ locker room, change into scrubs, put on a gown, gloves, and a mask, and locate the mother’s room. There, I would re-introduce myself, remind her that I needed to examine her baby, and get to work. Those were some of the happiest moments of my life up to that point.

I had thought newborn babies were little blobs of protoplasm, all waiting to be molded into whatever human they would become. What I quickly learned was that each of us is unique at birth – and probably long before that. Some were chatty, some were quiet. A few were lay-abouts, just waiting for the next feeding, while others constantly moved, kicking, punching, eyes darting to every sound or light. My love for each of those kids grew with each passing day, and I envied their mothers who got to hold them whenever they wanted. Once they left the hospital I got to see them at home, and felt even more warmth and longing.

“Yes, wouldn’t it be great to include all of that emotive work we did,” Lauren said when I shared, almost crying, the dissonance I felt between the actual exams, and the numbers which came out of them. Ignoring those feelings, I felt, was almost a crime.

“People need to know!” I agreed.

“Mothers, women, we already know. Men, the scientists, they’ll tell you it doesn’t matter. I call it the ‘Joe Friday Phenomenon’ – ‘Just the facts, ma’am.’ She laughed, recalling the iconic ‘50s detective  show, Dragnet. “You’d better get used to it, Sarah. For the next 5, 6, 7 years, and who know how long after you get that Ph.D., you’re going to be in that world. ‘Mind thy affect’ is my advice.”

Several weeks into my first month at BU, Howard and I sat down to an early dinner, the last food we’d have for 24 hours during Yom Kippur. I was still working at the CDU, as well as struggling to make sense of the rigorous classwork.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I complained. “Ed and Barry want to get the paper into Pediatrics, and they don’t think the writing is tight enough, and the conclusions are ‘all over the map’ they said.”

“Do you have to re-write the whole thing?”

“Only the results section. It’s got to be both shorter and longer, somehow. Shorter, meaning tighter descriptions of the observations. Longer, because they want to include more of the individual data for each day of life,” I explained.

“Come on, you could do that in your sleep,” he said.

“It’s got to be perfect, Howard. I’m already in BU, so I don’t have to impress them. But I still have to satisfy myself, as well as Dr. Brazelton.”

“Yes, you always have been your own harshest critic.”

I wondered what we was driving at. “What do you mean?”

“Look at us. You’re never satisfied with how you feel, how I act towards you. Always looking for perfection. It’s…sorry, but it drives me crazy sometimes.”

I glared at him. With controlled fury, I said, “I expected so much more from you.”

Now his turn to glower, he asked, “And just what do you mean by that?”

Without hesitation, I started in. “Back in the sixties, back when I first met you, in Chicago, you were going to change the world. Angry, but driven. Now, it seems it’s enough for you to show up at that clinic every day, maybe helping in a small way, but you seem to be just getting by, letting the world happen to you.”

I thought he might defend himself. Instead, he simply said, “Maybe the world changed us, Sarah. Maybe it’s all changed.”

My dismay with the article revision, my anxiety about finally starting school, and my frustration with Howard’s direction came to a head. “I thought we were making something together,” I announced, raising my voice. “But we do things separately, apart, even though we’re supposed to be together.”

Howard seemed puzzled. “Like what?” he asked.

“Like … well, you go to therapy, I go to therapy, don’t you think it might help if we both went together?”

“What! Why? What do we need to talk about?  I thought…”

I interrupted, “For starters, we might talk about who ‘we’ are.”

“I thought…”

I didn’t let him finish. “Howard. I’ve said this to you before, you are great to live with. So solicitous, so accommodating, such a good partner, companion. And, right now, you are my best friend. Something’s missing, though, something’s not there, I don’t feel…”

Now it was his turn to interject. “You’re right, you don’t feel. You always try to analyze everything, even when you talk about feeling all mushy seeing those babies. You might start by talking about what you feel with, feel for me.”

I couldn’t, I wouldn’t let him see me tearful, so I left the table, walking outside until sunset. We spent the Day of Atonement as much apart as we could. I worked in anger, re-writing by hand the results section.  He immersed himself in conversation at the Temple, then sitting sullenly on the porch.

We woke up next morning to the headlines, “ARABS INVADE ISRAEL AGAIN – Defense posts empty during Yom Kippur”.

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

Dear Mike,

In my unfortunate lacksidasical way I’ve finally gotten around to writing again. Although I don’t think a letter from me in the last month would have been any treat— I’ve just finished the graduate school rat-race, with happy conclusions; I got into BU, Teachers, Un. of North Carolina, and Tufts, and I am going to BU. Actually, for a long time I had been all set to go to BU if I got in because of it’s being in Boston and all my ties here— therapy, Howard, friends, research work— but I had really good interviews at Teachers and was very tempted to go there. In the end though, I just didn’t really want to go to NYC enough, I didn’t feel ready to spend a year getting used to a new place and uprooting myself. And finances will be easier at BU since I will get fellowship aid and be able to work part-time for Dr. Brazelton. So, in all, it worked out well and I am pleased— from time to time I just realize that I am actually going to be able to be a clinical psychologist and really get excited about it. In a way it does commit me to Boston even more as my home, but that’s OK too— it would have been nice if I had gotten into Berkeley, but otherwise, I’d just as soon stay here.

So, the whole anxiety about getting into school is slowly wearing down and things are settling down. Little else has changed— I still like my work and am getting better at working with newborns. It’s still cold here and we only get glimpses of Spring interrupted with days and days of rain or more cold weather.

Certainly, the other reason it took me so long to reply is that I was a bit overwhelmed by your choice of OB-GYN. Of course, it’s a gold mine for fantasy material, the very idea of one’s first true love becoming a gynecologist, as you probably understand from seeing women’s reactions and feelings about gynecologists. A gynecologist is certainly the least value— and fantasy-free doctor relationship for women, with pediatricians running a distant second. Added to this is the fact that I work somewhat with obstetricians in this job, since we have to clear research on their “patients” with them. Certainly the most troublesome thing to me is how callous and distant most of them are to their patients— there is all this concern about “patient cooperation” under different anesthesia conditions, but much less concern with what is the effect of the drug on the baby and alerting the mother to different effects with different drugs. I suppose that’s the common maternity hospital scene, with too many doctors too busy and not a lot of concern for non-private patients and all the other ills of the American medical scene. And because I have all these feelings about you, they get mixed up with the things I feel about gynecologists that are pretty emotional. Like how awful it is to go to the gynecologist for the first time if no one has told you about what happens during the internal; or how degraded I felt at the Beth Israel clinic when two gynecologists sat there discussing me, but refusing to tell me the name of the vaginal infection I had, insisting I go off pills, and then misdiagnosing me and giving me a brutal internal. Those kind of feelings are certainly the worst of it; luckily I have had good experiences, like finding good gynecologists who explain what they are doing and let you feel the ovaries and cervix as they are checking them and just being able to find books like OUR BODIES OUR SELVES that give so much important information. It’s amazing how many women I see in the hospital who have been told so little of what to expect when they have a baby— not knowing about delivery drugs and PKU tests and silver nitrate swelling up the baby’s eyes. Anyway, your going into gynecology set off a whole string of emotions in me. Neither you nor I was very comfortable with my body when we knew each other, but now we both know a lot more, and I apologize if I seem to be preaching. What I’m trying to say is a good gynecologist can do so much good for a woman and her self-knowledge, and a bad one can do so much harm, that I really feel strongly about your choice. And bve sure to warm your specula.

Is Shelly married yet? I couldn’t tell how you feel about it from your last letter, though your parents are probably glad. Good heavens, I just realized i was your birthday yesterday— that must have been part of the vibrations motivating me to write. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I hope you celebrated well, though I must admit I have no strong feelings either way about 24. What are your plans for the summer? Are you going to work through? I hope to take August off before I go back to school in early September; we’d like to go out to the farm we visited in British Columbia again, though plans are totally unformed as yet.

I hope this letter hasn’t been too preachy, I didn’t want to be oppressive. Again Happy birthday.

[I set the letter aside for a day, then re-read his, and added a handwritten ending to this typed missive]

In you last letter you seemed so cut off & distant with your emotions—this is not an accusation, but it made me sad & concerned about you. Surely you know I don’t want you to be unhappy. I hope things are better or that I just caught you in a temporary “down” mood.

Love,

  Sarah

11 APRIL 1973

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

“Have you started that other project with Brazelton yet?” Howard and I were eating dinner a bit later than everyone else one evening. I had come home around seven after a particularly long meeting at the CDU. Howard arrived even later, delayed by a weepy client who was about to lose her apartment.

“That’s why I’m late tonight. We spent all afternoon setting up, and then trying out the video taping system.”

Dr. Brazelton had been studying mother-baby interactions in the first few months after birth, trying to understand in minute detail the nature of their communication. A few weeks ago, at a meeting for his study into mother/baby reciprocity, he noted introduced the basic idea. “Babies can’t talk, but they have many ways to make themselves understood,” he explained. “Most new moms seem to be hard-wired to pay attention, and then adopt their own non-verbal responses.”

Ed added, “We are getting close to understanding the elements of this language. But we need to get down to a much finer layer of detail to fully describe it.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I’ve been talking with some guys who are A-V specialists. They say, with computers now, we could video tape the baby and the mom simultaneously, then lay the images side-by-side in sync, slow them down to 1/7th speed – super slo-mo…”

Dr. Brazelton mused, “Then someone could look at what both are doing in reaction to the other, and record it all?”

“Right, and you and I could review those transcripts, see what conclusions might jump out!”

I explained all this to Howard, finishing with, “So Lauren and I are going to be looking at these tapes. It’s three minutes of interaction, but at 1/7th speed, that might take an hour just to view. Then go over it again and again, to make sure we’ve got everything that happens, second-by-second, between mom and baby.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I learned all about examining newborns for the drug study we’re in the middle of, and now I get to spend even more time with them.” I paused, wondering how Howard might react to what I said next. “This all reinforces what I’ve felt for years now, about babies, and being a mom.”

Howard munched on the deli sandwich he’d brought home, turkey, cranberry sauce and cream cheese on an onion bagel. “Mumpf?” was all I heard.

“What?”

He cleaned his lips with a napkin. “I said, ‘Mother’. That’s what I see in you when you talk about this. I thought you were all into the research, the science part of this, but what you really seem to enjoy is being around babies, and seeing how the mothers react to them.”

“It does pull at my heart somehow, I can feel it clouding my head when I should be paying attention to the study. Makes me wonder, am I hard-wired to be a mom?”

“Isn’t that part of the deal with being a woman? I mean, I don’t know, I certainly don’t feel the same instinctive draw towards babies, but it seems hard to say that we, men and women, are exactly the same here.”

“They’re always saying, ‘You can have it all.’ Can I get a Ph.D, become a psychologist, and at the same time have a family, have a baby or babies, love them, raise them with a father?”

Howard put down the remaining quarter of his sandwich. Pensively, he said, “Me, I want to travel first. Not just like that trip we took last summer. I mean really go somewhere, stay there, learn all about it. A family, that’s something I’d like, too, but I’ve got things to do before I get tied down, you know what I mean?”

I gathered up our plates, Howard barely snatched his sandwich in time, and took them to the kitchen, where I slowly filled the sink with soapy water. Washing, rinsing, drying and putting them away gave me time to think. I wondered why Lauren and I were the ones chosen to examine the newborns, review the tapes, interact with the moms, while Ed and Barry did the analysis, drew the conclusions, and presented the results at conferences. Intellectually, I understood they were older, more experienced, and, yes, they had worked to get the grant money. They had the titles, Doctor, Director. Still, was it because we were the women, because, as Howard said, that’s “part of the deal”?

Howard came up from behind, spreading both arms around my waist, giving me a squeeze as he softly murmured “I love you” in my ear. I took off my apron, folded it across a chair, clasping his hands between us as I turned around.

“And…?” he questioned.

“Howard, not now. I’m tired from all that planning today.” Then, a burst of honesty. “It doesn’t seem sincere, if I always say it back to you, just because you do. It ought to come unasked, I think.”

Howard seemed unfazed at first, but as I pulled away, he said, “Oh, I forgot. You got a letter from your boyfriend – excuse me, ex-boyfriend…”

I sighed. Nothing for months on end from Mike, and then he shows up in the clutter spread out amongst Howard’s keys and money on the entry table, right when I’m feeling a little miffed with Howard.

Mike was uncharacteristically terse, almost whiny, as he related the inevitable break-up between him and Elizabeth. I could have told him that wouldn’t last; neither one of them had love for the other, only their youthful carnal need. And that only goes so far.

But the bigger news was carried near the end: “…My first clinical rotation convinced me, I’m not going to be a shrink. Ob! First night on call, I delivered a baby! LA County Hospital is unbelievably busy, four women to a room, all laboring, then going to delivery. I know what I’m going to do now…”

“Have you started that other project with Brazelton yet?” Howard and I were eating dinner a bit later than everyone else one evening. I had come home around seven after a particularly long meeting at the CDU. Howard arrived even later, delayed by a weepy client who was about to lose her apartment.

“That’s why I’m late tonight. We spent all afternoon setting up, and then trying out the video taping system.”

Dr. Brazelton had been studying mother-baby interactions in the first few months after birth, trying to understand in minute detail the nature of their communication. A few weeks ago, at a meeting for his study into mother/baby reciprocity, he noted introduced the basic idea. “Babies can’t talk, but they have many ways to make themselves understood,” he explained. “Most new moms seem to be hard-wired to pay attention, and then adopt their own non-verbal responses.”

Ed added, “We are getting close to understanding the elements of this language. But we need to get down to a much finer layer of detail to fully describe it.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I’ve been talking with some guys who are A-V specialists. They say, with computers now, we could video tape the baby and the mom simultaneously, then lay the images side-by-side in sync, slow them down to 1/7th speed – super slo-mo…”

Dr. Brazelton mused, “Then someone could look at what both are doing in reaction to the other, and record it all?”

“Right, and you and I could review those transcripts, see what conclusions might jump out!”

I explained all this to Howard, finishing with, “So Lauren and I are going to be looking at these tapes. It’s three minutes of interaction, but at 1/7th speed, that might take an hour just to view. Then go over it again and again, to make sure we’ve got everything that happens, second-by-second, between mom and baby.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I learned all about examining newborns for the drug study we’re in the middle of, and now I get to spend even more time with them.” I paused, wondering how Howard might react to what I said next. “This all reinforces what I’ve felt for years now, about babies, and being a mom.”

Howard munched on the deli sandwich he’d brought home, turkey, cranberry sauce and cream cheese on an onion bagel. “Mumpf?” was all I heard.

“What?”

He cleaned his lips with a napkin. “I said, ‘Mother’. That’s what I see in you when you talk about this. I thought you were all into the research, the science part of this, but what you really seem to enjoy is being around babies, and seeing how the mothers react to them.”

“It does pull at my heart somehow, I can feel it clouding my head when I should be paying attention to the study. Makes me wonder, am I hard-wired to be a mom?”

“Isn’t that part of the deal with being a woman? I mean, I don’t know, I certainly don’t feel the same instinctive draw towards babies, but it seems hard to say that we, men and women, are exactly the same here.”

“They’re always saying, ‘You can have it all.’ Can I get a Ph.D, become a psychologist, and at the same time have a family, have a baby or babies, love them, raise them with a father?”

Howard put down the remaining quarter of his sandwich. Pensively, he said, “Me, I want to travel first. Not just like that trip we took last summer. I mean really go somewhere, stay there, learn all about it. A family, that’s something I’d like, too, but I’ve got things to do before I get tied down, you know what I mean?”

I gathered up our plates, Howard barely snatched his sandwich in time, and took them to the kitchen, where I slowly filled the sink with soapy water. Washing, rinsing, drying and putting them away gave me time to think. I wondered why Lauren and I were the ones chosen to examine the newborns, review the tapes, interact with the moms, while Ed and Barry did the analysis, drew the conclusions, and presented the results at conferences. Intellectually, I understood they were older, more experienced, and, yes, they had worked to get the grant money. They had the titles, Doctor, Director. Still, was it because we were the women, because, as Howard said, that’s “part of the deal”?

Howard came up from behind, spreading both arms around my waist, giving me a squeeze as he softly murmured “I love you” in my ear. I took off my apron, folded it across a chair, clasping his hands between us as I turned around.

“And…?” he questioned.

“Howard, not now. I’m tired from all that planning today.” Then, a burst of honesty. “It doesn’t seem sincere, if I always say it back to you, just because you do. It ought to come unasked, I think.”

Howard seemed unfazed at first, but as I pulled away, he said, “Oh, I forgot. You got a letter from your boyfriend – excuse me, ex-boyfriend…”

I sighed. Nothing for months on end from Mike, and then he shows up in the clutter spread out amongst Howard’s keys and money on the entry table, right when I’m feeling a little miffed with Howard.

Mike was uncharacteristically terse, almost whiny, as he related the inevitable break-up between him and Elizabeth. I could have told him that wouldn’t last; neither one of them had love for the other, only their youthful carnal need. And that only goes so far.

But the bigger news was carried near the end: “…My first clinical rotation convinced me, I’m not going to be a shrink. Ob! First night on call, I delivered a baby! LA County Hospital is unbelievably busy, four women to a room, all laboring, then going to delivery. I know what I’m going to do now…”

“Have you started that other project with Brazelton yet?” Howard and I were eating dinner a bit later than everyone else one evening. I had come home around seven after a particularly long meeting at the CDU. Howard arrived even later, delayed by a weepy client who was about to lose her apartment.

“That’s why I’m late tonight. We spent all afternoon setting up, and then trying out the video taping system.”

Dr. Brazelton had been studying mother-baby interactions in the first few months after birth, trying to understand in minute detail the nature of their communication. A few weeks ago, at a meeting for his study into mother/baby reciprocity, he noted introduced the basic idea. “Babies can’t talk, but they have many ways to make themselves understood,” he explained. “Most new moms seem to be hard-wired to pay attention, and then adopt their own non-verbal responses.”

Ed added, “We are getting close to understanding the elements of this language. But we need to get down to a much finer layer of detail to fully describe it.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I’ve been talking with some guys who are A-V specialists. They say, with computers now, we could video tape the baby and the mom simultaneously, then lay the images side-by-side in sync, slow them down to 1/7th speed – super slo-mo…”

Dr. Brazelton mused, “Then someone could look at what both are doing in reaction to the other, and record it all?”

“Right, and you and I could review those transcripts, see what conclusions might jump out!”

I explained all this to Howard, finishing with, “So Lauren and I are going to be looking at these tapes. It’s three minutes of interaction, but at 1/7th speed, that might take an hour just to view. Then go over it again and again, to make sure we’ve got everything that happens, second-by-second, between mom and baby.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I learned all about examining newborns for the drug study we’re in the middle of, and now I get to spend even more time with them.” I paused, wondering how Howard might react to what I said next. “This all reinforces what I’ve felt for years now, about babies, and being a mom.”

Howard munched on the deli sandwich he’d brought home, turkey, cranberry sauce and cream cheese on an onion bagel. “Mumpf?” was all I heard.

“What?”

He cleaned his lips with a napkin. “I said, ‘Mother’. That’s what I see in you when you talk about this. I thought you were all into the research, the science part of this, but what you really seem to enjoy is being around babies, and seeing how the mothers react to them.”

“It does pull at my heart somehow, I can feel it clouding my head when I should be paying attention to the study. Makes me wonder, am I hard-wired to be a mom?”

“Isn’t that part of the deal with being a woman? I mean, I don’t know, I certainly don’t feel the same instinctive draw towards babies, but it seems hard to say that we, men and women, are exactly the same here.”

“They’re always saying, ‘You can have it all.’ Can I get a Ph.D, become a psychologist, and at the same time have a family, have a baby or babies, love them, raise them with a father?”

Howard put down the remaining quarter of his sandwich. Pensively, he said, “Me, I want to travel first. Not just like that trip we took last summer. I mean really go somewhere, stay there, learn all about it. A family, that’s something I’d like, too, but I’ve got things to do before I get tied down, you know what I mean?”

I gathered up our plates, Howard barely snatched his sandwich in time, and took them to the kitchen, where I slowly filled the sink with soapy water. Washing, rinsing, drying and putting them away gave me time to think. I wondered why Lauren and I were the ones chosen to examine the newborns, review the tapes, interact with the moms, while Ed and Barry did the analysis, drew the conclusions, and presented the results at conferences. Intellectually, I understood they were older, more experienced, and, yes, they had worked to get the grant money. They had the titles, Doctor, Director. Still, was it because we were the women, because, as Howard said, that’s “part of the deal”?

Howard came up from behind, spreading both arms around my waist, giving me a squeeze as he softly murmured “I love you” in my ear. I took off my apron, folded it across a chair, clasping his hands between us as I turned around.

“And…?” he questioned.

“Howard, not now. I’m tired from all that planning today.” Then, a burst of honesty. “It doesn’t seem sincere, if I always say it back to you, just because you do. It ought to come unasked, I think.”

Howard seemed unfazed at first, but as I pulled away, he said, “Oh, I forgot. You got a letter from your boyfriend – excuse me, ex-boyfriend…”

I sighed. Nothing for months on end from Mike, and then he shows up in the clutter spread out amongst Howard’s keys and money on the entry table, right when I’m feeling a little miffed with Howard.

Mike was uncharacteristically terse, almost whiny, as he related the inevitable break-up between him and Elizabeth. I could have told him that wouldn’t last; neither one of them had love for the other, only their youthful carnal need. And that only goes so far.

But the bigger news was carried near the end: “…My first clinical rotation convinced me, I’m not going to be a shrink. Ob! First night on call, I delivered a baby! LA County Hospital is unbelievably busy, four women to a room, all laboring, then going to delivery. I know what I’m going to do now…”

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

26 December 1972

Dear Mike,

I was sitting here at the typewriter, typing applications to graduate school, and decided to try to write you a letter. How are you? How is school and Southern Calif.?

Yes, I really am applying to school in clinical psych. I’m applying to a lot of places just because the odds are so slim everywhere — my first two choices are Berkeley and BU, but the two schools only took 15 people combined last year, and so my hopes aren’t too high. Also interested in NYU, Teachers, Yale, Tufts, Wright Institute (in Berkeley), U. of Wash in Seattle, Harvard, and Adelphi, but who knows what will happen.

We had a great trip this summer. After we left LA we spent five weeks in Berkley, San Francisco and Yosemite. I really liked Yosemite — luckily we were there before too big of crowds in the Summer. I suppose the access to the Park is one factor in my liking Berkeley so much. Berkeley seems like a god place to live; I like the program there and we had a great time staying up in the hills in a friend’s house (Marc M—’s brother’s). Then we went up to Lassen — I really liked the mud-pots and springs; then up through the Redwoods — what a gorgeous part of the world. Spent about a month with Linda in Seattle after driving up the Oregon coast, which is the first thing to surpass the Atlantic coast in my love of oceans and beaches. Linda is heavily into Scientology and I really don’t like it too much, but we got along very well and I really like Seattle — very easy-going with many friendly people and beautiful surroundings. Also spent some time on the Olympic Peninsula, though not enough, and a fantastic week in British Columbia on a farm miles away from anywhere on a beautiful glacier lake. Then we had to hurry home since I was already late; a day in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, certainly not enough. It was really exciting to drive across the northern part of the country — Wyoming, Montana, a touch of Idaho, Nebraska, then back into the Midwest. How was your trip? Did you ever get to Seattle?

I have a good new job now. I’m working for Barry Brazelton, the pediatrician I used to work with at the Center for Cognitive Studies a long time ago. I really like him, and we’re doing interesting studies; one is of drug effects on newborn babies from drugs given their moms during delivery and labor and I’m learning all about examining newborns for that. The other study is on maternal child inter-action, but it hasn’t really started yet. I’m living with eight other people this year and thus far it’s working out well; we’re half students and half working and we share meals and are fairly close together although not totally communal. Howard and I are living together and that is nice although he is having a hard time getting used to being in school again.

I was glad to see you this summer, though it is certainly very strange to see someone again after so much emotion has gone on. I feel like you’re very different now, and into different things, but I think of you often and wonder about your life. I didn’t go see Elizabeth because we were late getting to Seattle and didn’t have time for Eugene; I often think about her too, and somehow the more distant I get from my parents the two of you are my main memory-forces in Cincinnati; even though I don’t know where I’ll be next year, Cincinnati seems very far away from my plans.

How is your family — esp. your Mom. My family is well— Eddie and Arlene have two kids now, a one-year old brother for Denise, they both are so adorable; George is getting his Ph.d. in history at BU, and Linda is into Scientology. Marcia is well although none too overjoyed about med school; she lives in Cambridge this year and we get to see each other alot more. Bev and Jeanne were both here a bit this fall; both are very into being doctors and we are not so close anymore. Leslie and her boyfriend are in Santa Cruz— he’s a grad student there and I haven’t heard from her.

Anyway, I am basically well, though frazzled by graduate school applications and still working on a lot of things in therapy. I really would like it if you wrote sometimes— my address is: 27 P—— St. #6 Somerville, Mass. 02143.

Love, 

  Sarah

********

!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!

During our summer-long road trip, Howard decided to go after a degree in Public Administration, rather than put his life on hold any longer while he tried again at the law boards. In order to qualify for a Master’s program, he needed several courses in statistics and political science he’d neglected as an undergrad, which he found at the University of Massachusetts in Park Square near the Commons.

He grumbled a bit about having to attend the state school. “I don’t mind at all that it’s not Harvard or even BU. It’s the monstrosity they’re building out at Columbia Point. That whole area was supposed to be subsidized housing, now it’s being taken over by the Boston educational-industrial complex. At least I’ll be done by the time they move – that would be a long trip every day.”

By the time Kagan returned from his sabbatical, I had linked up once again with Barry Brazelton’s Child Development Unit at Children’s hospital.

“Sarah, we need someone exactly like you for a couple of research studies we’re starting.” His twinkling smile and Texas drawl, softer now after all his years mixing with Yankees in Boston, welcomed me into a routine I’d been missing since graduation. “The one I think you’ll find most interesting is our follow-up to the work we just finished on newborn reactions to medication during labor. Ed Wernick’s leading that one, I’ll get you set up with him right away.”

Ed got right down to business. “Barry’s been interested in this for years now. He decided the tools he’d used for that first study, back when you were an undergrad, didn’t capture the full range of an infant’s neuro-behavior, and that standard neonatal neuro exams are not probing enough to capture subtle changes. So he came up with his own tool, his Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale.”

I’d read about that while in Kagan’s lab. Covering a couple dozen separate items, it produced a complete picture of the motor skills of these tiny little people, as well as their response to things like pinpricks, light flashes, and sound.

Ed went on. “I think you’d be perfect at performing and recording all those exams…”

Over the next six months I had a crash course, a post-graduate trial by fire, as I got up to speed on all the facets of the study Barry and Ed had so blithely outlined. First, I had to learn about the drugs used in labor: Nisentil and Phenergan as narcotic pain relievers, lidocaine as a local for episiotomies and spinals before forceps delivery, Marcaine for epidurals – my head spun as I absorbed pharmacology texts and the PDR, the Physicians’ Desk Reference on drugs. Once  Ed discovered I actually had some charm, unlike the others on the team, scientists who hid behind data so they could avoid people, he assigned me as the liaison to gain the cooperation of the obstetricians and anesthesiologists we’d need at Brigham and Women’s. And then there were the endless meetings as we honed the study design.

“I think the problem with those previous studies, why they had trouble finding any pattern, was they were mixing up all sorts of Ob patients.” Lauren was the only other non-doctoral level person on the team, a graduate nursing student hoping to specialize in pediatric ICU care.

“Why so?” asked Ed.

“Labor is a stressful time, and there are so many different ways it can go, so many combinations of drugs and management strategies. Then there’s the difference in the length of labor, and mothers who have other medical problems, like diabetes. You mix up all those categories, the results we’re looking for can get lost in all the noise.”

“So we reduce the confounding stressors, limit the study to just a few simple drug regimens, you’re saying we might actually find some differences when it comes to, say, epidurals compared to that short-acting narcotic…what’s is called again, John?”

Dr. Stanton, the only MD on our team, responded succinctly, “Nisentil.”

“Right, Nisentil. Sarah, how long did you say that worked?”

I still got nervous, being treated as an equal by these serious and experienced researchers, but I had the information immediately available. “One hour, Ed, more or less. It works great, but it doesn’t last long at all. Studies show if they give only one or two doses, before a woman starts pushing, then it’s barely detectable…”

Ed cut me off. “One hour, right, it’s the one we need for the minimal drug group.”

We worried each element of our study in such meticulous detail, I feared we’d never actually get around to collecting the data, much less subject it to the analysis by Heidi, the CDU’s Ph.D. statistician, from which any answers must eventually emerge. Nonetheless, Ed had me begin writing a first draft of the introduction and procedures.

“Shouldn’t that be called ‘Materials and Methods?” I asked, reflecting all the papers I’d been plowing through. “That’s what they call it in…”

“Procedure – that’s what Barry wants, Sarah. Just do it his way, OK?”

So I outlined the subjects, grouped by the drugs to which they’d been exposed. I explained the behavioral assessment we’d be doing, and noted how we would eliminate all the confounding elements we’d agreed on, to ensure no extraordinary stresses on the mothers. “Beyond the stress of labor itself,” Lauren, a mother of two, said sardonically to me in one of the meetings. In the end, we had about as normal a group of 54 moms as possible: average age 27, length of labor 8 hours, gestational age 39 weeks, six days, infant weight 7 pounds 8 ounces. The babies all had to be normal, too. Apgars of 8 and 9, no congenital anomalies, no admission to the pediatric units after delivery.

“Sarah, wow, where did you learn to write like this?” Ed exclaimed when I hand my draft in.

I wanted to say, “Uhh, Radcliffe?”, but instead, I just said, “Thanks, this was helpful for me to understand what we’re doing. I just followed the standard formula.”

“Well, you picked it up a faster than any of our other research assistants.”

‘Research Assistant.’ There I was again, the lowest title on the group. So why did it seem like I was doing all the work?

********