My friend Andy and ZZ

Steve, you asked why I call her Z. Well, there's a story to that, and here it is:

As you know, I was desperately sick during the first trimester. I threw up eight times a day and that was the easy part. I felt absolutely miserable- like every cell was revolting against being pregnant. I normally feel split between school and family, but I became so sick that nothing else mattered. In and out of the hospital, on three different medications, nothing helped- except IV fluids that the nurses were so reluctant to give me.

One day I felt well enough to drag myself in to a path review. (I threw up three times between the train station and class.) There was no seat, so I sat on the stairs next to my friend Andy. He was excited to see me, because he hadn't in a while, and because he's just a nice person. He understood (as much as he could) that I was miserable, and despite having planned the pregnancy, I felt lost and like my life was completely out of control.

Here's a pic of Andy:


Oh wait, no, that's not him. Here's Andy's facebook profile picture. Here's Andy's facebook page, so you can befriend him.


So during this pathology review session, I had to run out of the room to puke and/or splash cold water on my face. I returned to the session only to grab my things and to say goodbye to Andy. I noticed that the zipper on one of the pockets of the back pack was open, and I reached in to find the most amazing, perfectly timed homemade cards ever.

On the front there was a drawing of a sperm with arm buds and a bow in its hair and a caption that said:

Thank You for letting me...

Then you flipped it over and on the back it had a picture of my uterus with a little sperm bouncing from one side to the other, doing spins and flips and having a great time. It just said, in big letters:

ZIG ZAG!

I felt warmed! For a good two minutes, I forgot about my misery and felt happy! Around that same time, Andy said "She doesn't know how sick she's making you! She can't know, because she only has two neurons! One is for cutie and the other for fun!" I told Quelly about it, and she loved it too. Since then we've been calling her ZeeZee!

Andy's a great friend. He's the class punster. He is willing to laugh and very light-hearted. He has a unique perspective at all times. I'm sure I'll write more about him. And did you know that he was the valedictorian of his high school?!

Balance, and other fairy tales

Balance? What? A couple of months before boards? HA!

This, right now, is what I signed up to sacrifice. I have to learn everything all over again, in even more detail, and all I want to do it play with TORIN!

I have to sleep to grow a human. She needs me to be healthy. How on EARTH am I going to review everything I have to review, keep going to lab a few times a week, work in the clinic every Tuesday morning, play with my son, wink at my husband, and get a healthy 8 hours of sleep every night. Prenatal yoga? HA!

It kills me that he's only here for less than another couple of weeks, and I have to study the whole time, and then I won't see him for another three weeks after that. I would cry, but after I'm done complaining (here) I have to study another lecture and then sleep, so there's no time for crying.


There's Mr. T. in his suit that he wore to the Free Clinic fundraiser.

Maybe I should think of balance as a lifetime thing, not as a lifestyle thing.

I swear, it will be easier as a grad student, right? Hosanna, I hope so!

Okay, I guess there is time to cry.

Keeping in Touch

On video skype with my brother Steve, g-chatting with my sister Raquel, texting my dear Chris and my other brother Marcos, while Steve has Mom on speaker phone as we try to convince her that I'm really there with Steve in Hawaii. This is how we bid our Major Brother farewell the night before he goes to Afghanistan, leaving his wife and two children at home in Hawaii for six months. We'll be able to do the Skype when he is in Afghanistan, and in this sense, it will be comforting to feel that the world is small.

Times, they are changing. Nations trying to fight wars with terrorists, like a fist trying to punch an idea. I don't understand our strategy in Afghanistan, mostly because I don't see the benefit of an endless occupation. Afghanistan is a gorgeous country, and is undoubtedly worth saving, but is that what we're doing there? In the 90's, I received letters from Amnesty International asking me to urge our politicians to take a stand on the treatment of women, saying that Afghani women used to be professors and lawyers, but they were being brutalized by the fundamentalist Taliban. This was ongoing for 20 years before 9-11, well before we were sold the war in Iraq partially because of their treatment of women. Skepticism of war policy is my nature and remains so even my with my big brother headed over there.

This is me trying to make sense of a new foreign policy. Struggling.

I know that the US has real and powerful enemies, and I understand that it is the job of the military to stay vigilant. I've learned about the Clash of Civilizations, and that our civilization, despite what our voting demographics or protest placards tell you, stands in favor of free speech, free press, civil liberties, freedom of and from (!) religion, free enterprise, equal rights, etc. ( I feel silly writing this, because as I do, I can think of a million ways in which our freedoms have been violated.) I'm not addressing individual motions or events. I mean, in general, these things are valued in our civilization, so much that for some people, they are deemed self-evident truths. But it's a mistake and simply incorrect to think that they are basic principles for all of humanity. Some civilizations do not value these things, and this is where the CLASH part comes in.

Our world is getting smaller, and the notion of "live and let live" seems to be unrealistic and maybe as immoral as cultural relativism.

One more plea: Maybe we need to slow down. Maybe we need to allow civilizations to merge, to educate each other, to show each other the benefits of different ways of doing things. Maybe, just maybe, we can slow this clash down, and as confusing as life can be, we can always invest in what we know is good, what's important to us- family, community, environment, good will, charitable acts, education, health, personal peace, expression of ideas... Is there any chance that our very real, very powerful, imperfect enemies would do the same? While I'm here, my brother is at war, and all I can do is live a life rooted in these principles.

DISCLAIMER: This is what I'm thinking now. I reserve the right to change my mind at any time, I just know it's not as simple as I thought things were when I was 19. I'll freely challenge all of these thoughts, until I feel as though I've grasped some larger truth. I only have very small truths right now, one of which is that I love my brother with all my heart, that I support him in every breath that he takes, where ever he takes it, that I have deeply mixed feelings about where he's going, I feel one way only about him.

19 weeks down, 21 to go, Boards, Torin

I'm past the brutal parts of the pregnancy. It was so awful I can't do it again, which saddens me greatly, but I just need to focus on the two children that I do have. Today I felt her kicks on the outside for the first time!

Looking at pictures of my first child makes me long for an infinite number of children. The last day of my trip to SF, we went for a forty-five minute walk... around the block. For Torin, a walk isn't about getting your heart rate up. It's about being in a new place, that just so happens to be right next to the place where he just was. The sun was blindingly bright. We had to choose what we looked at carefully. My eyes were glued on him. He focused on new beautiful things. We both saw the world as though it was the first time. We sat on the sidewalk and counted blooms on flower bushes. He ran his little finger over the stucco siding on the corner house.

It's all a practice of being "present". In violation of that:


This is Torin playing outside Nona's yard last summer. We found five or six of those rocks a few days later in his diaper. He slept well after that!

I miss him terribly. On the other front, I have been able to get a lot of school work done. It's nice to study early and take my time with the material. I think that missing Torin keeps me on track now, whereas before it made it impossible to focus. I'm not sure what's changed. He's a little older and so am I. Last year I decided to accept the sadness, and by doing so, I decided to not let it interfere with the rest of my life. Of course I'm sad. I'd be inhuman if I weren't. But I'm also grateful that I can study and enhance my life in other ways.

I take boards in just fourteen weeks! The countdown has begun.