4.11.2003 [way too late.]

man. i'm happy tonight, you know? i know i bitched about working 5 hours later than i thought i would, but it was good. it was rewarding. there's really not a single night when i come home and regret choosing this path. i know a lotta times i doubt myself, deep in the night. i know a lotta times i ask myself if i should've been a marine biologist, an oceanographer, sunbrowned and sailing for a living. but that's just doubt, and when i'm stressed and annoyed it's just that. stress and annoyance. there's no real regret, ever.

tonight my last patient was a breach birth. did i spell that wrong? anyway, you know what it is, when the baby comes out butt-first? it went smoothly, though. it was tense in the delivery room and it felt hot even though it wasn't, and the air felt thick, and for that one second before the baby cried there was like this absolute stunning silence, but then he let out a real squawl (barbaric yawp, anyone?) and the mother just...burst into tears, herself.

oh man. times like that make it all worth it, you know? that maternal love. the baby comes out of her and she just loves it, unconditionally, with every fiber of her being, no matter what's gonna happen in the future. it's hard to imagine some of those kids will become criminals and others will be our future presidents, but they all start here, right here in the delivery room surrounded by blue cloth and scrubs and doctors and lights, and there's his mother, and she just loves him, no matter what he'll become and what she'll become.

argh. i can't articulate it. it's just that.....sense of destiny that comes down on you in times like that. that sense that no matter what led up to this point, and where it goes from here, this is what we've all got in common. birth. and that one first moment of utter, uncompromising, unconditional love.

you know ts eliot's poem, little gidding? hahaha. it's like the scientist's favorite poem, because of these lines:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

that really is applicable, though, to the delivery room. i mean. god. i think about it and i could weep! heh. ag! it's like.

28 years of moving through this world, learning and growing and becoming, and in the end i end up where i began, in the delivery room, but for the first time i know it, i know what's going on and what's involved and where things are going from this point. it's me outside the womb, me catching the baby when he first comes into this world, and all my years of schooling and training has led up to just this.

returning to the place i began.

the rest of that poem's really good, too. it's long, like most of his good stuff. man, i do love eliot. he moves me. i can't stand people who can't stand eliot just because he's an expatriate, and because he finds such beautiful words. i dunno. there's like a sense that's he's kinda too arrogant, tries too hard, or something?

but goddammit, it works. it does work. he tries hard and he does it. i don't care how innovative that stupid wheelbarrow poem might be (was that william carlos williams? is that his name?), or how tragic that dude that wrote the Bridge was: eliot's got some connection there to a chord that resonates in all of us. and he's got lines that are just shocking and memorable, that pin you to the ground with their beauty and leave you transformed.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

that's just SUBLIME. you can't argue it: his poems are sweeping forces of nature. they pull you along, and each one's a journey, and when you get to the end of all those lines you feel like you've found something, arrived somewhere, or maybe arrived where you started and understand it.

man, am i waxing poetic.