July 21, 2014 Monday "Supreme"

First Words

      …thoughts of an anachronistic, solo pediatrician

                    by Glenn Feole, M.D.

        "Be careful too that the reading of your story makes the melancholy 

        laugh and the merry laugh louder," Cervantes, Prologue to Don Quixote

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Blog site: ishmaelish36.blogspot.com

July 21, 2014 Monday

Impression of the Met,  p. 3 of 10

Chief Complaint: (written on the chart before I go in the room)

     “check behind”  (I overheard the nurse saying, “behind what?”)

Interesting Name:

     Supreme

Anecdote:

     During an exam of a four year old girl, she showed me her baby doll and said that the doll had hurt her finger.  I carefully examined the doll and then told her I had fixed it.  I reassured her and  told her that she would be fine.  

     As she was leaving, we were all standing by the door at the entrance to my home office, talking.  It was a peaceful, almost idyllic moment for me, the sun drifting through the leaves of the trees and coming in through the French doors.   The Mother said, "Would you like to say thank you to Dr. Feole for fixing your doll?"         

     The girl thought a few seconds and then said, "Naa," and walked out the door.

               Westport, Connecticut, 1990's

          

Poetry:

Baptism 

I help my father
into the shower
with his good hand
he grips my arm for support.

Inside he sits like Buddha
on a plastic stool
and waits for me
to begin.

I drench him
with warm water,
soap his head, his back,
the flabby stomach,
the private parts
private no more.

I had not before seen my father's
nakedness, nor the changing
contour of his being,
his growing helplessness.

His brown skin glistens
and I think of him
as a young man on the night
of my conception:

Panting, capable, shining
with sweat and definition,
the soft hands of my mother
grasping his shoulders.

I pat him dry,
he lets me dress him
in the white
hospital clothes,
oil his hair,
put him to bed
and forgive him. 

     by Ted Thomas, Jr.

Coup d'essai:

"…my Father had the happiness of reading the oddest books in the universe…"  Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, p. 161, Chapter XXX.

    I was just reading interviews by J.K. Rowling and she says that she reads all the time…at breakfast, at lunch, in the bathroom.  Anything and everything.  If there is nothing to read, she will read the labels on the medicine containers.  I feel the same.  The eclectic, esoteric book especially is irresistible, the depth of the human mind and endeavors unfathomable.  One book I am reading now lists, well,  "lists." In the chapter on lists of nine items it has explications of: the 9 orders of angels, the 9 circles of Dante's Inferno, the 9 muses…  Amen.

Favorite Musician/song:

Carole King, "So Far Away"

    Incredibly beautiful.

Favorite Book/author:

Oliver Sacks, Oaxaca Journal

     A wonderful journal, going to Mexico to look at ferns with an eclectic mix of people from the New York Botanical Garden Fern Society.  His conversational observations on society and friendships, his reticence and gleaming intelligence are interesting, touching and often poignant.  I had included a quote during an earlier post.  

Favorite Movie/DVD:

Contact, with Jody Foster, Matthew McConaughey

    What is it about this beautiful movie that I find so moving?  The Father-daughter relationship, loss, love, romance, a life of scientific endeavor, the melding of science and spirituality…and the incomparable Jodie Foster.