Ramblings

Paris

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Bonjour! I’ve been remiss with posting lately due to travels. I went to Paris in early June for both work and pleasure. It had been a decade since I’d visited the City of Lights, and, despite several stressful setbacks (beware that Airbnb, even if reserved months in advance, can cancel within days of your scheduled arrival!), Paris did not disappoint.

I have a special affinity for the city, as it was the first place I traveled internationally. I took French in high school and went there as an exchange student, living with a host family for just a couple of weeks. It was the first time I’d been anywhere predominantly non-English speaking and my host family was attentive, warm and forgiving. My time in Paris was a gentle nudge out of my American suburban bubble. More drastic shifts in my world perspective would come later, but I always think of Paris fondly as my start to a love of travel. And, of course, it’s Paris! The richness of art, architecture, food, parks, history…. I’ve been back to Paris once each decade since and this, by far, was my favorite trip.

I had initially planned to attend a writing retreat right before my medical conference, but as the retreat was canceled, I instead had several days completely to myself in Paris before my husband arrived and my conference started. As a working mom with three little ones, solitary time in this magical city was bliss. I strolled the narrow streets, stepped into cafes and hidden parks. I hit my favorite Musée d’Orsay and Rodin and sat in quirky bookshops sipping espresso and writing in my notebook. I even had a chance to read a poem during a multilingual open mic night.

The summer institute I attended was also exceptional, an annual meeting of the minds hosted by the CHCI Health and Medical Humanities Network. This organization is a “hub for health and medical humanities research and collaboration” and this year’s theme, “Health Beyond Borders,” brought together experts in both narrative medicine and global health, each particular interests of mine.

Several talks I particularly enjoyed were:

A keynote by Ghada Hatem-Gantzer about her incredible work with women and girls who have suffered violence.

I connected with Shana Feibel on #somedocs prior to the summer institute when I stumbled across her post about presenting in Paris. Dr. Feibel spoke about a topic that resonates with me: “Bridging the borders between Psychiatry and other Medical Specialities: A Case for the Medical Humanities.” I hope to continue to learn from her work in this area.

Sneha Mantri from Duke is a neurologist with her Master’s in Narrative Medicine and gave a fascinating presentation about border crossing and modern medicine as it relates to Mohsin Hamid’s novel Exit West. I also learned Dr. Mantri was in the same narrative medicine class at Columbia as Stephanie Cooper, who I’ve gotten to know well through the Seattle chapter of the Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative. It’s a small, connected world!

Columbia’s Danielle Spencer presented innovative work on the idea of lived retrospective diagnosis, or metagnosis. I’m looking forward to her book on this topic, forthcoming in 2020.

Emergency Medicine physician Craig Spencer gave a moving keynote presentation about his work with Medecins Sans Frontieres and specifically the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean.

I returned from Paris rejuvenated and energized on many fronts. C’est magnifique.

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Ramblings

Free Write Friday: Girl Scouts

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We met in a Methodist church on a weekday afternoon. Recite the pledge, munch a snack, craft a project. We’d earn badges through field trips, skills, lessons. I was snack helper, clean up helper. We’d rotate through, sit in a circle on the beige carpet. Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.

We took our sleeping bags to overnight camp, sang songs around the campfire. Kumbaya. I didn’t like the bugs, the forest air was foreign to my sheltered suburban self. I liked the novelty of it though.

I never was good at selling cookies. My dad retired young, couldn’t take them to work like the others. Too many other Girl Scouts in my neighborhood, we had to ration out the doors to knock on. Most people were nice enough to the awkward girl in the green vest but I wasn’t animated enough to make more than a pity sale. My mom, like me, an introvert and not wanting to be too pushy, didn’t help my failing cause. I wanted to be forward, learn the marketing skills, but I never did muster the ability to sell.

I remember traveling with my troop to the Peace Arch on the northern U.S. border, admiring a stylish girl with long braids and a green beret, souvenir pins stuck to her vest. What travels she’s made, what friends she’s met! I started collecting pins that day, not to trade but to keep: document the family road trip to Disneyland, the annual summers in Hawaii, the study abroad in France, the Mekong Delta, the crowded dusty streets of India and beyond.

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Ramblings

Free Write Friday: Vaporetto

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I crane my neck to see the plastic sign mapping out the boat’s destinations as it pulls up to the dock. Circular markers dot stops marching along a primary color, like a linear road. It takes me a day to realize the N line only runs at night, the 5.1 and 5.2 don’t always drop me off at the stop closest to my hotel.

I climb aboard, daypack pulled snugly to my side, and finesse my way to the opposite railing. There is seating down below, past the nook reserved for large suitcases, for strollers. But I prefer to stand above, let the wind whip my face, my wide brimmed straw hat. Down below the sticky air suffocates, bare legs adhere to the plastic seafoam green seats. Summer vacation is no time to confine oneself to the bowels of a water bus.

Tourists on the deck lean over to capture a selfie, to catch a glimpse of the picturesque narrow canals, balconies brimming with wisteria, with dangling vines. It’s a dying, decaying city, a vestige of extravagances past. The city is sinking, its permanent inhabitants driven out by high costs and impracticalities. There’s beauty and sadness in the grandeur, in the loss, in the transformation into a spectacle for outsiders.

The more helpful attendants announce the stop as we arrive, shouting “Zattere!” “Ferrovia,” maybe even a helpful “San Marco” or “Piazzale Roma – Bus Station!” for the tourists. Usually, though, you simply have to scan your way through the crowd to find the bright yellow banners, black lettering painted on each stop, indicating the location. Much in Italy is charmingly lackadaisical. This is both refreshing and irritating to high strung Americans.

I read in a guidebook that in the evenings the vaporettos thin out: less people, less tourists as visitors return to their massive cruise ships in the harbor. But I found crowds at almost all times of day and night, the sticky sardine feeling of being packed in with weary travelers, shimmer of sweat trickling down their backs, each odor distinct but difficult to pinpoint. The evening breezes at least provide relief from the glaring sun, from the thick air. The lights of the baroque buildings bounce off the Grand Canal, reflections disrupted by gliding vaporettos.

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Ramblings

Free Write Friday: Campo San Polo

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Young children scamper across the square chasing balls, bold pigeons and unsuspecting tourists. I sit on a lacquered red bench under a low leafy tree, oblong salmon colored berries just beginning to sprout from its branches. The cover from the high afternoon sun is welcome.

Tourists stroll past with their Burano lace fans, their high-end shopping bags. A man with a walker all dressed in white leans forward as if about to fall over, as if about to kneel in prayer. A child sleeps in his mother’s arms as she reclines on the steps, a yellow bike leaning against the stone structure.

I should move on, get going. But it’s pleasant here, if a bit too noisy. I hear Italian and Russian dialects, I think. The occasional English words from a British or American tourist are too distracting but a foreign language doesn’t have the same effect; the musicality of their native tongues almost a background nicety.

Grey stones of irregular shapes make for uneven ground. The two boys jostling for a soccer ball, bouncing it against the sepia brick buildings, don’t seem to mind.

An elderly man shuffles across the square wearing cushioned sandals, a sky blue plaid cap. He turns, just barely, and shakes his head at something, I don’t know what. Maybe the crying child, maybe the rushed tourists. Maybe his own arthritic knees that are clearly causing him pain. He pauses for a moment as he looks over his shoulder, as if he’s taking it all in, as if he’s remembering something. Then he straightens, and hunches, and realizes it’s time to move on.

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Writing

Buongiorno

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I’m in Venice this week for a writing retreat, so instead of my usual posts I’ll be eating gelato, getting lost along the canals and writing in a lovely courtyard with some inspiring women. Ciao for now; I’ll be back with more free writes, prose and prompts soon!

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Ramblings

Free Write Friday: Flight

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A toddler is whimpering a few rows in front of me, the cries familiar but blessedly not emitting from one of my own children. Crystals form at the edge of the triple-paned window, a patchwork of tan fields replacing snow-capped mountains below.

I relish the window seat as we cross the country, no one chatting at me, no requirement to interact. The three women traveling alone in my row are not interested in conversing. We pull out our novels, our iPads, our Bluetooth headphones to mutually ignore via podcast. It feels luxurious, this solitude in flight, this lack of responsibility.

I do wonder about the strangers that fill the narrow seats behind me, that line the rows in front. What are they doing? Where are they going? Where are they from? Are they heading home or on vacation or on business? Are the cramped quarters with scant sustenance and stale recycled air an annoyance or a reprieve from daily monotony, the chores of home life?

I’m most curious about my seat mate but I don’t make small talk until we’ve almost landed. I saw her credit card when she bought a Tom Douglas chicken curry bowl deceptively wrapped in aluminum foil, reminiscent of a TV dinner. Block letters eked out “Fred Hutch,” indicating the large cancer research institute famous in the Northwest. I wonder, is she a MD, a PhD? Is she a researcher or a clinician? Does she have children?

Throughout the flight she studied a sheet of paper with neat type and mumbled quietly to herself. She must be giving a talk. I bet she’s a mom, no time to practice her lecture until she’s suspended 10,000 feet in the sky, away from the demands of making dinner and wiping noses, of sticky fingers and work reports and piles of laundry and school paperwork. I want to know her all of a sudden, understand who she is and where she’s going. I venture a question as the landing gear deploys below.

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Ramblings

Free Write Friday: Starbucks

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They line up outside the first storefront: the trim an earthier green, the logo more organic, subtly suggestive, less polished. They take selfies and wait patiently to order grande peppermint mochas. I shuffle by them onto the cobblestone street, eager to reach the Chinese bakery to collect barbecue pork filled humbow, sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves, buttery almond cookies that leave a residual crumble. I admire the fruit stands: large trays of plump grapes, squat persimmon, rainbow carrots gathered with twine. The flowers and the flying fish are, like the coffee shop, iconic, each wrapped in waxy paper, rubber-banded for the journey home.

***

I spot the familiar logo from across the street. Sweat sticking to my back, a rushing wall of air conditioning bowls me over as I step inside the coffee shop. The decor is the same, artwork familiar, stout brown chairs circle round veneer tables. I step back home, into anytown Starbucks despite being thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean on a tiny island of an idyllic archipelago. It’s the brand, what people expect, what they want to see. But I bristle at the cookie-cutter likeness, even as it comforts me. I order an iced latte from the awkward Thai barista, clad in the familiar bright green apron with emblazoned mermaid. I grab my cup with my head slightly down, a kind of apology. But I sip the milky caffeine eagerly, my American thirst quenched.

***

In college I would study at the one on the Ave, in medical school at the one in Madison Park. I’d order my drink and settle down at a table, spread my textbooks and notecards out just so, like surgical instruments lined up for an important procedure. I’d highlight and underline: red, green and blue. Star and paraphrase, chart and summarize. After hours of sitting I’d grow stiff, have to stand to stretch my muscles, hinge my joints. One time my strained neck raised to the hum of whispers: Howard Schultz, the owner of the ubiquitous coffee chain had stopped in for his own caffeinated drink. Someone mumbled that he lived in the neighborhood, came into this particular Starbucks from time to time. Tall, with an open confidence, he didn’t linger. I wondered what his drink of choice would be.

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Ramblings

Free Write Friday: Train

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2015

My son likes Thomas the Train but the newer episodes seem strange to me. Narrated by Alec Baldwin, his voice conjures up 30 Rock or Saturday Night Live. His raspy vocalizations seem misplaced on the Island of Sodor. Thomas is so eager to please, so concerned with being useful. We should all be so diligent with our life trajectories, laser-focused on our purpose. What satisfaction he finds with a job well done, what eagerness he displays to please Sir Topham Hatt. 

My son, too, is eager to please, but also wants what he wants in the typical preschooler way. He likes to link all this toy trains together, crowd them all on the winding wooden tracks. He wears his Thomas overalls, sleeps on his Thomas pillow, reads his Thomas books. I crouch to his low table to help assemble the puzzle-piece-like ends of the tracks, create a circuit for the trains to follow. I too like clicking the trains together, end to end, magnets locking. Each train helpfully pulling its neighbor to the desired destination. 

2009

My lids are heavy; we got up early to take the boat from Naxos back to Athens. Walking up the steep stairs from the port to catch the train, I could’ve sworn a rogue hand reached toward my backpack, fumbling for something of worth. Sealed tightly, I snatched my bag away as the arm disappeared into the swarming crowd. The end of our European tour, we’re heading back to an Athens hotel after several weeks of Swiss Alps, French museums, Italian countryside, Austrian opera, German beer. Our worn bag is full of dirty clothes and camping gear, Rick Steves travel books picked apart. 

I keep our small bag with valuables on my lap as we take precious seats on the packed train. My husband dozes next to me. Suddenly someone taps him, then, in broken English: “Is that your bag?” We both turn to see another man struggling to lug our huge green canvas pack out the open double doors. My husband jumps up, pushes his way through and out of the train, not thinking.

They both stand there on the platform, staring at each other; a stand off. Eventually my husband pushes the perpetrator back, away from the bag and heaves the heavy pack as he slides back through the train doors, just as they close. The train speeds on to the next station. I wonder what we’d have done if he’d been caught at the stop, holding our bag, standing by the thief. No cell phones, no contingency plan. We hadn’t even decided where we were staying that night. I would’ve had all the cash, both our passports. I look at our crumpled bag and all I can think of is how disappointed the thief would have been: all that’s in there is our ratty stinky travel clothes. 

2000

I like looking out the window as the world speeds by. Bright earthy fields of Kerala, the train jolts back and forth hypnotically as the greens all blur. I think it allows an introvert like me to observe so much without getting involved; I can participate in the wonder of the world without expending the energy to interact, to please others, to represent myself. 

We have a six bed cabin, fold down the upper berths for the overnight trip. My mom has sewn me a lightweight sleeping mat made from two soft bedsheets, a pillow case sewn in at the end. I unroll the mat onto the thin mattress and climb in. The train’s to and fro is soothing to the weary traveler, but the early morning hour is punctuated with the pre-dawn calls of “Chai! Chai!” throughout the train car as peddlers distribute the milky drink. 

It’s morning, just barely, and tea time is in order. The spicy sweet scent mixes with the intense body odor of too many people who haven’t showered in too long. I look out the window and take in the grey morning light. I can just make out the shadows of the passing landscape, the new Indian day as it takes form. 

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