FreshMD

Finished

When I began blogging, a family member unfamiliar with blogs looked over this site and said politely, "It looks nice. Is it almost finished?" 

Well, now it is. 

I feel hamstrung by the mix of personal and professional anecdotes under my real name in the face of increasing readership. I find myself censoring and second-guessing myself and that really dilutes the pleasure of blogging.

I started this blog for the satisfaction of crafting bits of my chaotic days at home and work into a tidy package. But now my domestic and clinical days have settled into a relatively unruffled routine and I'm eager to pursue other projects. Any creative energy (and time) not exhausted by children or patients is in short supply, not enough to slather over multiple projects.

And so I need to absolve myself of this blog. I'm not sure if I'm euthanizing it or inducing an indefinite coma. The site will remain up but expect this post to greet you for the foreseeable future.

I'll still be active at Mothers in Medicine, Twitter and Flickr. 

Thank you to my little band of readers, especially those who commented or emailed over the last year and a half.

Sanatorium

One of my favourite photos in the album from my grandmother is this one, of her brother in a sanatorium in Harderwijk, the Netherlands in the 40's: 

Sanatorium sounds psychiatric, suggesting a place where one's sanity is restored, but it's an institution for medically supervised recuperation from disease, usually tuberculosis. From a medical and a literary perspective, I was admittedly pleased to discover that a relative had suffered from consumption.

 

I love the button-up pyjamas, the drape of the bed sheets, the sun behind the curtains in the high windows and - most of all - the perplexing X where Oma marked her brother in ballpoint pen.

Album

I visited my grandparents the other day, and when the coffee had been served in decades-old flowered teacups and the pastries set out in a ring around the coffee table, Oma shuffled over with a photo album. She settled next to me on the couch and turned to the first page. 

"This is my oldest sister," she said happily, a bejeweled finger resting on a wedding picture. And in the same contented tone: "She died of a heart problem." Her finger slid down to the next photo. "And that is my oldest brother. He died of pneumonia." 

My grandmother had sixteen siblings, a corresponding massive extended family and a slew of friends, and their images were tucked into the book in black and white, in faded vintage tones, on thick matte paper and on Polaroid squares. She paged through the album, briefly remarking on each picture. Every observation included the cause of death. 

"Her husband died in the doctor's office when he was thirty-nine," she said of her niece. "She had five children." Flip. "My brother was in a sanatorium for TB. He was there for a year. He got better but then he died in a boating accident." Flip. "That is the husband of my sister. He died of a heart attack in 1981." 

Half-way through the album, and not one person in the photos was still living. And the strange thing was, Oma kept recounting their relationship to her and how they died in a cheerful, matter-of-fact way. I could smell her sweet old-person breath as she leaned closer to identify a blurred face, and I could tell she was enjoying herself immensely. 

I recognized almost no one in the pictures, save my grandparents and some of their siblings, marked by family resemblances: the small, pretty vandenHoven nose and chin; the full Byl cheeks and red hair. 

She closed the album and gave it to me. I took the book, heavy and oblong with a faded blue fabric cover, and realized that she had just paged through it for the last time.

"You can throw out the pictures of the people you don't know," she suggested. "You can just keep the pictures that you like." 

And so there is an album of dead strangers, of Oma's treasured people, on my desk. One day I'll probably sort and rearrange it, but for now I haven't the heart to disturb those photos' resting place.

Even better than brown thistles

So here's the reason we visit Ontario so faithfully:

There are twelve grandchildren and one on the way (that's not an announcement). The oldest is eight and the youngest, to whom I'm trying hard not to be partial, is three-month-old Katja Martina:

Three of the grandchildren are younger than Ariana, and that felt strange. It was odd not to pack a diaper bag and not to request 4L jugs of whole milk whenever Pete's mom headed out to the grocery store. I enjoyed not being responsible for keeping a little one from falling headlong down the spiral staircase to the basement or knocking a glass of red wine onto the cream carpet. Caring for three kids was ridiculously easy, relative to previous years.

My kids have one cousin in BC, but little PJ is regrettably infantile and has yet to realize any potential as a playmate. The Ontario cousins can play Stiga hockey,

* Josh & Saskia

have identical Webkinz (which can be identified by their peculiar scents, according to their owners),

* Saskia & Elle

and share confidences while lounging on the couch.

* Ava & Ariana

One of the best parts of Christmas was watching the cousins open their Christmas gifts at Opa and Oma's place. The afternoon sun slanted in the windows, Uncle Jack handed out the gifts from under the tree and the room overflowed with delighted squeals, shredded paper and one very big and blessed family.

* Opa & Katja

People often ask why I have "so many kids" - "stacks of babies" as one colleague puts it - and, while I think three is fairly modest, part of the reason is that I wouldn't mind being in the position of the matriarch in that first photo myself, one day.

Decluttering

For me, the key to productive, contented living is decluttering.

Life seems to default to an excess of possessions, activities and pursuits. It takes intention and effort to organize a distracted state of living into one that is simple and peaceful. Decluttering involves making do with the minimum required to achieve your goals, and systematically winnowing out what isn't earning its keep.

I apply decluttering to every aspect of my life. Working at two clinics had introduced unnecessary complexity to my week, so this summer I resigned at the HIV clinic to exclusively practice refugee medicine. I focus on three hobbies: gardening in summer, knitting in winter and photography year-round. No one looks inside my closet without remarking that it's the most pared down collection of clothes they've ever seen . . .

Continued at Mothers in Medicine, where the topic of the day is time management.