Thursday, November 23, 2006
Metamorphosis
Autumn 2006
I really don’t understand what has happened to us. I can’t explain it. But maybe I can give you some small sense of it.
We have changed-both of us- that much is clear. We certainly didn’t always plan to do this. Kinda like when we were 10 and had no real plan to become adolescents- didn’t know what was in store for us, we just wanted to go out and play, or read our books. That’s how it was for us a couple of years ago. But things happen. Everything changes.
One verse from Shakespeare (The Tempest) has been going through my head a lot this last year. I put it on my office door:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange
Where were we two years ago? We came back from New Zealand (you can see my blog about that trip) and I returned to my medical practice, teaching Family Medicine residents at CRMEF. It was pretty much, “return to the old groove”, working one-on-one with Residents, delivering babies with them, making clinic and hospital rounds, sharing my focus on patient education and computer use in the office. Vicki returned to her job as Principal’s Secretary at McKinley Middle School- keeping the place organized and running smoothly. Elizabeth returned to Maine and Engineering. Leah graduated and went to Graduate School on Long Island (Violin Performance). We all kept working our jobs and going about the usual routine.
And then, at least for me, there is a discontinuity, starting about last September or October. Life looked different. We started to feel changed. Or maybe more the same, but not. Everything got very confused. Like when we were going through puberty, a lot of ups and downs, but now we were in our 50s, and it was not so much fun. It’s a time that’s hard to describe, and I really don’t want to dwell on it now. It was damn scary. We both needed and found “Spirit Guides”. And there was certainly a physical metamorphosis: I lost 50 pounds over 6 months, and Vicki also lost a lot of weight in the last 2 years. Partly this was due to walking miles every day, partly to more sensible diet, but mostly due to metamorphosis, that mysterious process where hidden programs inside us just caused change. Radical change. The same basic people, but yet markedly different. See change. Sea-change.
And in January I got an email inviting me to apply for a job in Australia. On a whim, I forwarded it to Vicki, who replied back, “Let’s go!”.
And so we are. I’ve taken a no-guarantees leave of absence from my job for a year. We’ve sold our house. We will take the “geographic cure” and travel half way around the globe to Derby, Western Australia. Half-time I will teach medical students in that small town on the Indian Ocean, in the Rural Clinical School. The other half will be work as a medical officer in the Derby Aboriginal Health Services. Vicki will wear lots of sunscreen and read books and see what happens. We will both see what happens. The metamorphosis is happening; the sea-change has begun. So grab your slicker and your life-jacket and follow along.
I really don’t understand what has happened to us. I can’t explain it. But maybe I can give you some small sense of it.
We have changed-both of us- that much is clear. We certainly didn’t always plan to do this. Kinda like when we were 10 and had no real plan to become adolescents- didn’t know what was in store for us, we just wanted to go out and play, or read our books. That’s how it was for us a couple of years ago. But things happen. Everything changes.
One verse from Shakespeare (The Tempest) has been going through my head a lot this last year. I put it on my office door:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange
Where were we two years ago? We came back from New Zealand (you can see my blog about that trip) and I returned to my medical practice, teaching Family Medicine residents at CRMEF. It was pretty much, “return to the old groove”, working one-on-one with Residents, delivering babies with them, making clinic and hospital rounds, sharing my focus on patient education and computer use in the office. Vicki returned to her job as Principal’s Secretary at McKinley Middle School- keeping the place organized and running smoothly. Elizabeth returned to Maine and Engineering. Leah graduated and went to Graduate School on Long Island (Violin Performance). We all kept working our jobs and going about the usual routine.
And then, at least for me, there is a discontinuity, starting about last September or October. Life looked different. We started to feel changed. Or maybe more the same, but not. Everything got very confused. Like when we were going through puberty, a lot of ups and downs, but now we were in our 50s, and it was not so much fun. It’s a time that’s hard to describe, and I really don’t want to dwell on it now. It was damn scary. We both needed and found “Spirit Guides”. And there was certainly a physical metamorphosis: I lost 50 pounds over 6 months, and Vicki also lost a lot of weight in the last 2 years. Partly this was due to walking miles every day, partly to more sensible diet, but mostly due to metamorphosis, that mysterious process where hidden programs inside us just caused change. Radical change. The same basic people, but yet markedly different. See change. Sea-change.
And in January I got an email inviting me to apply for a job in Australia. On a whim, I forwarded it to Vicki, who replied back, “Let’s go!”.And so we are. I’ve taken a no-guarantees leave of absence from my job for a year. We’ve sold our house. We will take the “geographic cure” and travel half way around the globe to Derby, Western Australia. Half-time I will teach medical students in that small town on the Indian Ocean, in the Rural Clinical School. The other half will be work as a medical officer in the Derby Aboriginal Health Services. Vicki will wear lots of sunscreen and read books and see what happens. We will both see what happens. The metamorphosis is happening; the sea-change has begun. So grab your slicker and your life-jacket and follow along.
