Choices

As we grow from adolescence into adulthood, we make choices about our identity. We look at our parents and realize--often to our initial shock and dismay--that we become more like them every day. At first the similarities seem only coincidence; then with a creeping horror we realize that our inherited traits are like a tide. They "wait for no man," and will claim the shores of our identity like the ceaseless beating of waves.

Then, as we pay attention to our behaviors and the thoughts that engender them, we discover that from the briny foam of our parents' traits something new emerges: choice. We learn to see distinctly our inherited values and, if we see clearly enough, that we can embrace ones and let others go.

Lehigh Valley Hospital, on its Muhlenburg campus, has a relatively new Wound Care Center. My dad was one of the physicians who invested a great deal of time in the Wound Care Center from its beginnings. So last spring they commissioned a painting in his memory that now hangs in a gallery hall on the second floor of the hospital.

I missed the unveiling ceremony for this painting, so last weekend I took an opportunity to visit the hospital and find the painting. I went to the Wound Care Center, thinking the painting hung there. When I introduced myself, the staff told me of their great appreciation of my father's work. In fact, there is a picture of my dad hanging in the Center in honor of his dedication to it. But the painting wasn't there, so Ginger, the senior administrator of the Center, walked us down to where it hung.

On the way I asked about my dad's service to the Wound Care Center. She told me my dad stood out among physicians who worked there because he would go above and beyond staff and patient expectations. Patients came to the Center because they had wounds that would not heal normally; Ginger told me that my dad would not stop searching for the key to healing a wound until he found it. She said he would come in on his days off--apparently something significant for a physician--if he had struck an idea about how to address a problem wound. He was driven to help people heal.

The staff also remembered how my dad would bring in flowers from his garden to adorn the Center--a personal touch to a potentially impersonal environment.

As I look back on the traits of my father that have begun to surface in me, I think I'll choose to keep these two: dedication to healing others and an interest in persons rather than "the job." Those are worthy pearls in my sea of genes.

The painting that now hangs outside of the Diagnostic Medicine offices on the second floor is gorgeous. The staff all thought that it reflected dad's character, and I agree. I hope someday soon to get a photo of it and enter it here. For now you'll just have to imagine a painting that evokes light and dark, music and silence, depth and perspective.

~emrys