New Year, New Name

A new name is attached to "Jemila" and I'm announcing on my blog to coincide with the Jewish New Year. A time of fresh beginnings, re-dedication and renewal of love and devotion: everything embodied in my wedding ceremony, which unfolded with my best friend Jenn officiating, David's mom & partner Rich as witnesses and our kids the ring-bearers, flower children and living testimonies to the love we share. Our wedding ceremony took place four years after we first married each other in a small one-bedroom apartment with (planned) impromptu vows spoken between kisses on a rose-strewn bed where we first made love. Finally, we decided it was time to let some witnesses, and even Uncle Sam in on our promises to each other.

An explanation of the name change:

David would have happily carried the feminist flag by taking my last name, had it been my maiden name. My maiden name makes me cringe, remembering how it was always mispronounced at figure skating competitions, and how it sounded odd and unappealing to me even when pronounced correctly. These memories explain partially why, when I divorced, I kept former spouse's name, namely Monroe. It was a fine, normal name. Fine and normal were(and at certain junctures remain) appealing qualities. Yet somehow, David wasn't thrilled with the idea of inheriting the last name of my ex husband.

So our solution was to be introduced as Mr. Jemila Kwon and Ms. David Kwon. We belong to each other as we daily give ourselves for one another. In fact, it is more beautiful and true to say that we belong acutely with each other.

We are one because we create a new synthesis when we bring our whole, complete selves to the community of our marriage. And for the record, I am not Mrs. David Kwon, although I will possibly wear that hat once a year for Halloween, or other festive function featuring ridiculous costumes.

Here's a Christina Rosetti Poem David and I read together at our wedding:

What is the beginning? Love.
What is the course. Love still.
What is the goal. Te goal is love.
On a happy hill.
Is there nothing then but love?
Search we the sky or earth
There is nothing out of Love
Hath perpetual worth:
All things flag and flee;
There is nothing left but Love
Worthy you and me.

If you would like to see pictures of our wedding, they are posted at djfamily.shutterfly.com
The password is djfamily
Enjoy!

The Great Physician's Rule

Physician's rule: first, do no harm.
The Great Physician's rule: Love everyone.
Religion's rule?

Hmmmm....

If God is Love, love seeks the wellbeing of another, never disregarding the interests of another for one's own gain. Ones own agenda. Or even one's own religion. Love is the positive phrasing of medicine's rule, First Do No Harm.

If we follow the Great Physician we will seek wellbeing, love, healing and life abundant for everyone on earth. The wellbeing of another person will be more important than his or her religion, sexual orientation, worldview or personal decisions and beliefs.

We are healer's in in the world, healer's in Christ's name. And the first rule of healing is do no harm. In another words, love everyone.

Med School Wife, day 24

The weeks are going by, and by miracle or survival, I am adjusting...getting used to things, my new role, the constant rearranging of time; the ebb of changing schedules and the unpredictable cycles of play and work, waking, sleeping, alone and together, family and independent me and the kids. I am getting better at this.

Something I discovered is that it is not a very big shift from being miserable and content, between angry angst and simple ecstasy. They are always there, each present in every single God blessed or damned moment (we get to decide,) maybe one at the front door, ringing the door bell, one at the back entrance standing next to the hose fixture, waiting like a friend.

So why do I look for someone else to make me happy? I never realized I could do it for myself, for one. Also, I always thought someone else should make me happy, like it was there job. And if I think someone's not doing their job, then I darn well am not going to let them off the hook by doing their job for them. If someone else is supposed to clean up, I have always chosen to live in a messy house covered in rotten food and shit stains on the toilet, rather than simply clean up. Does this make sense?

And so this is exactly why I have insisted on remaining an old version of myself.

Is it someone else's job to make another happy? It's not all or nothing. In an ideal world, you love someone, you do things that make them happy, or at least that will eventually lead to their happiness. But that doesn't account for the vast majority of actual life, in which people are suffering so much they cannot make themselves happy, much less do it for you. So I've decided to go ahead and do it myself and I like my decision, which is really tons of tiny decisions I make during moments of my life. Of course sometimes I still opt for self-pity and feel upset, but I try to be compassionate with myself and become more aware of the choice and what it entails.

The best part has to do with sex: Since I've stopped looking for David to make me happy and decided to do it on my own, we been doing it alot together, if you know what I mean, which of course you do. Yes, despite being more tired than ever, we're getting hornier. Sleepy horny, i is the phrase we've ascribed to the state of things libido. The pressure's off him, so he's free to love without feeling like I'm sucking it out of him, and my happy life becomes all the full and lovely because of someone absolutely amazing who loves me and wants to have this adventure along with me.

Funny, I feel similar to when we were first falling in love and I worked really hard to be independent -- sharing things with my guy, but only after I'd dealt with it a little myself first. Intimacy, rather than dependence, or something. Of course now we know each other better, love each other more truthfully because of the better knowing. It seems our lives and bodies are entwined more profoundly -- with two more cute babies as evidence. I sometimes fold his scrubs so they don't get wrinkly, even though I am not naturally domestic; he sometimes surprises me with flowers and declarations of love, even though he is not naturally expressive of his love, which normally he takes to be assumed.

So learning to arrive at being fine, or on my way to fine without turning outward first for deliverance is uncannily helpful. Possibly the ultimate secret to happy relationships. Cause I've noticed this: When I take care of myself apart from my love life, my intimate relationships becomes fresher, freer, more fun and lifegiving, because it's not having the life sucked out of it with the weight of baggage better sorted through before the trip. Whoever knew giving up on being rescued could be so romantic?

A lovely dinner

Adventures come with a price, and and the also come with dividends, assumed and unexpected. Living day by day is an assumed blessing of adventure. Spontaneous celebrations come to flick on switches of unanticipated joy.

Life with a medical student entails erratic schedules and getting on a roller coaster that can be a joy ride or a hell ride, largely dependent upon your own creativity, resourcefulness and ability to embrace uncertainty as a positive ingredient in an adventuresome life.

I spent last week making myself miserable, and decided to move on from that, because likely I've only got one life to live. Unless reincarnation happens to be true, and while there's that possibility, I'm not counting on it. Besides, why suck up to misery? So I decided to stop moping and start opening up to the possibilities latent in an adventure I might have foregone in favor of normalcy (whatever that is) if I hadn't been lucky enough to fall in love with my husband.

And fate/God threw me a delightful surprise: Tonight David got off unexpectedly early and we took the whole family out to celebrate at Norma's Meditaranean Restaraunt. Miraculous, from oldest to youngest, everyone savored the company of family, as well as the Sifa pizza, drizzling out feta, onions and little squares of tomato from pitas sandwiched together like lovers. Gabe didn't fuss as he stuffed his face with couscos and cucumbers, occasionally smearing smushy remnants of food on his sister's infant head. Avriana didn't wail. Nika followed directions. David and I conversed. Not one person left without a belly sated, content and practically overflowing with warmth, laughter and good food.

We've been going to Norma's for just about three years now, and our favorite waiter has seen me go through two pregnancies. Today he told his girlfriend that we're his favorite family to wait on, and then told us. He also said his girlfriend said she couldn't stop staring at us because, "they are such a cute family." Alot of people look at my family and probably idealize us; they see us as young, cute, happy, nice and successful. There's a danger in that -- a danger that we could start trying to live up to a fantasy; that we could forsake the gritty true-love of family for a graven image of an idyllic family. But there's a gift in seeing through the eyes of pleasant strangers too: a recognition by others of the beauty we offer to one another and the world simply by being together and loving each other. And tonight we really had a lovely time, shining a light flowing from the blessings we have in one another.

Of course each and every kid fell into fussy wails when we returned home. On the other hand, we turned the tears into giggles before lights out and it's only 8:09. What else could a girl want?

Maybe just a little more sleep. A few more minutes of quiet. But I'll miss the raucous when it's a memory. I already know I will.

Your Doctor May Be Laughing AT You

Now what could be worse than getting laughed at by someone who's seen you with your pants down? Okay, it would be worse to be caught amidst a genocide, live trapped inside an abusive marriage sanctioned by a sexist culture or get the chicken pocks right before giving birth. Nevertheless, probably you'd be pretty upset if you knew the professionalism of your doctor went out the door after you, leaving your quirks and vulnerabilities the possible subject of crass and callous humor -- the coping mechanisms of choice among many physicians.

I remember lying on the OR table getting a C-section, while the doctors tossed jokes back and forth about their favorite TV show. That was disturbing. But apparently, it gets worse when you leave. Or if you're asleep. According to my med student husband, it's the culture: comraderie and coping at the expense of patient dignity. So how can doctors cope with a conscience? If "coping" jokes have to be at the expense of someone, or something, why not focus on the exploitive pharmaceutical companies or the cheesy paint-by-numbers artwork occupying the office walls? Or make fun of your own illegible charting notes, or your over-gelled hair or the semen stain on your white coat. And if you must have a catharsis at a patient's expense, go home and do it with your partner. If you don't have a partner, vent to your dog. If you don't have a dog, tell your goldfish, and if you don't have a goldfish, get one. Or get a shrink. But do not humiliate a patient by discussing them derogatorily amongst office staff whom they will see again in the future. And don't make poking fun at patients a sport. For God's sake.

Med School Wife Day 3

My babysitter has a saying, applied broadly to any situation she simply can't stand: "This isn't working for me." Variations include, "That doesn't work for me," "This just doesn't work for me," And "That isn't gonna work for me."

Which would describe how I feel today about my husband's medical education, which takes him randomly away from me, our family and any sense of a normal life rhythm, and makes him go to random locations to do and watch random stuff that's supposed to help him be a good doctor someday. Screw it. I am a creative person, and I can think of lots of saner ways to make qualified physicians than to haze them.

David thought the time away would be compensated for by his happiness overflowing upon return to the homefront; but the last few days he's been drained as pasta noodles before the sauce. This sucks. An unqualified sucks. With the qualification that I am being forced to develop competencies I would not otherwise find myself discovering in the dim light of hopeful necessity.

Med School Wife

I thought it was significant that two days before my husband began his first rotation -- obgyn, by the way -- I was hit on by Neil Diamond. A middle-aged, slide-show creating, window-washing not-Neil Diamond, Neil Diamond, who by his own admission can't really sing. "I have other talents," he says to me from his table, kitty-corner from me at Panera Bread. Neil Diamond is not the first middle-aged man to make advances toward men this week, and I am not accustomed to being flirted with so obviously by me, and in particular the graying ex-hippy crowd. I could be insulted -- after all, do I really suddenly look that much older after kid number three? But I choose to be more optimistic and assume that it's God's little grace: a reminder that I've still "got it" whatever "it" is, right at a time I'm prone to be insecure. As in, right before my husband is about to start vocationally sticking his hands up other people's vaginas, and interacting with pretty, starry-eyed nurses on a daily basis.

Yesterday was the first real vagina to be examined medically by my husband. It belonged to a live model, or standardized patient, who taught the incoming 3rd year medical students -- on herself.

"It was just like doing it on the mannequin" David said when he came home. David is sweet, kind and professional. I believe him. But damn, it still weirds me out. I felt so relieved when he reminded me that he wore gloves, meaning that he did not actually touch her.

Today David mostly watched ultrasounds. "Seeing those little babies was so bajoo" he said.

My day consisted largely of watching slightly older babies, who, though certainly Bajoo, fabulous, are hardly the silent little miracles that dance on ultrasounds screens. Gabriel hugs Avriana with robust affection, and then yanks at her hair tufts with a gigantic grin. Avriana grimaces in pain. She is quiet around her rambunctious siblings, but when we are alone with the changing pad, or sharing some minutes in bed before the day officially begins, she coos and speaks with the intention and enthusiasm of a woman who has discovered that both God and alien life forms inhabit other worlds covered in green.