To Parent is to Time Travel

We spend our lives as objects in motion - accelerating endlessly, acquiring things and experiences and therefore mass, increasing our speed day after day, year after year, hurtling towards 'next,' whatever that may be. And at a certain point in our lives the awareness of that reality hits us - holy shit. 

Stop. 

No. 

Slow down. 

But we know from the most fundamental teaching of physics that an object in motion will stay in motion. And so we hurtle. Each stage of life a new momentary distraction from the unstoppable force that is our journey through time. Something to take our mind off of the terrifying reality of aging and the relativity with which we perceive the time left in our own lives. College. Grad School. Jobs. Marriage. Another job. New house. New Friends. Vacation. 'can't believe it's already 2017!'
..... '18!
…'19!
..'20!
.2021! 
…

… But then … 

You. 

Theo.

If time is truly relative, perceived uniquely by each of us depending on the speed at which we are moving and the mass of the objects in our personal atmosphere then you, Theo, are the most massive object to ever come into my life. You didn't just draw me off course, you derailed entirely my linear experience of time. Reality expanded infinitely in every direction. After 30 years I could only see my own life going in an increasingly narrow set of possible directions, but you? Yours could go anywhere. Every time I stared down at you asleep on my chest I marveled at the explosion of possibilities that was your life. And I saw myself reflected through you in each and every iteration, and then infinitely in the possible generations to come. 

Do we not live forever through our children? 

And yet. For the first time in my 30 years here the central reference point from which I perceived the passage of time shifted. Each day was compared not to my previous 30 years - 1 out of 11,245 - but to yours - 1 out of 1. 1 of 2. 1 of 3. The relativity was staggering. Time collapsed into the singularity that was you. It seemed at first that we would spend eternity changing meconium diapers, feeding you every two to three hours, stressing about you eating enough every two to three hours, or laying in your forest gym repeatedly winding up and listening to 'You are My Sunshine.'

But time is cunning. And we found ourselves wishing for the days to come. A month later, an eternity in baby days, you were one month old… then suddenly, seemingly twice as fast, two.
… three
..six
.ten
One year

And somewhere in that journey time reclaimed me. And now I look up and you’re talking. And walking. And I want so badly to close my eyes and see you as a 5 month old, constantly worried that you won't roll on time. But my time consciousness struggles to work in reverse and now my view of you walking clumsily towards the kitchen spirals into images of you walking away from me to kindergarten, driving away to a friend's house, moving away to college. And here I am once more. Right where I started - holy shit. 

Stop. 

No. 

Slow down. 

But time does not. So I must. 

Stop. 

Breathe. Notice. Enjoy. 

It’s all we can really do.

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WhitehousePJ

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To Return Home

They say a prophet is never accepted in their home town. 

But what of us who are not prophetic? What of those common men who simply find themselves returning? Those bringing no great message, just the weight of experiences from a decade of their life spent elsewhere? 

This concern has been tickling at the back of my mind for months now, building from an occasional chime to a clarion call. It demands to be reckoned with. And so I write to process and contemplate, to flush out and clarify. 

First, a declaration: I like myself. I feel confident in the person that I am - that I have become. 

Some clarification: that has not always been the case. 

Insecurities and inequities have plagued at my sense of self for most of my life - be they creative, physical, gendered, political, or spiritual. That is a through-line that needs far more time than I have here to unpack, so I will leave it as a clarification, albeit a vital one to understand my current state of dissonance. 

At the heart of this dissonance is the relationship between place and self. How much of me is me, and how much is merely a reflection of the place I reside? I know for certain that I have been a different version of myself, be it subtle or more glaring, in every place I've ever called home: Owensboro, Lexington, Louisville, Chapel Hill. Place by place I settled into an identity, combining my own intractable qualities with those more pliable facets molding into some reflection of the people and places I found myself around. I've also found that in each home I've felt a little more comfortable in my skin than the previous. 

Unfortunately this revelation, like most knowledge worth having, does not bring peace - only more questions. 

How much of the me that I've grown to love is just my love for a place or culture that has worked its way in to my definition of self? Which, if any, of the qualities I so value in who I am today are immutable? Do the parts of me that are environmental and cultural reflections travel, or are some of them geo-specific? Can they be transplanted into new soil or will they find themselves lacking nutrients and slowly fade? 

How will my current self react to a place that already has a version of me? A previous home where I've already lived and defined (or often - let others define) myself? Does the current self simply step into past me's life, boldly asserting itself? This is me now, that was me then. Or will they be forced through a reconciliation process - compromising and trading pieces of self to settle on some new version? Would I even be aware of this process as it happened? 

Can the new me slide comfortably back in to old relationships that were built on the shared identities of another life? Will my less-admired pieces of past identities re-emerge after exposure to those I built them around and for? 

What happens when my beliefs and identities that are ubiquitous in my home today find themselves starkly in the minority tomorrow? Can I create a home for this part of me within the 4 walls of my own nuclear home, or will the prevailing thoughts and beliefs of whatever future environment I’m in find their way in, eroding and shifting, adding and re-building? Is that a bad thing? 

How much of this geocultural-impact is macro, impacted by the sum of the community, and how much is micro, based in individual relationships? Can I carry this new sense of self against both macro an micro effect?

Or . . . am I just overthinking (as I tend to do)? 

Is my personal growth over 31 years really just the natural progression of time? The gradual increases in myelination stabilizing and optimizing my neural networks to create a more confident and stable sense of self? A homeostasis of identity?

And to what extent is there even value in attempting to wrestle and contort with these contradictions and multiple selves - to attempt to synchronize past and present in a single self? Can we apply Fitzgerald's claim of a first-rate intelligence, holding multiple opposing thoughts simultaneously, to identities? History fittingly contradicts itself in its answers. Legion contained many and was immortalized in scripture as a demon; yet Whitman confidently asserts self-acceptance in the face of contradiction -  I am large, I contain multitudes.  

With all of these questions stirring I return to my initial thought to find it reshaping, having no value to my state of mind in its original form. Though prophet or plebeian, maybe it doesn't matter if you are or aren't accepted in your home town. Maybe this externally assuming axiom should be turned inward and rephrased as inquiry:

Can one, after finding themselves elsewhere, accept themselves in their hometown? 

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WhitehousePJ

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One Song for My Old Kentucky Home

The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home.

There are few words that can stir my heart like the lyrics of My Old Kentucky Home. They always have. Whether it be watching the Call to Post at the Kentucky Derby, or swaying with my fellow students after a University of Kentucky win (or the rare loss) at home. The song is an integral part of what it means to BE a Kentuckian. Like Kentucky, the song has a checkered past that we’re still working on fixing – recognizing, revising, and re-writing the flaws of our past and inserting the hopes for our future. But like Kentucky, we see these flaws and we love it still the same. Instead of a nostalgic look at the past it can represent a chance to be better in the future. In short, the song is rife with meaning for every Kentuckian, and there is no day the song means more than today.

Today is the 145th running of the Kentucky Derby. A day like no other in the state of Kentucky – a state so often marked by what it does not have – for this one day a year we celebrate the things that only we have – a horse racing tradition unlike any other and damn good bourbon.

The race is celebrated from the coal mines of Eastern Kentucky to the Horse farms of Central Ky, across to my ancestral home – the midwestern corn fields of Western Kentucky. But nowhere is it celebrated quite like Louisville Kentucky… I spent 4 years basking in the radiance of Derby week in Louisville. There was nothing like it. The air crackled with electricity – the streets were filled with music, food, and liquor every night – and work slowed to the point of near stopping as we all collectively held our breaths in preparation for the best day of the year.

But for two years now I’ve celebrated away from that electricity. The air is simply humid here – there is no static in it. I expect the air to infiltrate my bones and revive my soul as it did in Louisville, but no such spark occurs. The grocery store does not drastically increase their mint sales, and handles of bourbon are not prominently displayed in every ABC store. The sun does not shine especially bright, the birds do not make music all the day. Because today is just another day. The world turns, life goes on.

It makes me think about identity. About who we are at our core. The series of events and experiences that shaped all of us and our desires to continually seek out those experiences that most make us feel safe and comfortable. It is why we surround ourselves with people like us. With people that remind us of home. Shared experience is the root of all human companionship. This is not inherently right or wrong. It simply is.

So today, I share this as a way to remind you of the duality of human experience and the necessity for both comfort/nostalgia as well as discomfort/new challenges.

Life, like My Old Kentucky Home, does not have to be defined by only what was, what we’ve lost, and what once defined us – it is also about what can be.

Today I sing one song for my old Kentucky home, For my Old Kentucky Home far away.

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27 thoughts

This is my second birthday in a row during which I will watch the clock tick midnight and turn to the 7th. It's not my second time ever to see this. For one, I'm a night owl. For two, everyone turns 21 at some point. Most notably, though, this is my second birthday in a row spent on a call shift, and I am in a completely different place this year than last. Last year was honestly probably one of my all-time lows during intern year. I was covering the burn unit among dozens of other patients. It was my first inpatient rotation. I was on a stretch of night shifts. And I had no idea what I was doing – and I mean no idea what I was doing even outside of work. Parker and I had finally started to see the dust settle from our move to North Carolina. Birthdays are a big deal to me, and we were realizing that we had very few connections and friends in this area with whom to celebrate. Not trying to be dramatic – obviously we made it through just fine. It's just so interesting to reflect on just how far we've come since then. The other night we went to dinner with several friends for my birthday again. As we were leaving I felt all warm and happy inside. It was a large group of people that I can be certain are supporting us and genuinely care about our well-being, just like I do about them. All these feelings felt like a good reason to record this moment right now so here are a few thoughts on my 27th birthday in addition to the word vomit from above, most of which I am speaking from recent experience. (I tried to come up with 27. Turns out my brain is too tired. Haha)

1. You can always handle what's put in front of you. It may seem impossible at some point, but it's really not.
2. If you can't do as above, there will always be someone there to support you. Even if they can't really pull you through the difficult time, they'll at least be a listening ear.
3. Speaking of difficult situations – moving far away from all your friends and family is hard. Period. Don't feel weird or inadequate because it's hard. You can be super social and outgoing and it still be hard as hell to make new friends and lay new roots.
4. It's ok to keep making new friends, and it is possible to maintain the same closeness with all your old ones.
5. It's also ok to let some people drift away. It happens. Everyone is busy. Likely, if they're truly your friend you could rekindle the connection if you really wanted to.
6. Trying new things is scary but worthwhile.
7. It's ok if you're scared of trying something new (to you) that seems lame and ordinary to others. Don't let that make you feel inadequate.
8. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Sometimes socializing is much more energizing than sleep. Of course you should adjust this knowing your own intro/extroversion.
9. Spending lots of money on traveling is worth it. Don't let yourself go in debt or become unable to pay your bills because of it...but if you splurge a little you won't regret it.
10. Don't be ashamed of what you do in your free time if it's making you happy. Just because it isn't what's cool or all over Instagram doesn't mean it won't make you happy. The only person who knows what exactly it is that makes you happy is you.
11. Don't stand when you can sit. Don't sit when you can lay down. Eat when you can. Sleep when you can. (And don't touch the pancreas).

This is all I can muster. I’m (hopefully) laying down for a few hours for the night. Goodnight, world.

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Hey, it's been awhile!

"I recently read the book When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalinithi. If you haven't already heard of it (or seen my many Instagram story posts), the premise of this book is a neurosurgery resident accounting on his life and experiences after he realizes that he has been diagnosed with metastatic (terminal) lung cancer. I am by no means a crier. I think I've cried in maybe one or two movies and a book or two. This book was tough. Having just finished MICU with many tragic cancer patients and the emotional and physical wear of working so much, all the topics really hit home for me. "

I sit here giggling a little reading the above paragraph. I started that post on May 20, 2018. It's July 30th. I clearly haven't blogged in forever. While that makes me a bit sad as it means I'm not quite keeping up with my life record like I'd hoped, it's pretty satisfying to look back and realize that it also means I've been so busy living life I haven't had a few moments to mull over my thoughts on the computer. That being said, consider this the first catch up post of many to come (since I'm on vacation this week).

I think it's still a legitimate time to reflect on at least 2 big lessons that were learned during the…we'll say experience that is intern year. This is probably especially relevant as I have made several new friends who are now interns trying to navigate their ways through this craziness.

1. You can do anything for 8 weeks.

Ok, I didn't really do any one thing for 8 weeks. But still. I was told this phrase by the course director of our third year surgery rotation. I had 8 weeks of surgery with 28 hour call every fourth day as a med student. At this point, I am so grateful for that experience for many reasons. For one, I already knew how it felt to be horrifically tired on your post call day (the day after you are "on call"). I was already primed for how grumpy, intentionally or not, people can get when they, too, have been awake for 28 hours. This was useful because I knew that it made a difference if I the resident being paged by nursing at 3 am was less grumpy on the phone. It also gave me a thick enough skin for when people were mean, and it was always a pleasant surprise when people were nice (yes even surgery people are very nice here).  The point here being; this too shall pass. Everyone survives intern year (the hours, the scary learning curve, the finding the bathroom on your first day).

2. Friends are everything.

I think I previously wrote about how hard it had been moving out here. For the most part, I'm too busy to notice. But I think in the down time, or the time when I realize that social interaction can be more energizing than actually getting the sleep I missed, I realized a few months ago that it didn't feel like we'd made very many friends here. Almost as soon as I said that, I actually started spending time with people outside of the hospital (I know, right, I can't believe we all were actually out at the same time – it's like Grey's Anatomy or something).  And now, at the start of second year I'm feeling more and more that we've really established a life here and are surrounded by so many high-quality people. My point here is that loneliness is real. Moving somewhere far away is hard (even if you're as extroverted as Parker and I are). At the end of the day, though, if you keep being open-minded, friendly, and intentional the right people will settle into your life. The next thing you know you'll start having weekly family dinners, fake weekly book clubs (aka girls' night), and weekend taco traditions.

More to come…

(But seriously, I have a lot to catch up on haha)

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"The Steak" Valentine's Day 2018

There is a lot of value in tradition. This is doubly true when you find yourself in a new surroundings. Annie has been working a lot lately with very few days off (except the 3 days we spent hospital/couch bound thanks to her appendix) and honestly it's been really hard on both of us emotionally. It's so much harder than expected being in a spot with no long-term friends, while social media allows us to watch all of our friends from past lives go on without us there. Everyone is new, and though we've surrounded ourselves with some great people since moving here, it just hasn't been easy yet, if that makes sense.

In short, we've both been feeling  a bit homesick of late, so having traditions in our relationship that transcend geography has been critical. Traditions anchor us to what really matters. To each other. We have several of these throughout the year, but none has been as consistent as our Valentine's day tradition.

While parts of it have changed over the years - letters, records, apartment, etc., what has not changed is the meal. This year marks our 10th (yikes) Valentine's day together, 6 of which have involved good music, good wine, and a recipe we have dubbed THE steak. I'd like to share the story of that first experience, as well as a modified recipe for those of you who are interested in giving it a try.

It all started our senior year of college, we had been dating for 4 years, we were comfortable in our relationship, and didn't feel like we had to do any grand gestures or gifts as we had in past days. We'd made no plans until around 5pm and realized we wouldn't be able to get into a restaurant, so we'd have to opt for a plan B. I did some quick googling and stumbled on the recipe that we've based our last 6 V-day celebrations on - THE steak.

That first year was experimental - we had cooked, but were FAR from experienced. It may have been my first homemade sauce I ever made, it was the first time I'd ever oven baked a steak, and even Annie making mashed potatoes from scratch seemed daunting (we laugh every year now at how simple most of the recipe actually is…).

We picked up our supplies (what's thyme?, where do you buy port?, you mean the garlic isn't powder?) and got to work, with Pandora radio (is that still a thing?) playing in the background. After a good deal of fumbling, slicing, and prepping, it was all coming together.

 

The steak was in the oven, the sauce was beginning to meld, and I recall a very specific moment then that hit me pretty hard. I believe John Green would refer to it as feeling 'infinite', Maslow may have referred to it as a peak experience of self-actualization, Thomas Moore may've thought of it as a second revelation. Norah Jones' come away with me was playing, the smell of garlic-thyme port wine sauce wafted into my nostrils, and Annie leaned on the counter next to me drinking a glass of wine with a look of absolute content on her face. It was an almost out of body experience. I found myself imagining our future together, realizing that this could be the rest of my life if I chose it.

I saw years down the road standing in a nicer apartment than where we stood, or our own home, cooking a similar meal, with the same smells, and the same girl by my side. I came to teary eyed and couldn't help but smile like a little kid for the rest of the night. I think part of my excitement ever year is the hope of re-creating that feeling.

Last night we completed our 6th attempt at THE steak. Things have changed, but the core of the tradition remains the same: Norah Jones plays, but now on vinyl. The steak is a nicer cut, typically bought from a butcher or Whole Foods. The recipe has been modified, but the flavors are all still there, now enhanced.

I think that last night reminded us that it doesn't really matter where we live. It doesn't matter who we're surrounded with. Those are all secondary pleasures to the core of our life together. Because while the location, the friends, and our schedules drastically change, our love remains the same. 10 years in, 6 rounds of steak. Much like our love, it's gotten better every year. Here's to 50+ more years of tradition.

 Recipe - THE Steak

We base our recipe off of this post

Here's how I've come to tweak it.

- We use ribeye rather than filet. We've tried both, but preferred a high quality, well-marbled ribeye over filet. The fat and the blue cheese and the panko all work SO well together.

- We typically buy 1 large steak and split it rather than eating ourselves into a coma. Annie also always makes a dessert (dark chocolate mousse this year - yum)

- I like to reverse sear the steak rather than the sear/bake technique they use. Bake for 40 minutes or so  at 275 (check steak with a meat thermometer - should be about 115 degrees for medium rare) then cast iron skillet sear it for 30 seconds on each side, then proceed to broiling blue cheese/panko on top

- you can cut the blue cheese/panko in half - it always makes too much

-  find a good mashed potato recipe for the base - we like this one from Pioneer Woman, but it takes a bit of work and advance prep

Let us know if you try it out!

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WhitehousePJ

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Lent 2018: Joy and/In Sacrifice

Today is the first day of the Catholic season of Lent - the 40 days leading up to Easter - which are typically filled with different types of self-sacrifice. As a child, I was always confused why Lent was such a big deal in the Catholic Church. It seemed to me that the truly celebratory days were Easter - Christ's resurrection from the dead, and Christmas - the birth of Christ. These were joyous days, victorious days. If we really believed Christ has come, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, then it seemed to me that that mantra was pretty perfectly summed up between the joyful holidays of Christmas and Easter.

On the other hand - Lent, and really all of Holy Week leading up to Easter, was hard. It's a lot of church. A lot of sacrifice. And a lot of dark, sullen music. I couldn't see how being asked to make sacrifices - to fast, to give up meat on Fridays - could be the pinnacle of anything, much less the holiest days of the year.

But as I've aged I've come to realize why we see Lent as such a Holy Time. That realization really came not through study of Catholic teaching, but through observation of other religions. If you look specifically at the original three Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Islam, and Catholicism, there is a critical common thread that they share when it comes to observing the Holiest time of the year: Sacrifice. Muslims celebrate the holy month, Ramadan, by fasting entirely from dawn until dusk to celebrate the revelation of the Qu'ran. Jews celebrate Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, with a 25 hour fast. Catholics celebrate Lent, the period leading up to Easter, with fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, plus additional sacrifices of our own choosing. Sacrifice, not celebration, is what we choose to commemorate our holiest of days. That is not to be looked over lightly.

I think this tells us a lot about faith, life, and happiness in general. When it all comes down to it - life (and religion) -  are not about the pinnacle experiences, the mountain, the highlights and the celebrations. Religion and life are defined by sacrifice and self-discipline - the struggle, the valley, the conflict points of growth.

 

This is hard for us. We live in a culture of self-service and immediate gratification. We have at our fingertips every piece of information and any good or service we could ever want almost instantaneously. There are a plethora of benefits to this. But with it also comes a lack of struggle that previous generations grew accustomed to. As a society we expect immediate satisfaction and joy, and we base our happiness on how it makes us feel in the immediate moment.

But that immediate satisfaction doesn't last. It's fleeting. It doesn't bring us the lasting joy that we truly seek. That's because life isn't about self-gratification. Life, when you really boil it down, is about sacrifice and discipline - it is only in training ourselves to put off immediate gratification to work towards a higher purpose that we can achieve a lasting joy and satisfaction.

This has many names - intrinsic motivation, grit, self-discipline. Call it whatever you want - but they are all sacrificing immediate satisfaction for a greater goal or purpose. And according to the famous Stanford Marshmallow test, not only does that lead to higher reported happiness later in life, it also leads to healthier, more successful lives.

As a way to further prove this conjecture - I challenge you to think about the pinnacle experiences of your life. The moments you were happiest, or ecstatic, or celebratory - and ask yourself where the joy truly came from… I'd be willing to bet that most of these experiences are actually the culmination of a difficult experience of sacrifice rather than a single joyous event. The highlights of my career come through letters from students, thank-you notes form parents, and lightbulb instances for students who were struggling. But those peak moments of joy in my career weren't really a celebration of a single instance - they were a joyful celebration of months or years of hard work and sacrifice on my and the student's part.

But these moments of joy at the end of sacrifice can often be misleading. Because sacrifice isn't always about the end of the road. It's about finding joy in the experience of sacrifice itself. Teaching has its moment of absolute and total frustration - low moments where you feel totally burnt out and don't feel like you can sacrifice anything more. Any teacher who tells you otherwise is lying to you, or not trying hard enough. But what faith does for us is it allows us to take joy in those moments as well as the highs.

Going to weekly mass is not a highlight of the week for me, many weeks it only brings frustration or annoyance at giving up valuable time from my weekend. But I've come to take joy in the spiritual grit necessary to make it to church every week, even if I don't take anything away from it that day.

Waking up at 4:45 3-4 days a week to work out is awful most days. And though the end result of 2 years on this path has led to great results, the real joy that I find comes in the repetition. The discipline necessary to keep getting up and working hard. The goal is good - but the journey can itself be a source of joy. It is difficult to see that in a culture of self-serving immediate gratification. 

So my challenge for you all this Lent, and for myself, is to embrace the sacrifice. Embrace the grind. Find joy in struggle. It may be the only common thread connecting human existence. I think that's why it's such an integral part of the religious experience, and why we celebrate our holiest time of the year, not with celebrations and festivals, but with sacrifice.

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