It all started when our Great Aunt Mary had heart surgery. We were away on vacation when my MIL’s sister had her heart valve replaced by a pig valve at a hospital on Long Island. Her son was an orthopedic surgeon at the same hospital because MD is a gene that runs in our family. What could go wrong? Mary was in her early 80s, and this procedure was supposed to prevent minor complications in the future, but instead a blood clot traveled up to her brain and she had a major stroke.
Ada would drive into New York to visit her older sister almost every day. Mary was pretty spectacular as older sisters go – a talented musician, she taught me the Yiddish lullaby I sang every night to my babies and the Rocker is singing to his babies. It’s a magical tune about raisins and goats and to this day can make the L’il Pumpkin close his eyes and enter a dream state! When we returned from our trip, we visited Great Aunt Mary and noticed a flock of small bluebirds had appeared at her bedside.
It was the start of a collection. Ada had been delivering tiny, glass and porcelain bluebirds to Mary as a reminder that all will be well and her happiness would return, just like the migrating bluebirds.
So it was inevitable that when the Bride decided to pivot, and leave hospital-based Emergency Medicine, with its brutal schedule, administrative horsehockey, and clinical intensity, she would call her new venture, “Bluebird, MD.” I saw the change happening during the pandemic; the showers before hugging her children, the slowing down, the constant battle in a red state to enforce health guidelines for Covid. She wanted something better, for herself and her family. She and her husband were on the front lines of a war at that time, in the ER and the ICU. And You. Know. Who. was our Commander in Chief.
Many people migrate at midlife. We moved from watching herons fly over the Shrewsbury River on the Jersey Shore, to watching Pileated Woodpeckers demolish trees in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Midlife is a time to reflect and consider alternatives – a sort of existential right of passage. To quote an existential therapist: “… you have a responsibility to show up to your life. You can’t avoid it, in all its pain and beauty, by living in the past—personal histories and buried traumas matter, and they might inform the present, but it won’t do to dwell on them.”
And for some of us, we wake up and wonder if we’re really where we want to be – are we happy?
When Bob retired from his ER practice, I knew my happy place was near our grandchildren, and so we moved again. Flying further south, to Nashville. I wanted to be present for all the skinned knees – for the roses and the thorns. Just this past weekend, I sat on a bleacher in a huge gym in Franklin, TN with the Bride as we cheered on the Bug’s volleyball team. Did I almost get hit in the head with a ball? Yes. Was I happy? You betcha!
I’m proud of my daughter for cutting ties with the hospital and opening her own practice this year. Bluebird, MD is a mobile Urgent Care practice. You can actually call and speak with a person… a doctor! You can schedule a same day appointment or have a remote visit. It’s not concierge medicine, there’s no fee to join, it’s a direct care practice. They don’t take insurance, there are “… no barriers or delays of the traditional insurance-based system.” She’s come full circle; her Grandfather also made house calls. https://www.bluebird-md.com/
Yesterday I delivered one of Ada’s glass bluebirds to my older sister Kay. She’s working on a watercolor of peonies, and when she held the small bird in her hand exclaimed, “Oh, I can paint him!” This bluebird pic was captured at Radnor Lake.
https://www.instagram.com/bluebirdmdnashville?igsh=MnI2Z2Zkb254N3Ns
MountainMornings 