Bend Light

6/100 Strangers Project

Today, my three, my son, my wife and me, were sit­ting in a preop hold­ing room in Port­land at the uni­ver­sity hos­pi­tal. We walked in to the Mult­nomah pavil­lion– the word evokes pres­ence and his­tory at the same time – prob­a­bly built in the 30’s. Finials and foli­ates gar­nished solid beige and green brick walls and beyond them and hang­ing in the clear­est blue sky was Mount Hood, the most deca­dent header for the city itself. We were look­ing down on the city and the moun­tains beyond. It was beau­ti­ful, truly. Even the inkling of fear that wound round our ankles as we waited for our son to be taken back for elec­tive surgery did not keep us from notic­ing. Even­tu­ally, and as always so far in his short life, he did great and was an inspi­ra­tion to us about trust and about imme­di­ately and with­out guile, let­ting us know his needs are as best he can, even though we don’t yet speak the same language.

The beauty of the pavil­ion has stayed with me. I have been in oper­at­ing the­aters and old sur­gi­cal haunts. When I was a res­i­dent in Cincin­nati, we had our weekly grand rounds – the lec­ture that includes and every­one and has a very long and won­der­ful his­tory in med­i­cine – in a refit­ted sur­gi­cal amphithe­ater. You have prob­a­bly seen one in a pic­ture some­where. They are tiled white, built in the round and very steep to allow the stu­dents to look over white tubu­lar rails at oper­a­tions they hoped to do some day. The patient would be brought in to a the­ater lit­er­ally and the seats were full. The ether flowed and the stu­dents watched her­nias repaired, can­cers excised, femurs set.

Old things take me to an idea of things solid and safe and good. If they spent this much time on this build­ing, the surgery must be good. This is not true, but it is, I think, what we want to think, and some­times, it actu­ally is true. When I saw Adam’s car, the car in this photo, it’s fins split­ting Green­wood Ave. in Bend, I had to have it – on film. Not only the car though – the whole crew. We were fol­low­ing from behind and saw the girl and dog, who we now know are Ariah, the girl and Myah, the boxer. I asked Rose to wave him over at a stop light and we ended up in a park­ing lot tak­ing sev­eral pho­tos, the last of which you see here. This car means a lot to Adam as it has passed through many peo­ple to him and most recently many peo­ple he has known. His words:

“It is a 1960 Chevy Belair. I bought it about a year ago from a friend of mine, who bought it from another friend of ours and he got it from yet another friend of ours. so I am the 4^th owner of it in a group of friends. I has the uphol­stery done in it. some motor work low­ered it and did a few cos­metic things such as pin­strip­ing, paint, and fender skirts. There is lots more on the list to do for the car. The car is a daily dri­ver and will always be one, no trailer queen here!”

Loved tak­ing his pic­ture, look­ing over the car and watch­ing lit­tle Ariah watch­ing me take her dad’s pic­ture. The antique Has­sel­blad felt really right for this shot and even though my expo­sures were off, I am very happy with the series after they have been developed.

Old places, old build­ing, new sons and daugh­ters. Even though they come out per­fect in one sense, the sons and daugh­ers, they aren’t. We never are. My kiddo had a lit­tle mechan­i­cal issue that is prob­a­bly fixed for good. Our human expe­ri­ence in these amaz­ing bod­ies involves check ups, bang ups, breaks and fixes. It is about break­ing and heal­ing and repeating.