Many years have passed since the night I delivered my first baby and, in retrospect, it is clear that practicing obstetrics was the path the Creator intended me to take. But I confess that after a thousand deliveries, the blaze of emotions that once accompanied each one has subsided to a softer glow, flaring up again only at those times when danger, or joy, bring the world more sharply into focus.
So it was with a recent difficult birth. The mother and her family were well known to me. Two years earlier I had delivered my patient’s second daughter. Her first daughter, then an irrepressible nine-year-old, had gleefully cut the cord. But with this labor, the third daughter, there were complications. The baby’s heart rate kept falling.
It was obvious to my patient that I was worried. Every five minutes I came into the room, obsessing over the baby’s heart rate like an anxious stockbroker watching the ticker tape. I maintained a professional demeanor with my patient, trying to give her as much reassurance as I could. Her anxiety level was rising and, for a moment, I felt bad. When confronted with worrisome clinical circumstances, doctors tend to pull back emotionally. It helps us think clearly and, hopefully, make the right decisions.
It’s a mistake to think that any physician knows exactly what he or she is doing at all times, and, at this moment, I was no exception. I was uncertain about what was wrong. But finally a routine procedure improved the baby’s heart rate, averting emergency surgery. The baby was born. My patient’s first daughter, now eleven, delightedly cut her second cord. Her little sister’s cry filled the room. My tension dissipated. I was a third year medical student discovering my destiny once again, and my soul hummed with the joy that swelled the room.
When I arrived home that evening, my stomach was also humming—with hunger. I looked forward to a nourishing meal and sharing the stories of my day.
My wife, Ann, is my soul mate. Well, she’s either my soul mate or just a very good listener. It doesn’t matter. Ann is a loving person, a supportive friend, a great mother to our children and, most importantly, an attentive audience. So even though she’s heard me talk about clinical cases hundreds of times, I knew she’d listen to me with polite fascination.
And, she would feed me.
But this night I was wrong. When I walked in the door my first clue was that supper was nowhere to be seen. My second was that Ann expressed no interest in the heroics of my day. Instead, she wanted to tell me all about her day.
It was an outrage.
Incredibly, Ann and the boys were actually ignoring me. They were engrossed in a large glass jar on the kitchen counter which contained, upon inspection, caterpillars. I groaned under my breath—the evening’s conversation was going to revolve around Ann’s butterfly garden, again. She shot me a dark look. My groan had apparently been less discreet than I intended. I gave myself a mental kick. Now I’d have to work even harder to feign interest.
Last year, after months of research—otherwise known as shopping from gardening catalogs—Ann created a butterfly garden in our backyard. She told me all about it but the details escape me—something about attracting lots of bugs to our yard.
In its execution, the project fell short of Ann’s expectations. Deer and rabbits showed their enthusiasm by chowing down on her plants. In the end, Ann counted a grand total of five butterflies the entire summer. She was depressed. So was I. All the plants she’d ordered had been a waste of money, and now I had to console her about it, to boot.
Then, one morning, Ann returned from a visit to her garden practically skipping. Two monarch caterpillars were eating her milkweed plants. Several times a day, Ann took our two sons out to watch the bugs. After a few days, according to their frequent and detailed bulletins, the caterpillars had eaten all the milkweed.
So, I came home this particular evening in a good mood after a delivery to find that Ann and the boys had spent two hours gathering food for the caterpillars. The air went out of my balloon. Ann enthusiastically badgered me into pressing my ear against the jar so I could hear the caterpillars munching on the milkweed leaf dinners she and the boys had so thoughtfully and painstakingly prepared.
I took the subtle approach:
“They sound really hungry. I know how they must feel.”
“Boy, it must be nice to eat your fill.”
“You’ve done a really nice job fixing dinner—for the caterpillars.”
I tried to be a good sport. I’d heard that Monarch butterflies are endangered. Freezes in Mexico and genetically-engineered corn with poison pollen are said to be wiping them out. These are the facts you pick up when your wife has a butterfly garden. I proudly recited my extensive knowledge about Monarchs in an effort to show Ann that, in fact, I was listening to her all those months. But she informed me, to my surprise, that Monarchs may not be so endangered after all, just underestimated by butterfly experts.
That was the final straw! A couple of bugs not even on the endangered species list were keeping me from my dinner. But Ann was so enchanted, she didn’t notice how annoyed I was. I adopted the guise of supportive husband and took the family out to the local pizza parlor. The caterpillars came along for the ride. My mouth was watering by the time the cheese breadsticks arrived. Joseph, our five-year-old, launched into a rambling grace, thanking God for the caterpillars who had come to our yard … who were going to grow into orange butterflies … and fly away into the sky ….
As I half-listened to his thankful litany, my mind wandered back to the delivery. I gave silent thanks for my patient’s healthy baby. I remembered her ultrasound: the tiny fetus, much smaller than a caterpillar, now a beautiful baby girl living and breathing in the world. Metamorphosis is the way of life. We grow, we become, and ultimately our souls soar skyward, like the Monarch.
I stared at Ann and the boys, their eyes closed as Joseph was reaching his grand finale. Tyler frowned with impatience. I laughed to myself. Sometimes the beauty of life is so intense, it overwhelms us with its light. At these moments, the path before you is clearly illuminated, and faith becomes effortless.
Before taking my first bite of dinner, it occurred to me that these are the moments, and nothing more, for which we truly hunger.
-Dr. Mike Litrel
