The Q Team Comes to Dinner

"Dr Q” and his team came for dinner at our home this past Friday night. “Q” is short for Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa which is a mouthful. Dr Q, the neurosurgeon who directs the Brain Tumor Surgery program at Johns Hopkins Bayview Center and the Pituitary Surgery Program at the hospital, is a charismatic personality. Even our neurotic border collie, Jake, was charmed by him. It was easy to see why he attracts people of all kinds. He touches people constantly, grips your arm, pats your back, and dispenses hugs without hesitation. Our 14 year old schipperke instantly threw herself at his feet knowing she would get the attention she craves.  He embodies the American dream, having risen from illegal immigrant to star medical practitioner in the most exacting of all medical sciences. Alfredo neither forgets his humble origins nor the fact that many people contributed to his success. He has a grueling work ethic but hasn’t lost his sense of humor. He laughs readily and often—mostly at his own expense. We laughed about the Mexican hairless dog his family adopted through a dog rescue service because his kids didn’t want him to forget his “peeps.” Unfortunately the dog couldn’t forget the climate for which he was bred and refused to go outside during our Baltimore winters. Rescue went out the window and the dog, so ugly he was almost cute, went back to Arizona.

Over the days leading up to the dinner, the invitation list kept growing.  I was struck by his team’s global character. Dr. Q apologized as he added two more guests the day before. I apologized in return. We could only seat sixteen at the same table, but I wondered if he could dig up another nation or two for our mini UN forum? We had Argentina, Mexico, China, Belgium and a roster of names so challenging I would never make it through the evening without a cheat sheet.  Emily, the event coordinator, sent the attendee CV’s and Rich, my partner, and I marveled at the array of talent. We decided that it would be prudent to speak little and listen a lot. Despite demanding operating schedules and lab experiments, everyone arrived on time and we enjoyed four hours together over a Shabbat meal.  We don’t go “out” on Friday nights, so we couldn’t accept the invitation to join their Friday night end of the week ritual when they gather for a meal at the lab. They share important findings and often invite a guest patient to their dinner to keep their work, as Dr. Q. and I discussed, “down to earth and honest.”

When your goal is curing brain cancer, it’s easy to get lost in the clouds. A patient living with ‘the monster’ can quickly bring you back to the ground. On the other hand, so can the memory of a loved one who died of the disease. We were deeply moved to hear how often personal experiences with brain trauma and disease had touched the lives of team members. I won’t pretend to remember or even fully understand all the work that these brilliant young researchers were doing. You can go on Dr Q’s website http://www.doctorqmd.com/ to read all about it. My big takeaway was this: in an era when so many of us have become addicted to the gratification of instant answers and quick results, these young people—equally divided between men and women— have deliberately committed themselves to a goal that is painstakingly slow and undeniably distant. Their work proceeds in miniscule increments that require remarkable discipline, commitment, and skill. “Don’t you ever get bored?” I asked. All heads swiveled to my end of the table. They looked at me as if I had asked, “Is it possible that the earth is flat?” It wasn’t a stupid question—just an inconceivable one. “No!” Pragathi replied,”one small thing leads to another. It opens up.” 

“Like Windows?” 

“Yes, like that.”

Beaming as he surveyed the table, like Vince Lombardi talking about a championship team bearing down on a trophy, Dr Q declared, “What one of them discovers today may lead to a cure 50 years from now.”  I would never want to take on the adversary they are all determined to vanquish, but I am so grateful “the Q team” is committed to waging the battle. They lose patients they come to love and admire almost every day, yet they suit up in rigor and vision to celebrate US, so that one day we won’t have to dread the fight.

The Circus Is Coming!

Going to the circus should be just plain fun. There are clowns and acrobats, a ringmaster, tigers and elephants, trapeze artists, and strongmen. My son, Sam, took us (Rich and me) to see Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus in Boston along with our 4 year old granddaughter, Lauren, and her friend and dad. We reached the Garden after parking 20 blocks away, because every access street was blocked off for the filming of what looked like a disaster movie. (If it wasn’t, it should have been!) This created its own hilarious pre-show spectacle as we rushed past fallen debris in the streets, staged traffic jams with crushed trucks, cars artfully jammed and crunched into each other, alongside the wide-eyed tourists who happened on the mess, clicking away on their cell-phones and cameras. We would have spent more time investigating if we didn’t have a date with the three rings.

We missed the opening promenade, but that didn’t dampen Lauren’s enthusiasm. Although she is already a circus going veteran, the ritual of act openings and closings don’t seem to matter, nor do exceptional feats yet fully register. The acrobat flying through the air, doing a somersault, and landing upright in perfect form on his massive vaulting stick wasn’t a remarkably trained athlete working with a disciplined team—for Lauren, he was a guy in bright colors bouncing around on a stick. Isn’t there a TV commercial like that? “Cool!” The woman balancing her male partner in beautifully choreographed, gravity-defying poses that required exceptional strength and trust wasn’t a slow motion, role-reversed ballet—they were two people acting like pretzel magnets.  “Neat!”  The elephants seemed to have special relationships with their trainers and moved with unexpected grace and precision. Lauren pointed gleefully at the dog rushing about. The tigers seemed far less happy to be there. And we were less happy watching them. Motorcyclists raced inside cages dodging one another with inches to spare bringing the first act to a heart pounding finale.

Elaborate costume changes helped to keep spirits high and to shift our attention from the ancient Egyptian segway riders (didn’t they use to ride in chariots?) to rough and ready cowboys with high stepping cowgirls in short skirts. In fact, that seemed to be the overriding concern of the circus—that the circus itself somehow wouldn’t be enough to hold the attention of its twenty-first century audience. So on top of the wonderfully colorful and joyous costumes, continuous stream of acts and non-stop narration and singing of the huge, black ring-master, they piled on sound—tons of it. A constant soundtrack blasted throughout the arena at decibels guaranteed to promote hearing loss. I finally wrapped my scarf around my head turban style to muffle the noise. I looked like a circus act myself but didn’t care. My ears were ringing. I couldn’t hear Lauren 12” away from me. To accompany the auditory assault, large LCD screens hung above and below the performance space broadcasting jarringly bright images. My eyes ached from the glare.  Meanwhile, in the darkened space, hundreds of flickering LED lights flashed constantly in the dark as tiny patrons clutched their souvenir batons, pendants, and swords and waved them about.  For us, the experience soon moved beyond exhilaration to exhaustion. We were saturated with stimulation. 

Happy in the realm of celebration, we’d been shoved into the land of overload. Joy turned to dismay.  We loved the circus for itself.  Why hadn’t the circus returned our affection?  Sure, not every act was great. But we weren’t that fickle. Besides, a constant stream of awe-inspiring performance might also be overwhelming.  Josephine liked the clowns while we found them barely silly. We thought clowns were funnier when we were kids—without all the fancy sound effects and elaborate storylines. The tightrope walkers were a bit wobbly. The audience didn’t love the skillful trampoline jumpers, but their zany costumes were a distraction.  If the music and the LCD screens were supposed to divert us from what didn’t work or enhance our entertainment experience, the tactic failed. 

Afterwards, we visited Sam’s office which has a great view of the harbor, a yoyo, and a water cooler.  Oddly the day after, Lauren remembered that and the long walk to and from the Garden, but almost nothing about the circus. I can’t help but think that the total sensory overload inside the Garden made it nearly impossible for her to sort through the things she had seen. It all converged into one massive stimulation barrage—the circus that flattened my granddaughter. 

We came to the circus like everyone else to celebrate fun and us. But I learned something else there.  Fun sells itself.  To celebrate US, create the right vista and trust people to appreciate the view for its own virtues.  Even PT Barnum would tell you the memories aren’t as good when you invite folks up for the view and then try to push us over the edge.

Let's Play - Baltimore's Ultimate Block Party

Our series of wet and rainy days that made Baltimore feel more like Seattle or London, and raised our water table 12 ½ inches above normal levels, continued. The sun remained stubbornly hidden behind dense, low-hanging, steel gray clouds. It was cold and miserable with occasional drizzle, definitely not the kind of day you send the kids outside to play in, but that’s exactly what 15,000  Baltimoreans did as they descended on Rash Field to participate in the Ultimate Block Party (UPB) on Sunday, October 2nd. The party was championed by Dr. Susan Magsamen, a Johns Hopkins-based educational entrepreneur, who believes that parents are our children’s first and often most influential teachers. She has dedicated her career to integrating the latest findings in brain science research and educational methodologies into award-winning, innovative, family friendly products that parents and kids like to play with and use. 

Play is essential to learning, the development of imagination, social competencies, and critical thinking skills. So when recent research demonstrated that the time children spend in play had plummeted by eight hours a week over the past two decades, Susan and her colleagues decided to do something about it. The first Ultimate Block Party (www.ultimateblockparty.com) was piloted with a number of institutional partners a year ago in New York’s Central Park. They expected 10 to 20,000 people to show up and participate. The final attendance figure exceeded 45,000. Apparently, families missed play in their lives and wanted to do something about it too.

The idea is simple. Throw a giant outdoor block party with dozens of sponsored activity booths and spaces where children and parents can play together.  Keep the atmosphere relaxed. Include “Play Doctors,” helpers dressed in white lab coats sporting red clown noses, to encourage, instruct, and pass out materials.  Post prominent messages about each activity’s educational value –we always learn as we play. But mostly, make play possible. There was so much play happening that I thought the sun would jump out from behind the clouds to declare “3-2-1, ready or not, here I come!”  

At the clay station, parents were as engrossed as their children in shaping, molding, and coiling.  Families proudly cradled and carried their finished red clay treasures all over Rash Field. We all love what we create. Children and adults made paper airplanes, built blue foam structures on a large artificial beach, played drums with silly abandon, decorated faces, read books, studied zebrafish under microscopes, played in child-sized kitchens, spun hoola hoops, and jumped rope. One grandfather jumped through 10 cycles of the jump rope, gamely smiling and laughing in order to encourage the shy trio of little girls who wanted to jump, but couldn’t quite muster  the courage to join in. They still were hesitant, but they beamed as they watched their grandfather’s crowd-pleasing moves. Everywhere you looked, children and their significant care-givers were laughing and talking to one another. As I strolled around, watching and listening, I realized that something was different about this public gathering. There was no food, so children weren’t jazzed on sugar or asking for snacks or treats, and everyone was truly paying attention to one another. It was rare to see an adult check a phone, text, or even make a phone call. People were simply enjoying being with one another. This is what play does after all.

Play lets us immerse ourselves in the experience we are having. It feels so good we can forget about everything else—even unseasonably cold weather. Families were also able to get new winter coats for their children at the “Operation Warm” booth, which put big smiles on many faces. But, the biggest reason everyone was smiling was play. Attendees got a huge happy dose of it out in the open air with no pressure to perform, only to discover and enjoy. The Ultimate Block Party was a giant celebration of US at a time when we all need reminders about the importance of play and the sheer joy of being US together.

Crossing Distance to Celebrate

Welcome to Celebrate US--stories about how we can celebrate the little and big moments in our lives to create memories that last. Last week, Jews all over the world celebrated our New Year holiday. No, it’s not my purpose here to explain the meaning of the holiday, why we celebrate it in the fall, or why this is the year 5772 in Jewish tradition. If you’d like answers to those questions, please check out the wonderful and easy to use site: www.myjewishlearning.com.  What I will note, is that like many families these days, ours wasn’t together this holiday. It isn’t like “the olden days” as my kids used to say. It isn’t even like half a generation ago when you might expect at least half of the family to live within driving distance of one another.  I am divorced from my children’s father, and my four children, two married with children of their own, live in four cities on two different continents. My siblings and I, unusual even for our generation, all live in Baltimore. In the fourth generation, only one of my father’s ten grandchildren has chosen to live here.  We arrive at every holiday, religious or secular, joyful to be with those present, but also sad that so many of us are inevitably absent.

So I called all four of my children on the afternoon before the holiday began to wish them a good and sweet year. Then I emailed another message with an attachment, a list of ten questions put together by a talented educator to inspire meaningful conversations for their holiday celebrations. At lunch the next day, I shared the list and one of the questions with the family group my father and step-mother were hosting for lunch after services. “If someone were to write a book  about you this year—what do you think would be its message?”  We went around the table and asked each person to add one thing they wished for in the coming year. It was spontaneous, easy, and meaningful. “Health, peace, fun, life, inspiration, family, more time, more peace” and so it went.  Then my six year old grand nephew and I took turns blowing the two ram’s horns (called a shofar) I had brought. This was a source of great amusement for everyone and amazement that we could get any sound whatsoever out of these ancient instruments.

I spoke to my Boston son later that afternoon to learn how his four year old daughter’s synagogue visit had gone.

“Didn’t you get my text last night?” he asked.

“No I didn’t see it.”

“It’s going to be your all time favorite text.”

One of the things about having family all over the place is that we collect texts and emails, digital pictures, and voicemail messages. These are the moments we share and celebrate, some of the most precious memories we now make together.

“Lauren said that ‘Rosh Hashanah is her favorite.’”

“Favorite what?”

“Just her current favorite experience.” Why? She got to eat apples with honey, drink a thimble of wine (she has loved wine has ever since she was an infant which alarms all of us just the teensiest bit), spend special time with “work daddy” (daddy dressed in his work clothes—he is usually gone before she wakes up in the morning), and both parents snuggled in bed with her and read her a bedtime story. What’s not to like for the average four year old—except for the cabernet?

The point was that the day stood out for her. It was special. Not like every other day.  A few things marked it and made it different.  Her parents made for her a memory. At our table in Baltimore, we participated together in naming the things we wanted for our new year. We broke bread with a blessing and blew the horn that gets our attention with its sharp, piercing notes. Halfway across the world, my son Alex with his wife, Natalie and their one  year old son, Roy, gathered with 40 other Jews and their families in Dar Es Salaam to worship and have a meal together—an experience far from home that none of them will ever forget. We also made for ourselves for a memory.  Although we were apart, and the absence of family was keenly felt, in Baltimore, Dar Es Salaam and in Boston, the holiday and its multiple rituals helped us all to connect to a shared tradition, and to find ways to celebrate US.