Post-Operative Sex

Survival rates for medical couples and partners where both people are in graduate school are not great. Add three little kids to the mix, and it's not surprising that many marriages go flat as Saturday morning pancakes. But after a week of bitter herbs and tears and just making it through another day, we are having Saturday morning pancakes and we are smiling. After a week of rearranging internal organs and trying to establish a new breathing rhythm amidst a freshly irregular schedule, we are together for the weekend and the Sabbath was peaceful and erotic. Let's just say, for a married couple comprised of one half-Jew and a half-East Asian Gentile, we were good Jews. God is one. We are one. And I'm so glad.

An hour later the pancakes are either being digested in our stomachs or going down the drain. I'm convulsing in tears. More scheduling bad news and it's delivered to my on my day off from medical school prison. I hate this. Of course hating it won't do any good. I own a book called Suffering is Optional, and I'm reminded that I can either resent my life, myself and my husband for being what we are, or I can take one day, as it is and allow it to be -- and maybe then what IS will be somehow beautiful and helpful and Good.