Whispers on a Sunday Night
An entry most of you have never seen, from 2002, from earliest days of my Open Diary almost three years ago. Revised and posted here to LiveJournal for the first time, appropriate -- most appropriate, I think -- for this day of days. Enjoy. :-)
Winter 2002
Across a great expanse of mirror-polished wooden floor, with great glass windows rising into the rafters of the ornate ballroom, two lines, one of men, one of women, listened carefully as the instructor made his points. Slow...slow...quick, quick! he said pointedly, as his feet traced out with his partner the steps of the American Foxtrot. On the quick-quick --step together! But as I watched our instructor, in the corner of my eye I first saw the other gentleman....
A few people down, he stood there, a physican on staff at the medical center, a Chinese-American man about my height, dressed much like me, glasses similar to mine; enough things in feature grossly similar that he arguably could have been a cousin or even brother, enough closeness to me to cause me a mental double-take. In the moment I first really noticed him, he looked mischeviously at his partner, standing in the women's line across the floor. Like some remote signal had been passed, at that moment she looked right at him.
- Again, the instructor continued, his back to us, the side-step should be no wider than your partner's hips!
It wasn't that the two of them danced well together --noone did, this being an introductory lesson for rank beginners. It wasn't that their feet didn't trip over each other or they didn't miss steps --for they did both in spades, like everyone else. What it was, as I watched the young physican and the young woman dancing with him together across the rest of the evening, was that there was this connection, this intangible thing between them, a joy, a simple mischevious shared secret, a quiet silliness, the way one could make the other laugh with just a gesture, or a certain face...
Later that night I was punching away at the terminal in my lab, phone slung over a shoulder on med business with a MD/PhD friend of mine. Rapid-fire coverage of a dozen projects at once, meeting after meeting, questions, answers, plans, thoughts, a million miles an hour worth of things he had on his plate...
- "My word, you're really enjoying yourself, aren't you?" I commented at one point.
"Hey, this is great! This is what I've always dreamed of doing!" he replied back, excitedly.
"What about med school?" I teased.
I could almost see the grin over the phone. "You can't make your whole life your career --my dream was to be an activist, but you've got to do something else with the rest of your time, right? So I went to med school," he laughed.
"So how 'bout you, Turnberry?" he continued, "you want to live in the lab the rest of your life? You want to be NIH Director someday?" he kidded.
"Hell no," I laughed. "Boy, I'm not going to make my career my whole life either, you know."
"So what you want? What are *you* dreaming of?"
I laughed. To be honest, I already had -- have -- more than most people: a close and loving family; many wonderful friends; a chance to fight, on many fronts, for those I cared about the most, fight for something I could believe in and never regret. There really wasn't much more that any man could ask for. I was going to toss out an answer...and then it suddenly hit me. I knew *exactly* what there was still left to dream of in my heart of hearts...
- ...that fox-trot mangling physican. I didn't know what title he had, what service he was on; whether he was tenure or clinical track, specialist or generalist, paid high or low; not even his name. Only the way he could communicate to his partner something hilarious in just the way he held her hand, the tender kiss at the end of a promenade, the way his face lit up just seeing her re-enter the ballroom, or hers when he surprised her from behind. That's all I knew. That's all I needed to know. *That's* what I wanted.
He'd had to meet every challenge they throw at a would-be doctor, from pre-med all the way forward. To become faculty at a place like Michigan, he had to not just survive but excel, stand among the top of every list, first in every gauntlet, all along the way, with all the steel and strength of character required to achieve such a thing. Neither the diseases he fought nor the competition he faced would have brooked any mercy for personal weakness of any kind, and he had beat them all. And yet, despite being smart and tough enough to win, despite everything he had to have overcome to get to where he was, he still had a heart that could share a gentle and silly magic with the lady he loved. And if he could do that, maybe I could be that strong, that selfless, that gentle, that brave, too.
I smiled into the reciever of the phone cradled against my shoulder. "Friend, you'd never believe me if I told you."
A midnight scamper over rooftops.
A dance with everyone watching.
A song at the end of an Autumn day.
These stories -- and many more stories, that I have had the privelege of telling: all really telling the same story:
The greatest thing / You'll ever learn / Is how to love / And be loved in return.