my first year of medical school- i got my belly pierced. i was 26 and i needed to hold on to the non-doctor part of myself. i thought it was cool, subtle, and not a big deal. i didn't plan it- i just made the decision and got it done. it was for me. i needed a physical reminder that i was more than just a girl who studied 20 hours a day. i needed to be myself- and hold onto something that was being transformed. i was becoming a doctor- but i wasn't going to start wearing preppy conservative clothes and become completely absorbed in doctorness. i was an older student, for my class. i had spent most of my life not wanting to be a doctor. a semester in costa rica had changed that, and at 21 i'd decided that to engage the world in healthcare- i wanted to do it as a physician. i'd enrolled in a biology course to see if i could handle the science of it, loved it, got an "A", and began to see myself in a different light. mike and i got married a year after i finished college. he was in grad school and i spent the next 2 years taking the rest of the science courses i needed, while working full-time. when i got into medical school and mike finished at MIT, we left boston, moved south and i dyed my hair platinum blond. we spent 6 weeks traveling in europe before our lives began again. before he began his first professional job, and i began the process of becoming a doctor. it was like a honeymoon. we had space and time - that we hadn't had since being married and being so busy and absorbed in our school/work/ med school application process.
the acculturation process of medical school freaked me out. i was with 100+ kids (mostly right out of college), who were fulfilling their life long dream of becoming physicians. they had spent their lives getting perfect grades, SAT scores, and finding the balance of volunteerism and summer lab research jobs. they belonged to honor societies. they were biology majors. they were used to delaying gratification and spending hours in books and libraries and knew how to take meticulous notes.
this was not me. i was doing it backwards and i knew it. i'd spent my life not focusing on grades or studying, but on friendships and self discovery. i'd spent my time studying outside the library - in fact often outdoors- and i'd studied sociology, not biology. i didn't have perfect grades or SAT scores. i did have the perfect resume - having worked 4 years in a nursing home, and 2 years doing clinical research in boston. and i did have a complete love for what i was doing- as did they. but i wasn't going to lose myself in this new group. i took notes on giant posters with colored markers. i studied at coffee shops. mike and i lived in a loft at an arts center on the other side of town. i painted and sketched to balance the lopsidedness of my left brain use- and had a little art show at a coffee house. and to physically maintain this identity- i pierced my belly.
when i was 28 i was pregnant with zoe- another transformation. i was about to become a mom. this was a lifelong dream. this was in the plans. we'd been trying to get pregnant for a year. we were thrilled. but with any big change- any shift in identity- there are many emotions mixed in. the loft we lived in was an old plow making factory that had been redone into live-work loft space. it was on the freight train tracks. we had 2 giant factory windows that looked out over the railroad tracks and several times a day, when the trains would go by, things would rattle and shake and the conversation would have to stop until they'd passed and the loud, squeaky noise was gone. i spent a lot of time sitting in those giant windows and watching the trains. there was something about their movement and their constancy that felt freeing. they were slow and steady and determined. they held things- moved things-there was purpose and function. they left and returned. in those first two years of medical school, i often felt trapped. it was so intense- there was so much information- it was such a different type of learning than i was used to- that watching the trains was an escape. when i would see an empty boxcar moving slowly past my window- i would imagine timing it, running beside and jumping in. to see where i'd go. to have that space again.
one day when mike and i were driving back to the loft, going over the train bridge, with zoe kicking my ribs from the inside, belly ring still in- i said i wanted to pierce my tongue and jump the train. i had that feeling again- the identity challenge. his response was classically mike and exactly why i love him so much. he addressed the outsides and the insides of my comment. "if you really want to pierce your tongue-that's fine- but you should really think it through- i don't think you'd really like it. in terms of the train riding- not a good idea- you're 6 months pregnant and do you know who rides empty trains? people who have no other way to get around- criminals-people escaping from things." " kris, what's really going on? are you stressed about having a baby? about becoming a mom?" as often is the case- my mouth spoke before my brain caught up with it. and he nailed it. i never pierced my tongue nor jumped the train- but i still wonder about the train part.
when bryn was born and the 5 of us were living in a small, yard-less apartment, scraping by on our full time professional salaries- across the country from most of our family, we decided to move back east. this was a hard decision. it was hard from an identity standpoint. we had fallen in love with san francisco. we had fallen more in love with each other in san francisco. we had defined ourselves professionally there, we had formed wonderful friendships there, we had grown a lemon tree. we had delivered our boys looking out over the golden gate bridge, hiked most weekends in marin, walked the long cold beaches year round, and developed a love for vietnamese food. leaving it was scary. i began to think about getting a tattoo- a piece of san francisco that would always be with me- on me- forever. and i began to think about it would be- what it should be. it needed to be beautiful and significant- in a permanent way.
san francisco has a strong asian influence. one of the ways to tell when it's spring is the blooming of the cherry blossom trees that line many streets in the city. there is a cherry blossom festival where zoe's public japanese bilingual kindergarten class rode on a float in the parade.
the cherry blossom is a beautiful delicate flower from asia. it blooms intensely, fragrantly, rapidly, and then the flowers fall. it is a symbolic flowering tree with two different meanings. in japanese culture it represents the fragility of life- the transient nature of living things- that beauty is found in the brevity. in chinese culture it represents femininity and strength.
i never got the tattoo.
but i love these meanings and i love the delicate image on this page- that reminds me of so much. it reminds me of san francisco, of our years there. it reminds me of the parts of myself that are important-and strong- strong enough that i don't need a tattoo or a pierced navel to hold on to them. it reminds me of the truth - that life is fragile- humanity delicate- little moments of beauty to be savored- because they go- but they return.
now another season of change is on me, an identity shift. africa. missionary. but this change feels whole and uniting. my mind and body are connected now. there is clarity and resolution. i don't need a symbol or mark to bring definition or to hold on to myself- i am intact. but these pages can carry the process- can record the transiency- the delicacy- the beauty of life, beside a little sketch of cherry blossoms.
