The Balance

It is strange, being in the routine I’ve had for years after some time away. The trees are starting to explode into color, a marked shift from the steaming heat the last time I was seeing patients. My tiny car is parked outside, and I watch it from my office window, its color starting to match the emerging fall palette behind it. It’s the same car I’ve had for 8 years, one of the few things that hasn’t changed. 

I run to the restroom and look in the mirror. My hair is crazy, flyaways sticking out like antennae, but as my daughter points out: that has always been the norm. I am otherwise fairly put-together. Truthfully though, I am frayed, crackling, live wires molded into some semblance of a doctor.

I have my bag of neurological tools and arsenal of one-liners. There is a balance that needs to be reached, spanning the distance between medical guide and unmoored boat. Am I smiling too unnaturally? I wear a mask, but can they see how my face is stretched out against its will like a balloon slowly becoming inflated? I hope it doesn’t pop, the walls will be smeared with my worry-laden thoughts and to-do lists. Luckily it holds, and we laugh and chat while I better understand the disease at the heart of their clinic visit.

My husband is continuing treatment. My daughter wants banana muffins but we ran out of eggs. I have patients until the end of the day and I am a marionette whose strings are spiderwebs. The bananas on the kitchen counter are teetering on the edge, just like me. But perhaps, just like me, they’ll hold on.

Maybe tonight, dessert will be different than what we had planned, just like this day, and just like this life. The sweetness may come from somewhere else, an unexpected source, but so warm and needed. And we will sit together, downing spoonful after spoonful, and wondering how long we can make it last.