I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be an adult.
For the last month or so my throat has been sore as though every day was the day before I got a really bad cold. Yesterday, the 8th of May 2008, really was, and today; my eyes ran, I couldn’t sleep for sneezing and I blew my red nose into an already wet handkerchief all day. In short, I felt the extraodinary wretchenesses that make up a common cold. I called my doctor to make an appointment and took the day off work. Quite bored, I surfed the internet and read a book until the appointed hour when, dazed but upright, I left the house, hailed a taxi and gave directions to medica sur, the local hospital. Five minutes later, I was in the lobby.
Feeling rather sullen and leprous, I allowed a lift full of people to go by so as not to infect them, then ascended the eight floors with a garullous and now, quite probably, seriously ill, family of three. In Dr Carlos’ waiting room, a televisión was playing a film with Russell Crowe as a ship’s captain. It cheered me up no end that his voice had been dubbed into Spanish by a chipmunk . The only other patient, a young woman, stared at her phone until it rang and was still talking animatedly ten minutes later when I was called in to see Carlos.
Once in the surgery, I wondered how many times I had been there. I accompany Vita if she goes, which is quite often, so that I can translate her pains and worries into Spanish, and I’d been there on my own account twice. Mexico City’s pollution seems to erode your immune system. I recognised the books, the stainless steel ornament with 4 hinges so you can make it into a box or other shapes. I recognised the view; endless suburbs disapearing into a horizon of smog to the East, Tlalpan forest and the volcanoes Xitle and Ajusco to the South. The pollution being especially thick today, it was not posible to see the other volcanoes which lie some 20km to the East.
I sat in my usual chair and looked at the place where Vita normally sits. Dr Carlos sat in his chair and also looked at the place where Vita normally sits. At times like these, the absence of a quiet person is as pronounced as the arrival of a loud one.
I said that Vita was in Australia and explained the cáncer in her mother’s liver. Then we moved on to discuss my long lived sore throat and other symptoms. He looked in my ears and mouth, and listened to my chest, before recommending three drugs. I explained tomorow’s roster of lunches and parties, and made clear how inconveniently timed is this ailment. He offered me an intramuscular injection that would, he said, hurt, but cure me in time for tomorow. I had to go downstairs to the pharmacy and buy this injectible drug, and so, as I crossed to the lift, infected an elderly couple on the way down and bought the ampoule, I had time to think about needles.
I remembered my eight year old self hiding under a table in Doctor Skinner’s surgery to avoid being vaccinated for the flu. Could that injection have been so painful? I do recall injections being painful, and furthermore, when I was a child, my arm would be stiff and sore for days afterwards. Back then I had a terror of doctors on account account of all this.
Returning to the surgery, I sat on Carlos’ examination bench and half took my shirt off. On his advice, I relaxed my shoulder and looked away. As a child, I could never muster the strength to look away. This time, I literally felt nothing, and needed to see the drop of blood to be sure I had been injected. How can it be that a pain I had so feared as a child is now too subtle for my sense to perceive? Is this adulthood?
I like Chillis. Food I now call tasty would have sent me, in 1978, screaming from the room. Likerwise emotions, fears, passions and ideas. I have become insensate. Talking matter of factly with Carlos about the cáncer that has afflicted Vita’s mother, I felt some sympathy and pathos, but not the overwhelming grief that I would have felt when a child.
What I am wondering is this: can one choose, for convenience, which parts of themselves go through this aging and desensitisation process? I am, of course, glad that needles are now painless, but is it good to feel so little about matters of the heart? Through meditation and carefulness, I am will try to awaken these hidden and forgotten softnesses, and we will see if this is possible or not.
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