Memories are such a mystery - is it the mind’s way of reminding us to pay attention to something? - are there feelings associated with them? - or are they just an undigested piece of fruit still working it’s way through our body?
It’s interesting and intriguing who shows up in our dreams and our random thoughts. Sometimes they are strangers but most of the time they are people from our lives past and present.
Early morning has become a sacred time for me – a time for quiet awakening, meditation, taking a musical journey, and definitely enjoying a cup of coffee.
During a recent morning musical journey, my childhood doctor, Dr Spier (aka Spear to us kids), appeared - why are you here I wondered? Why did you come forward? What do you/did you mean to me? I asked my brothers for their recollections, and they remembered him as a tall, big man, our family doctor, who always had an unlit cigar in his mouth that he seemed to be chewing on.
I do remember two specific moments that Dr. Spear helped me medically. The first was when I was about 9 years old – I was racing my friend Michael from the front of our houses to the back, and then back again. We lived in a two-story brick row house – ours was the middle of the row of six houses, so our walls adjoined the walls of the house on both sides, while his house was on the end of the row and had only one adjoining wall – the other side being a yard. So, Micheal and I could see each other when we started and could begin at the same time and then see who came out first on the other end. When we were racing from the back of the house to the front I tripped on the step and hit my forehead on the curb of the back door causing my forehead to be cut badly. My Dad was at work and my Mom didn’t drive and like most families we only had one car – so our next door neighbor called a cab and I held a towel on my head – the cab took us to Dr Spear’s office and he proceeded to treat the wound and stitched it up – I still have a bit of a scar as a reminder of that day. The second time was when I was sixteen and working a summer construction job with my best buddy – at the end of the day I swung one final time with my hammer at a nail and a piece of the nail head felt like it went into my eye. My buddy took me to Dr. Spear and he proceeded to flush out my eye – he never really saw anything come out, but I could feel the relief that let me know that it must have been washed out.
In those days doctors also made house calls – imagine a doctor actually coming to the house with his black bag in hand – I was not feeling well and after examining me he declared that I had the “grip” and told me to roll over as he was going to give me a shot in the butt. I found out many years later that the “grip” was another term for the flu.
I don’t recall if Dr Spear was also our parent’s doctor or how he came to be our family doctor – we just knew him as our doctor.
As I thought about the recent memory of him and wondered who he was, where he came from, how did he become our family doctor – it struck me that he was almost a mythical character - someone possibly from another world – not necessarily alien, but very different from the world I lived in.
But I still don’t know why he showed up in my memory all these years later. Maybe it was that cantaloupe that I had for dinner…..
Share this post