a poem by Susan Arcady Barich ©2009
I have wanted to tell you about him
all my life.
About his soft, moist lips,
the yellowish skin and tiny moles on his face,
and the way he narrowed his eyes
as he carefully touched
my sister’s head,
while we sat there,
side by side,
on the examination table.
I was only a baby,
maybe two or three.
They must have let me up there
to appease me.
I must have protested and
demanded,
till I was hoisted up
next to her
on the lime green
naugahide cushion of the
oak table.
I can smell the alcohol in which the
instruments were kept,
the instruments he used to
carefully unwrap the
long bandage
from ‘round her head.
I can hear the clank of the stainless steel lid
settling back onto the glass beaker.
He quieted himself.
I watched, intent on his face.
He poised his mouth,
we waited.
What would he say?
Would it please Mother?
Would she be sad?
Would she worry?
His gentle, calm competency
always brought me a feeling of
safety.
And so it should,
for more than a decade later
he gently reached into my own abdomen
and artfully,
ever so carefully,
lifted out my gangrenous appendix –
backwards.
I wonder in which heaven that gentle soul resides now?
This man,
this surgeon,
my mother’s best hope,
who, for a time, at least
gave back to her
two of her daughters.
