Taking Part

Decorating for holidays is one of those things that - like cooking my own food and taking cough medicine voluntarily - always makes me feel like I'm play-acting at being an adult.

And then I remind myself that being an adult, like being a midwife, is a whole lot of acting like something you don't quite feel is legitimate until some day you wake up and realize you don't remember ever being anything else.

Tomorrow is my last day at my clinical site.  I will miss everyone there, but especially my patients.  My mind reels when I think about all the women that I will care for in this lifetime and how even the dozens from the last few months will fade into the background of my memories so soon.  The human heart cannot hold them all.  At least, not with faces and names intact.

As I battle through finals and not feeling well and the penetrating cold that has dropped over New Haven, bringing snow and ice and slate gray days, I am reminded to be grateful for warm slippers, Skype calls with Richard, and cats that while they may have a personal vendetta against the Christmas tree, are still very effective foot warmers.  The end of the year always brings with it a bit of panic (for me, at least), as I grasp to hold on to what seems to be flying by, struggling to keep pace with time's inevitable march.  My school friends and I sit in the warm car in my school's icy parking lot before going inside for a truly punishing exam.  We take deep breaths and tell each other, "The time will pass anyway.  All we have to do is go in there, and be a part of it."

Cheers, to being a part of it.