"They can not be here forever"

My eye surgeon works hard, as 

a 2nd year Fellow at the Univ-

ersity hospital, an élite desig-

nation for the most promising

residents, who will not remain. 

I met him in an emergency last 

Sunday, 3 visits ago, and wrote

about it then and again, not ex-

pecting to do so today. I asked

him yesterday, if he could take

a weekend off this week, and he

said, no. It is, he said, the

birthday of his daughter, and he

has not been able to go shopping

for her, and will miss most of

her day.

To me, of course, this is ter-

rible. In a way of changing the

subject, I told him I had just 

been reading about an automobile

for him, out in the waiting room

as my pupils were turbocharging.

Yes, I said, it is made by VW

but it is called a Bugatti Vey-

ron (by pure sentiment, as in Ab-
ercrombie and Tummy), and it 
is very fast. He has no free 
time, he needs a way to extract 
what others derive, more quickly

and with greater concentration.

He said, Ah, I used to love Los

Angeles; I could drive 90 miles

per hour, everywhere. Everybody

does, he said; and the only real

problem is when you miss an exit.

I told him I could well imagine

this, and that I'd grown up in a

town so small in Los Angeles, it

didn't have an exit of its own.

Were you at UCLA, I asked. No,

at SC; and I said, oh, my,

I was so close, in San Marino.

Oh, so you are a Californian,

then, and I know I smiled when

I said, yes. I always do; and

he was smiling, too, remember-

ing South Pasadena.

Then he said, you know, my daugh-

ter was born in Huntington Hos-

pital. (This is an establishment

akin to everything named Hunting-

ton in that small world, every-

thing of the name being in San

Marino, but for the grande dame,

the neighborhood hotel, in Pas-

adena). That's where I was born,

I lighted up, as if subscribing

to membership in an obscure and

tiny team; but such things are

important to children, when they

learn about them. He said, yes,

my daughter was born there on

07/07/07, and he was sparklingly

pleased about that, too.

And what is her name? Nahla, he

said, spelling it out for me,

and I could envision a bright

and pretty little feminine ver-

sion of himself, a little Syrian

girl of infinite dark eyes. She

must be very proud of you, and

understand why you are away from

home a lot. She knows I am an eye

doctor, he said, allowing that

she was happy about that.

Then he said, his mother and his

father were there, but that they

would be leaving for Syria on Mon-

day. I said, oh no, it is very 

dangerous, as if this small detail

might have eluded a busy fellow.

Yes, he said, he knows he might

not see them again. But they can

not be here forever, it is home.

Happy birthday, precious Nahla.

ii  Photography Beth Nelson

     2011