Doctors Hospital and the Very Sharp Cheese Plane

Until it closed in 2004 and the building was razed to make way for a new luxury high rise,  Doctors Hospital stood on East End Avenue two blocks from our apartment.

Opened in 1929 as a small, private hospital,  originally for maternity cases,  it was soon favored by celebrities and over the years counted Marilyn Monroe,  Michael Jackson,  and Eugene O’Neill among its patients,  while also serving our upper eastside neighborhood.  (See The Gurney)

One weekend some years ago  I was serving my family lunch when I went back to the kitchen to cut some slices from a large wedge of Jarlsburg.  But the cheese plane was very sharp,  I was careless,  and along with the cheese I sliced off the tip of my finger.

I wrapped my bloody digit in tissues and we all rushed out of the apartment and hurried down the block to the Doctors Hospital ER,  my son carrying my fingertip in the expectation that a surgeon would need it to stitch back on.

Then while my family sat in the waiting room,  I was ushered in to see the doctor.

“The skin will grow back and your finger will heal perfectly.”   he assured me,  tossing my useless fingertip into the tras

Relieved,  and with my finger nicely bandaged,  I went back to the waiting room where I’d left my husband and son –  but they were no where in sight.  Rather annoyed,  I walked home and found them sitting at the table eating.

“How could you leave me in the hospital with my severed fingertip!”  I demanded.

“Well ”,  said my husband between bites,  “since we couldn’t do anything about your finger and we were hungry,  we came home to finish lunch.”

“But don’t worry Mom”,  my son reassured me,  “before we sliced the Jarlsburg we washed your blood off the cheese plane.”

I thought that was pretty cheesy.

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

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One of my favorite stories about my late mother-in-law, AKA Nana, was the group family photo taken at a wedding. She had a huge copy made, which hung prominently in her living room. She loved that picture. But when my youngest sister-in-law was divorced, what was she going to do with a beloved and expensive family portrait featuring her former son-in-law?

Nana was a clever woman. Even in this pre-digital era, she found a way to erase him from the family. She removed the beloved photo from its frame and drew a curtain over her daughter’s ex. Then, she drew a matching curtain on the other side. I wish I had inherited that picture because it was masterful. From that point on, whenever new members joined my husband’s side of the family, the running joke was not to end up standing near the edge of the photo.

I wish I had adhered to that lesson, as I inherited my parents’ love for taking family photos to mark special occasions. We took so many of them and I still love reminiscing about who had joined the family, how cute my kids and then grandkids were, and how my nieces and nephews had found partners and started their own families. I never dreamed I would one day be confronted with Nana’s dilemma, but sadly it happened. Not too long after we gathered to celebrate my mother’s ninetieth birthday, my youngest daughter and her spouse divorced, and I was left with what to do about that family portrait, the last one that included Mom, who died less than two years later.

The offensive ex-son-in-law was very tall and stood in the back row. I had some rudimentary skills with photo editing and decided to remove his head. Wish I could have done that in real life. So, I did, but he was holding the baby who ended up weirdly floating in space. I tried rehanging the picture like Nana had done, but my editing resulted in an eerie family photo. Ultimately, I took it down with great sadness.

Ultimately, my daughter remarried and pictures that include her second husband and their blended family are great. But I struggle with what to do with almost ten years of photos pre-divorce. What about the album from her first marriage that includes many people I love who are no longer here? Baby pictures of her children with their biological father? I hold on to these things in case my grandchildren want these photos of their biological father someday. He has been totally out of their lives since the divorce. No child support or visits. But it’s better for them than being pulled back and forth between feuding parents. My daughter’s current husband officially adopted them, so they are blessed to have a real father in their lives.

On our 50th anniversary, the family photo that is the featured image was the only gift I wanted. I can put this one in a frame and have happy memories of that day when our family was once again whole. No need to cut anyone out of that picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What amazes and terrifies me about the role that timing (or is it luck?) has played in my life is how dismayingly often my future has been determined by chance events. So many times, the course of my life has been diverted by what happened – or didn’t – at some random moment.  Planning and effort often seem to take second place to fickle Fortune. Scientist and writer Stephen Jay Gould wrote an entire book on what he called “contingency,” meaning that the flow of events is so often and profoundly altered by seemingly small changes in direction or result, that if went back and did it all over an infinite number of times, you’d never get the same result twice.

One major example in my life was shared in Bookends. On that day, an epic lifelong friendship began that, had either of us been, literally, a minute earlier or later on our errands, would not have happened. But it didn’t stop at who I would share a dorm room with for a few years. That meeting has reverberated through our shared lives ever since, like ripples from a stone landing in a pond, spreading out, affecting things farther and farther away from the initial impact. Its influence has grown and spread and maybe become more subtle with time, but like energy, it has persisted.

Had I not encountered Alan that day, the events that lead up to my renewing my relationship with Maria, and all the damage that she wrought upon me, would not have occurred. Which means, quite possibly, that I’d have had the will and hope and energy to make my academic career a reality. Also, absent the dark years of serial bad relationships that were a direct result of my chaotic and wounded post-Maria emotional state, my first marriage would certainly never have happened, even if Wife-1 and I had happened to meet, which is also  highly unlikely. Which means I’d never have met Gina. I wouldn’t have moved to Chicago. I’d never have met Alan’s lovely wife, and made new friends both here and abroad. I wouldn’t be writing this story. Meeting Alan that day at the FDU Housing Office in late summer of 1975 has turned out to be maybe the single most consequential thing that ever happened to me, from which so many other events have derived.

Contingency. That meeting happened at a nexus in my life, a choke point, a crossroads that I didn’t know I had reached, a moment in time where, all unseen, various threads leading to my futures were crossing, interweaving, to be lengthened, spliced…or cut.

Of course, there was also the time the plane I was on avoided a mid-air collision by a few seconds. Or the unusual October thunderstorm that led Gina and I, who then barely knew each other, to quit lab work for the night and go see a dumb movie. Or the lab explosion that missed removing my right hand by about five seconds.

Life is basically a casino, and although the House always wins in the end, sometimes the players catch a lucky streak.