configurations of the past

this is not a post about medicine. it is not a post about medical school. or patients. or being a patient. it is a story about the past. about configurations of the past. about love....

most girls would scream. most would run. but she doesn't. she stands, transfixed, as she watches the tiny egg in his hand shiver ever so slightly. it shivers; then it breaks. a crack clean down the center and then the sudden appearance of a slimy greenbrown creature, complete with tail. most girls would squeal. most would at least say "eww..." but she doesn't. she watches. she watches as a baby lizard unfurls in his palm. she watches it look at him, at them, and then she watches it disappear--almost instantly--as the little creature leaps onto the nearest bush.

most girls would never have noticed him. most would vanish. but she remains....

twenty years later, the girl--now a woman--sits cross-legged in her overalls, back pressed against a locked hotel room door, as she waits in the hallway, reading intently. the girl--the woman--she is intense. transfixed, she can sit for hours, reading, looking, watching...but never quite taking part fully in the world around her. she is still a bit shy. tentative. but she stays....

she sees them first, striding down the hallway. it's been nearly ten years since she last saw them. she feels her breath catch in her chest. they were boys...they were still boys when they all last parted. but these guys she sees now, these aren't boys. these are men. and she--a woman.

the sparks between she and he are instantaneous. he has the body of a man--lean, fit, inviting--yet retains the grin of the boy. that grin, that twinkle in the eyes, his laugh...the same she'd seen when the mama lizard bit him and hung from his finger--her punishment for his disturbance of her nest--juxtaposed against the joy of his curiosity and the surprise at her wonder. the curiosity, the wonder...it remains....

she learns this two days later when, after having spent the night together engaged deep in conversation, he kisses her, just before dawn. electricity. she feels electricity. she feels the heat from his lips, from his chest, and from the raw undeniable presence of his lust for her as he presses against her. she sees the curiosity, the wonder, the hunger in his eyes. when they leap, together, half-blindly like the baby lizard into the new relationship, she cries. she's waited for this, distracted mind wound up in her studies, observed the world from a distance, and longed for something real. something true. and this is, she thinks, this is true--and it remains....

it remains through the early days, from the first moments, when, breaking out of shyness, she discovers the power of her body. being with him is not an intrusion. it is not like one of the several dozen medical exams she's submitted to over the past few years in an attempt to find healing. it is not like being half-covered, she thinks, in a degrading paper gown. it does not hurt...it does not hurt like so much of her life has. this--this relationship--this is new. this is beautiful. in her interaction with him she feels, possibly for the first time, whole.

she puzzles over this new way of being with another person. perplexed by the complexity and depth of her feelings, she wonders at how non-intellectual life can be with him. he lives in the moment.

or so she thought.

they talked for hours, separated by thousands of miles, about the past, about the present, and about their dreams for the future. he lost some of his boyish spontaneity when he became a man, but had replaced it with a certain solidness and assurance that she felt she could wrap herself in, a warm blanket to protect her from the cold. one day, when they are together, riding on a bus, he leans over and kisses her on the cheek. a spontaneous act. loving. she imagines life between them could remain like this. she has no hope, no desire, no wish for anything more than just this: this spontaneous, tender love.

if she'd known...if she'd only known something about men, about what happens to boys when they become men, she might have seen it coming....

what she did not know was that her words would betray her. she'd spent years with words: learning how to put them together to weave a poem; discovering how to use them to persuade an audience in an argument; rolling the newness of foreign words from her tongue for the first time. some of her friends would say she was a word. she breathed language. she thought in streams of water, a constant flow of ideas flooding her brain.

it was her downfall.

the words, to him, to his man-self, were unquestionable. they were not spontaneous or flowing: they were bricks. they were to be stacked neatly in piles, here, and here, and there. once placed, they did not move. words were stone. sentences were walls. paragraphs became houses. there was no room for movement. this was how life was "supposed" to be.

she'd never known the true strength and immobility of the word "should" until he decided. he decided, without her, that her dreams were built on clouds. he convinced himself that a woman could not become both a doctor and a mother. he chose, instead, a concept, configured in the past, to guide his life. and no matter what remained of his curiosity, his spontaneity, his care, his love for her--it did not matter. her dreams were built on clouds--clouds he couldn't imagine being reached, not even as she lay, brick by brick, her own foundation....

he chose not to love her anymore. it wasn't a discussion. there was no discussion. one day they were together; the next, they were not. he decided. and he vanished.

a year and a half goes by.

the girl--the woman--continues reaching for her clouds. her foundation is not perfect. she does not always build upon it in order. it has holes. her walls are cracked and sometimes wobbly, but she persists. even when she has to go backwards--take a wall apart and build it again--she continues. she persists.

word comes to her, not from him--he has no time for her, for someone crooked, cracked, and sometimes kooky--word comes from afar. he has married. he has given himself to another woman, promised to love her, and has never looked back. his bricks are straight. his dreams are fulfilled, built on a solid foundation, for he has the new woman's word: her commitment, to place bricks on the ground, to make certain life is laid out perfectly, and to ensure that she reaches only for him, their future children, and never a dream upon a cloud in the sky.

the girl--the woman--knows she will never hear from him again. she knows the boy, the man, her lover, has vanished. she holds the fragile, fractured eggshell of a new world in her hand. she weeps. and she remains. these are her words.