Custos (1 of 3): Carousel Meeting
A custos is a notation from medieval music, used at the end of a line or a block of music, to mark off where the music to follow will begin. In a small way, such are these three tales...
Late Thursday night, the tail end of a long, long day which had begun the day before, run through a rushed night of work and a tumble of travel, that now had me long after dusk at the baggage pickup at Washington DC's National Airport. Hard work, long travel, minimal sleep, all why it didn't immediately connect that the "Jeff" being called out for was in fact me. A voice that sounded surprisinging familiar, and when I turned around, eight-hundred plus miles from home, I was face to face with the jovial, smiling face of Professor B.
I had come all the way to Washington DC this time not for politics, but for science. A meeting at NIH I had been invited to come present poster at, with my bill paid this time not by activist organizations but the NICHD. I had no idea that the allied Pediatric Academic Societies were meeting the exact same weekend in DC as well. And it was for that that Professor B had come to DC, senior among their ranks as he was, for the allied meeting at Washington's brand new Convention center. I had not even noticed him sitting in 1st class when I had boarded the plane earlier that evening, but he had noticed me, and made a note to find me on the ground. And with hearty handshakes and big smiles we caught up on our respective lives, mine on the conclusion of my work, his on his meeting and the graduation of his son from teacher's college up in New York, to which he was headed next.
Five years before, at the very beginning of my research sabattical, even before I had committed to the full course of the MD/PhD, I had been given the privelege of serving for a full year on Professor B.'s Pediatric Hematology/Oncology service. Of that time I have written many entries, Ward Side Story and End of the Season being perhaps the two stories from that time closest to me. I had begun the year told in Lifestyles of the Rich and Scientific with an inkling of where I wanted to go. Perhaps just as much as the research I spent six days a week upon, it was my experiences on the seventh -- on the cancer clinic Professor B. led -- that showed me what it is I could become, and sealed for me what it is I wanted to try to become a part of.
But it wasn't just the clinical or the scientific that Professor B. showed me, as superbly skilled and nationally famous as he was at both. Professor B. was far more than a scientist and a clinician; more importantly, for all of his honors and his fame, he was a human being of great warmth and compassion, to his patients, to his staff, to his students; to his wife, to his children. Father and husband he was as much as he was scientist and clinician, and a role model for me as all of the above he became for me. His tale, in far greater depth and reflection, of who he is and why I hope to follow in his footsteps, I told in The Work of Thirty Years. And so it was a joy to encounter him again in the terminal of DC's National Airport, on the verge of making my thesis defense and returning finally to the clinical service which I had begun under him so many years before.
As it happened, on the way out of DC I also happened to run into one of my research mentors, who was himself flying into NIH aboard the same plane on Monday I would be flying out of. He too very kindly came out of the way to find me in the lobby, to say hello and catch up. I have been very lucky to have had Professor M as one of my thesis advisors. I have been very lucky with my mentors, avoiding in entirety the hells of bad mentors that so many others, even here on the diaries, have had to suffer through. They have taught me much about science, and science will always be a part of my life, necessary for the work I hope to be a part of.
These past few years I have learned much about how to be an effective scientist, thanks to many kind and generous people. Much too I have learned about how to be an effective activist, from others. Much too I have learned about dancing, about singing, about storytelling, about so many other happy things. All of these things -- scientist, activist, dancer, singer, storyteller, and so much more -- I will always in part be. But none of those things were what I primarily came to Ann Arbor so many years ago to become. None of those things were the primary reason I began the upwards climb for as far back as my earliest high-school days. As important or as happy as each of those things are -- and as much as each will always be a part of who I am -- none were the cause I hoped to follow the path of so many others to join.
I came to this place -- fought my way to this place -- to try to become a clinican and teacher. To do the work of tales like On CALM and Chromosomes. To follow in Professor B's footsteps, to fight that battle on wards and bedside, and to do all of that while too also sharing my life with the love of family and friends. To be someday the healer, father, and husband that Professor B has become was what I first, a very long time ago, set out to do. And in just under a season, sometime this fall, in earnest again I will begin. The final sprint is already underway and the dates will soon be set. It's been a wonderful four years of MD/PhD and two years research before that. Thanks to so many, I've had much success and even more joy. It's time, finally, for me to go back.
Professor B and I parted with good wishes at the transport islands in front of the old terminal at National, me to catch the shuttle to the Metro up to NIH; he to grab a taxi to Downtown. But I will soon be seeing him again, I am sure, upon the wards. And there, starting soon, I will discover whether I have steel, fire and heart enough within me to become all that Professor B. has shown I might aspire to be.
Onwards to Part 2