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Our lives are consumed, consumed by two young women. If Susan or I are not at work, we are with the girls. I suppose we could publish this booklet filled with pictures of two four year olds, now five. Even such mundane tasks as sleeping and eating are often accompanied by two wiggling children scrunched up against us. We have introduced them to our jobs and offices. We take them to church, to the mountains, bicycling, swimming, sight-seeing, sledding, snowshoeing. They want to learn to write, to sign their names, to paint, to sew, to build, to mow the lawn, to clean the house, to fold laundry. Their appetite for learning is nearly insatiable. They are a sponge with respect to anything we say, making us de facto teachers. Of course the exception is when they do not want to do something, then no amount of repetition will implant that thought in their brain.
Reading stories to the girls most nights, I usually have to ask them to go to bed as they can listen forever. I started buying the yellow book (National Geographic for those of you with too small a library to have 50 issues) three years ago. Now, suddenly they are interested and I have to read it all the time. Sometimes explaining why archeologists like to dig up dead bodies can be a little difficult. Then again the bible is not a lot easier. Using the Dorling Kindersley children’s bible we came across a painting of Jesus’s circumcision.
“Daddy, did they cut your penis off?”
“They don’t cut it off, they just take a little skin”, I reply. Being a doctor, I could reply about how phimosis is a complication of uncircumcised males but decide to avoid that new word for fear of more questions.
“Did they do that to you daddy?”
“Yes.” I reply.
“Did it hurt?”
I’m not sure how to end this conversation. “I don’t remember, but when I’ve seen it done, it seems to hurt, so I suppose I did hurt.” Routing the subject elsewhere, I tell them how I clipped their tethered tongues when they were very young and that hurt for a little while but now they can stick their tongues out without any problems.
They tell me, “Our tongues hurt now.”
It seems the power of suggestion goes a long way. Even I must admit looking at the painting of the circumcision, I experience just a twinge of pain as I recall an experience from residency. I received a stat page for a bleeding newborn. It seems the resident took just a hair much with the circumcision taking a nip from the tip. That really can bleed a lot.
I often wonder how I could have 28 years of schooling to become a specialist in surgery and have almost no training in parenting. Why am I allowed to even attempt this job? On the other hand perhaps I overdid the professional schooling.
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