Ah. The gorgeousness of winter is passing here in the Sunny City. That sentence would have been irony, except that the past week has actually been Sunny and pretty. Last week it was snowy, this week it is spring.
I've made friends, lost friends and learnt more in the last six months than the whole five years of med school. I fell in love with babies and watched them grow and beat the odds. I see them in clinic now, and smile every time they show up on my schedule. I see people in my continuity clinic, adults, some of whom picked me because they like my "spunk". We hug at the end of each 20-minute visit. I'm happy, I'm smiling, I love going to work.
I've stopped submitting poems to be published, mainly because I haven’t had time to type up the poems I write. They’re not even sad, they’ve turned more introspective, a questioning of things I have always believed. No, I’m not questioning my faith in the inherent goodness of the world despite having been hurt. I’m finding out that life is a series of checks and balances, and the scales are finely balanced. Always. There is no grief unmatched by joy, no sleepless night unmatched by lazy day. There is no smile that is unreturned, unless you count the infants, but they don’t have to smile all the time to be adorable.
Speaking of infants, I think I’m a happier pediatrician than an internist. Not even kidding. Its amazing how happy I am when I’m around the kids and babies. I still don’t know what I’m doing with a lot of the older children, but the babies make me want to sing. Yes, sing. Despite my dislike of the NICU, a neonatology career is showing up on my horizon of career choices. I’m not impressed by my vacillation on career choices. Not that it was one of the never-choices, but it wasn’t even remotely considered. I thought all the ICU fellowships were at the bottom of the list, but two of them are slowly coming up on my personal ranking hierarchy of choices. And they’re not even that far apart if I think about it. Eeek. I’m turning into a fellowship person, and it scares me. Kidneys and guts remain firmly at the bottom of the list, yessir indeed they do.
My home is still incomplete, unfurnished, but I’ve progressed to calling it “home”. I think I have picked out a couch on craigslist, that beautiful website for the cheapie like me. I’ve picked out two desks, I’m waiting to hear on one before I make up my mind. Either one will make me joyful and better organized. I’m waiting to get my living room organized a little bit before I pick out a dresser for my bedroom. A dresser and a mirror. I’m getting end tables from the dollar store tomorrow.
I went to the lake on Friday, and took a beautiful set of pictures of the sunset. It was a lovely day in the sixties. Dad loved the pictures, I emailed them to him. The new cam is amazing, and I want one of my own. I’m going to save up for an SLR or the same camera I bought for my brother, a Fujifilm Finepix S1500. I also want to buy adobe photoshop and play around with pictures. It is more fulfilling than buying a car at this point. I want the small happinesses of life – is happinesses even a word? Or a neologism?
I’ve been meditating the past few days at night, before I go to bed. There are a lot of realizations I’ve had, and one of the biggest is that I’m actually learning to stop and smell the roses. Live in the moment. Be spontaneous. Offer to help. I’m living for the small joys and it has made me a happier person. I’m happy for every 30 minute workout I squeeze into the week, every time I’m taking the bus instead of cabs. Every night I get six hours of uninterrupted sleep, I’m happy.
I love my parents, and every day I spend here in this country, watching families tear themselves apart, children growing up in incomplete homes, my respect for the gifts I’ve taken for granted rises up out of somewhere deep and chokes me. I laugh with my mother over the phone, hear my father’s oft-spoken pride in the short conversations we have every week. Get my brother’s opinion on everything from furniture to electronics. Buy him stuff. Laugh over in-jokes that no one else will understand. Tell him something and know that he'll understand why its funny or frustrating. I'm blessed, very blessed.
Its beautiful. My life is beautiful. Touché. I love life.
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