Mirrored by Kathryn Merrifield

The yoga teacher today at Bikram distracts me.  The characature of him, that is:  Martin Short impersonating a gay, Latin man, with Duran Duran hair sans Aquanet and with rosey cheeks. 

But, here’s the deal.  I laid my mat on that Flotex floor, grasped my hands together under my chin to start the first round of two sets of breathing.  Three quarters of the interior walls are covered floor to ceiling with mirrors and I opted for the front row where anyone whose attended a few classes can, um, perch (I later executed a Bird of Paradise that the last person in the room, said, “Wow.”  His name was Julio.  I told him that my anatomy and practice allows for that, and that is a function of focus more than anything, which is why I life the sweaty mess of this yoga).

I digress…  Well, there’s something new.

(sigh)

So, I’m thinking about the mirror in front of me.  How I have to look myself in the eye for every posture of the entire class.  My mind is scattered so I try to skip over the second set of breathing into a side bend, hands together to form an arrow, index fingers pointed and arms precisely straight.  My eyes are red.  Mostly, because I’ve been sad and discouraged of late, despite the goodness of one door closing and others swinging open as if by magic.

On that particular day, I didn’t want this particular yoga instructor.  I wanted to hear what Jean had to say.  I wanted to get what I needed.  Assurance in her words that come with a fresh class every day despite what could be monotony after something like ten years of ownership.  The same class but different every day.  Do you know how difficult that is?

Very.

So, that’s what I wanted.  But, I got Latin Martin Short.

But, by the time we arrived well into the floor series, the second half of the class, our instructor began talking about Kung Foo Panda and the postures of the class - the way he says it, it sounds like “posters” and it took me a while to understand what he was saying…  Now I consider that my problem, not his.

He talked about how the evil tiger finally snatched away the sacred scroll.  When he finally got it, he unrolled the scroll to find no words – just a mirrored, empty but for the reflection of his face, scroll.

The message was that the power of the dragon warrior is to be found inside. 

It’s where transformation begins.  I stayed another thirty minutes after class in that room with its near silence, using the heat to ply my body to do what my mind needed to do, if anything, to know I tried, and that I could do something.  Right now, any self care – yoga, running, swimming… - is the easiest thing I do all day, even when it feels like the most difficult, it shows me that I can show up and do something.

Shaking Out the Common Core by Kathryn Merrifield

When asked to write an blog post on the topic of The Common Core for weareteachers.com, I realized that I did not know enough about it to form an intelligent opinion .  So, I went to work, backstopping where I first heard of the controversies surrounding the Common Core - not all curriculum-centered, but encompassing the roots of educational programming and the information issues that filter from our government, into our schools, businesses, and what used to be, our private lives.

The seed was first planted in September when I attended the kindergarten principal’s coffee.  Dr. Peter Mustich, the Rye Neck School District Superintendent, spoke briefly about the iBloom system that the state was mandating through federal incentives.  While federal educational incentivizing mandates are against the law, state funding as reward, is not.  With corporate-backing, districts are being asked to provide student academic and behavioral data and possibly released or sold to third parties for research or marketing. 

That lead me to a bit of an information tirade of my own – asking that our PTSA provide more information on data collection, which lead to more research about the Common Core.  Oddly, the only way that I can seem to convey this information is in a timeline of my experience with it.  Perhaps, in hopes, that you’ll understand better that I am a parent who knew nothing, but was prompted into advocacy because now I do know something, thanks to a handful of incredibly knowledgeable parents who are also obsessed with reforming reform.  Parents, who, as you will see from their comments below, are educators and are wholly informed on this topic that takes the our trust from teachers and puts it in the hands of state legislators.

In a nutshell, legislators and corporations are leading this academic reform movement to capitalize on a misperception:  the misperception that ALL American schools are failing, that we’re falling behind internationally and the only way to enforce teaching standards is to test kids to the point of exhaustion. Accountability is placed in the hands of the teachers, though the tests come from a private publishing company capitalizing on the government’s misperception.  But, where did this start?

Thankfully, in my research, I came across a book recommended by a former teacher:  REIGN OF ERROR:  THE HOAX OF THE PRIVATIZATION MOVEMENT AND THE DANGER TO AMERICA’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS by Diane Ravitch.  I’m still slogging through the book because it is packed with information that needs to be digested in pieces so that my emotional reaction to those pieces does not block continued absorption.  There’s a lot there and it’s shocking. 

There are a few episodes of the TWILIGHT ZONE that would clarify this shock.

One of the points that the book made was that the impetus for educational reform came from the 1983 publication of a report called A Nation at Risk.  “It’s basic claim,” reports Diane Ravitch, “was that the American standard of living was threatened by the loss of major manufacturing industries – such as automobiles, machine tools, and steel mills – to other nations, which the commission attributed to the mediocre quality of our public education system; this claim shifted the blame from shortsighted corporate leadership to the public schools.”

While I’d like to distance myself from this comment to say that it doesn’t break my heart to hear that highly paid corporate leaders are placing greed first, driven by the need to capture more profits without consideration to quality or national loyalty, and placing blame on badly paid, badly treated but passionate and caring individuals assigned to care for and guide our children for more hours in the day than most parents, working or not working, can attend to them in a meaningful, instructional and creative way.  I am ashamed at these individuals – the corporate entities leading reform - because they replace substance with ego and a broad and profitable agenda.

Really, the only thing that can push forward a program that has no grounds in educational research or pragmatic thought is money.  The aforementioned book and my research goes on to explain that the impetus of this Common Core and data collection, is leading toward the privatization of schools.  The privatization of schools means that children will not be granted  “a free and appropriate education.”  The twist – because there always is one – is that these private charter schools, won’t have to subscribe to the standards required by public schools.  They will have no Common Core.  Conspiracy theories aside, it sounds like a hoax meant to make public schools fail so that privatization is the only clear path for a solid American education.

And, guess what.  Someone profits.

While these realizations have been hitting me in waves, I have to say that this year my family did not travel to see extended family outside of the state.  We were home for Thanksgiving.  After the holiday passed, I realized that the kindergarten Thanksgiving feast did not happen.  I was told by a parent and friend that it was cancelled the year prior when the kindergarten aides were let go.  And, one of my children’s teachers said that they built a curriculum around the feast and that the Common Core no longer allowed time for it.

During this conversation, I managed a simple smile and nod to a kindergarten teacher who I’ve known now for years – a teacher who always offered a warm, sincere smile in return for the haggard-grin of a parent juggling three young children.  What I see now, is a look of defeat trying to cheer itself out…  in a kindergarten teacher.  One that is solid and steady and loved.  I am not the only one who finds it terribly wrong to treat our teachers this way, in our free country that allows for creative expression and individual success but takes away… creative expression and individual success.

I’m not the only one who finds it wrong because I did the research and I showed up and I signed my letters, and now I’m left with this little crusade among the informed who want to inform you.

Teachers are required to give tests in a sequence.  Tests, like the kindergarten gym test  created with age-inappropriate questions children cannot answer simply because a publishing company that creates the tests, needs a baseline to gauge a child’s progress. 

To teachers, it’s a waste of time.  All of the time testing to satisfy Pearson Publishing’s focus group responses required to build curriculum, takes away from meaningful classroom instruction.  Teachers and students are being forced to change direction entirely and quickly, without allocated transition time.

Legislators have linked failing schools to circumstances that fail children.  The circumstances are not teachers.  Failing schools exist in troubled communities, and though our successful school mothers are now being called spoiled brats by legislators for wanting to opt out of this curriculum and incentivized academic performance, and instead funnel it into the needier schools, while keeping a curriculum that already works, our school district and others suffer because some need more help and this is the only way legislators without teaching backgrounds, could not create anything else.

In terms of data collection:  data collected through iBloom ranges from student behavior to academic achievement and is stored to be used without parental controls.  What is important to remember here is that these students are minors, but this does not resonate yet as a legal matter.  It should.

Pearson Education is failing.  Legislators are failing.  Who's making anyone of them accountable for the harm that data collection can cause to a child who slipped up once or twice?

And, why is a curriculum mandated to schools that already exceed national standards?  Not that it would work anywhere else, mind you.  But, I think I already covered that.

Since I am not a teacher, but know many educators who are also parents, I collected opinions from them too.  We’re all not know-it-all helicopter parents orchestrating the minutia of our children’s lives, but concerned parents and educatorss who understand what works and what doesn’t.

As of yet, our legislators are not listening.

It seems like a mixed message to me – one being that kids should not be given choice.  That teachers should instruct with myopic tunnel vision, teaching age-inappropriate content to children who should take what’s given to them.  I make the connection between a generational argument – a criticism of modern parenting.  I’ve been told that young children should not be given choices.  I’ve been told this by my mother, who grew up in an era where choice was limited.  You bought a pair of sneakers of the few brands and styles offered.  You followed a particular route.  You want to talk to someone – pick up the phone or speak face-to-face.  Life events had a certain map to them.  Even employment at the same company for years offered a reciprocal loyalty and security. 

While it can be argued that we are fortunate for a vast array of options now offered to us, I fail to understand how any child will grow up with the ability to navigate choice if they are offered none.  Discrimination is a skill that teaches people to choose based on areas of talent and interest, of ethics and societal mores. 

But the creation of curriculum that adheres to a one size fits all standard, does not take into account choice.  I am not one to pander to the fickle needs of children.  I do not subscribe to the practice of we are all winners and everything deserves a reward.  I do not spoil. 

But, teaching a circumscribed curriculum that doesn’t take into consideration difference, learning styles and the obvious need to teach children how to sipher through massive amounts of content, is short-sighted and misdirected. 

We live in a free country that allows us to choose our content, but we offer no plan to help the future of our country to use it wisely and to good effect. 

Test taking is not a life skill.  Teaching to a test is not a lesson in discipline, it’s a lesson in getting through.  It is not a lesson of mastery or mining talent, it is a lesson that education has nothing to do with anything real in life.

To put it into an internet perspective, we allow corporate executives to dictate a movement toward charter schools – privately-funded schools that do not have to follow any such standards like those mandated now.  It makes absolutely no sense.  Zero. 

Funny thing is that Bill Gates is one of those people spearheading this campaign – a successful and incredibly wealthy man who dropped out of high school is one of the largest backers of the Common Core and iBloom. 

No one is thinking about our children.  It’s just money their pockets.  That’s all it is.  Argue what you want.

- Anonymous

I think the amount of assessment the teachers are required to do now is absolutely absurd.  It unnecessarily takes away from teaching time.  I understand as a parent and a former teacher that occasional assessment is useful to see individual needs, but I can state from experience, most teachers know the strengths and weaknesses of their students within the first few weeks of school without doing any formal assessment.  

True individual assessments take a good amount of time and it is impossible to do it correctly with the limited time these teachers already have.  Again, it takes away from valuable teaching time, including non-academic teaching time, such as special projects or creative free time (the things that keep many of the students interested :-)

So basically, although I do think individual assessments are helpful and needed occasionally, possibly 3 or 4 times throughout the year, it is a hinderance the way it is being used now and discouraging to many of the children.  

- Marla Schneider, former teacher, mother of four elementary-aged children

As a parent of 3 children, aged 13-18, I have seen all walks of my kid's education. As a teacher for over 20 years, I have also experienced all walks of public education trends throughout the years. I can honestly say, that at this point in time, morale for both teachers and students is at an all time low. While the Common Core may have started out with good intentions, it has spun wildly out of control, and can quite possibly be the demise of our feelings of self worth, and our passions for both learning and teaching. Teachers and students are feeling frustrated and under-valued by the over emphasis that testing has in the classroom. Curriculum is test driven, results have high stakes, and the enthusiasm and love of both teaching and learning is quickly being squeezed out of the classroom! No longer is there an emphasis on creating life-long learners who are bright and inquisitive.  Today, education is more focused on the end result of a poorly formulated state test, which is not an accurate reflection of what is developmentally appropriate for children. Between the implementation of tests that are too challenging, and the combination of raising the bar for meeting grade level expectations and the lowering of the bar for assisting students who struggle, there are no winners in this vicious cycle of assessment.

My own children are all different types of learners, and for the most part have always met with success. My youngest, however, is a struggling student who will probably never meet grade level expectations. She is in "nomads" land; she doesn't meet the benchmark for success, but doesn't qualify for support services either. How, with the rising level of expectations, is she to catch up? Homework is a tearful event, and preparing for subject area tests are even worse! At this point, I am just hoping that she doesn't fail anything, and will actually graduate on time in 2018! Maybe by then, the state, in their esteemed wisdom, will realize that they have successfully created students who do not have a desire to learn. Then, perhaps we could go back to the way things used to be... happy kids, in loving school environments, with teachers who care and kids who actually want to be in school, learning!

- Betsey Ensign, 5^th grade teacher and mother

Education at its best should be rooted in child developmental theory.   Children are born curious and eager to discover the world.  Schooling should simply provide an environment to nurture these innate qualities.  

Play is the foundation for children's learning.  While children play they develop relationships, learn to negotiate, develop cause and effect, count, sort, recognize patterns, become dexterous and coordinated, make sounds that turn into letters, words, then stories.  The amount of learning that happens within a day is almost immeasurable.

Unfortunately, education as I describe it is under attack.  Corporate education reformers say that we must now adopt a rigorous curriculum to make young children college- and career-ready. It is not only inhumane to force children to learn material for which they are not developmentally ready; it is futile.  

We see a trend towards rote lesson plans and high-stakes testing as a direct result of pushing children in ways they are not meant to learn.  Consequently, there is the need to repeat and retest because it does not make sense to them.  

When children's curiosity is engaged and the material comes from their own play, learning happens with minimal effort.  Stop the hours of mundane lesson plans, stop the testing, and watch the learning that happens.  

--Gina Tampio, mother of two elementary-aged children

As a teacher, I see the stress and frustration that the rushed and bungled implementation of the Common Core curriculum and the new teacher evaluation requirements has caused for teachers and administrators, especially at the elementary level. It is nothing less than heart-breaking to be forced to teach in a way that does not engage you or your students, that you know is often developmentally inappropriate, that doesn’t allow you to address the individual needs and ability levels of your students. It is infuriating to know that under the new APPR evaluation system, the only thing that really matters is how your students perform on a poorly-constructed standardized test that sets kids up to fail (an evaluation system under which the New York State teacher of the year was not even deemed “highly effective”). It is sad to see administrators removed from their work from students because their jobs have been reduced to dealing with the enormous bureaucratic task load that Albany had dumped on them.

But I’m an adult. I can handle whatever Albany sends my way. And if I decide I can’t handle it, or don’t want to handle it anymore, I can quit my job and pursue another field, difficult as that might be. My 8 year old son does not have that luxury. In the past year he has gone from someone who loves school and is excited to wake up in the morning, to a child who says almost every day that he hates school and just wishes that he could have “one good day.” There is no longer any room in his day for the kinds of creative projects and lessons that used to engage him. Science and Social Studies are barely touched upon anymore. ELA and Math instruction, despite his teacher’s valiant efforts, have been reduced to tedious test prep. He comes home from school defeated, only to face an hour or more of homework - always worksheets from engageny or his Common Core-aligned workbooks. And he is not alone; I often hear similar stories from other parents. What can my son do? He can’t quit third grade. We’ll never get his third grade year back. So I feel like I have to speak out for him. I don’t want him to hate 4th grade and 5th grade -- I teach at an alternative high school -- I see what happens when students become disengaged. So I am speaking out for him, because he has no voice in Albany. Parents have to fix this. School boards and administrators are trying, but Albany isn’t listening to them. Parents have the power of numbers -- we are constituents -- we pay taxes, we vote. And no one can accuse us of being self-serving, of not wanting what’s best for our children (accusations frequently made against educators speaking out). Our only interest is our children. And we can’t afford to be patient.

- Jennifer McGrath Fall, teacher and mother

Off Season Running, or “It’ll Be a Cold Day in Hell...” by David Yockelson

Ah, the start of fall.  Leaves falling in droves from trees, squirrels scurrying to store nuts for the winter, darkness coming much earlier in the day...and cooler temperatures adding a layer or so to what we wear before venturing out for our runs.  Or...are we?  I’ve already been asked several times if I was running OUTSIDE now or next week or this winter. Really? Do the thirties – I’m talking temperatures here, people – really mean a move to (yuk) indoor running?

They certainly need not mean that. Moreover, winter should be a fabulous time to build some running base and strength, to relax a bit and build some of that VO2 max we hear about all the time.  So...what should you be considering in terms of winter “off season” running?

If you are an endurance athlete or someone intending to run a half-marathon, marathon, or complete a half-ironman or ironman next year, it’s never too early to start building run strength.  Long, easy runs help build endurance and the ability for your body to use oxygen efficiently. They’re also of tremendous mental help for those times that you know you’ll have to be out on a race course for a while. Cold and even snow are easy hurdles to overcome – for the cold, the simple rule of thumb is to dress for 20° warmer than it actually is – you warm up considerably on the run, so you can prepare for that.  On REALLY cold days, which for me are mid-20s and under, beyond the obvious hat/gloves/tights/layers, slather some Vaseline on your nose and cheeks.  Even snow is easily overcome; I actually love to go for an easy run in fresh snow.  While some people will even turn to snowshoes, I have a pair of YakTrax (the running shoe equivalent of chains for your auto tires), though in 30 years of running, I’ve worn them maybe twice.  Basically, you CAN run outdoors all year round.

(OK, if it’s below 10 degrees, then MAYBE it’s worth staying in, but I’ve run in 3 and 4 degree temps, and dressed appropriately, it’s doable.)

You may have guessed by now that I am no fan of the dreadmill (or tready or treadmill), which will be an anathema to some people.  And I can understand the advantages of a tready sometimes: it’s softer than pavement if you’re injured; and most treadmills are kept inside and thus you are protected from some of the severe temps noted above.  But I’ve always felt that treadmills force you to run a bit differently than you do outside unrestricted and without being subtly pulled by the tread.  If you’ve been injured, say with an Achilles, calf, or hamstring issue, I’d be careful about turning to the treadmill given that it will slightly pull your legs along and change your stride a bit (despite providing a softer surface). 

So now that you are all geared up to run outside, let’s see what fun we can have! I like to play the “catch the leaf game” in the fall.  That’s when, while running along, you try to catch leaves falling ahead of you, sort of like a neurotic fartlek workout (for the uninitiated, “fartlek” is Swedish for “speed play;” it’s basically a term that refers to doing interval work during a run).  There’s “leap the puddles” and “avoid the mud” as well, along with “warm the hands,” the game in which you find the appropriate hand gear and positions to keep your hands warm from start to finish – do you keep the thumb wrapped in your fist or do you let it free float, waiting for that first 10 cold minutes to go by?  Now don’t get too nervous here...even in the direst cold, my hands warm up after about 10-15 minutes of running. Lastly, there’s the “don’t slip on the ice like a clown” game in which you basically attempt to continue to remain on both feet while running despite the patches of black ice you often can’t see on the road (or brown ice on the trails).  Fortunately, that is also something I’ve done quite rarely, perhaps twice in the years I’ve been running.

How much should you be running and how fast should you be running those miles?  As I noted at the beginning, winter, which in theory is an off season for triathletes (I distinctly remember mine last year – it was a Tuesday in December), is a time to relax, rebuild, and remember that there are other things to do besides train. But OK, since we are all type A+++ folks, we’re going to do SOMETHING out there (accent on the “out”). So my advice is to major in strength, getting base miles in with a combination of long and frequent runs and some tempo running.  Speed can be done over the winter (and winter track meets can be fun if you have incredible patience), but I’d orient it toward tempo and fartlek – and hill work (yes, the hills can build similar speed/strength as speed work) – with a very good dose of easy running mixed in.  The right combination depends upon your near term (winter/spring) and longer term (tri season) goals as well as the amount of recovery your body needs from last season.

Varicella by Peter Acker, MD, FAAP

      David was the last of us to contract chicken pox, but he got it the worst.  My older sister picked it up at school, passed it on to me and finally, probably about the time I had scratched off the last of the crusts from my skin, he came down with it.  He must have been less than one, since I, two years older, have no recollection of this.  I just know that for years my parents would recall how sick he got and how worried they were.  He had been born prematurely and from day one, my parents worried about him.  Just a skinny little thing, covered with pox, my dad would recall from time to time with a grim shake of his head.  In my early childhood, I didn’t have a clear notion of what chicken pox was.  I imagined for a time it was some sort of culinary dish like chicken cacciatore or chicken a la king.  This kind of misunderstanding was typical for me, a middle child benefiting from what I later liked to call benign neglect as I was buffered on one side by a preternaturally verbal older sister and on the other by my sickly younger brother who together managed to soak up most of the parental attention.   I was free to concoct my own versions of things in dreamy solitude.  Worried attention, on the other hand, had a rather toxic affect upon my younger brother, I think, who grew up to be a robust, talented, but extraordinarily anxious young man.

       We shared a bedroom throughout a good deal of our childhood and for the most part it was a harmonious situation, though of course we did have our occasional squabbles.  He had what was probably some sort of vocal tic that would manifest just as he was settling into bed.  As I read on the adjoining bed, short little grunts and sighs would emanate from his side.  I learned to merely grit my teeth since complaining to him, just made it worse and my parents, I was sure, would take his side.  Later he decided that the light of my lamp bothered him and I would retreat to another room.  He would emerge after some minutes claiming that a faint light under the door was preventing him from sleeping and I would withdraw to a far end of the house.  For a scrawny little thing, he wielded a lot of power.

     As I grew older, I developed protective mien toward my brother.  In college, we talked often on the phone.  Usually, I could gauge his mood in the first millisecond or so.  Frequently, he would start with sort a brief vocalization, sort of a throat clearing then a long pause and then slowly at first he would pour out the various things that were on his mind.  I would listen, make an occasional encouraging comment and finally I would hang up the phone feeling totally spent.

     In one of those conversations, he confided to me his growing conviction that he was gay.  I immediately assured him that I was fine with it, but at the same time, I was yet again gritting my teeth, wondering how my poor scrawny younger brother, covered with pox, could deal with the world as a gay man.  For some time, I carried this revelation in solitude.  Gradually, the circle of those in the know grew and some years later we were able to enjoy a friendly if not entirely relaxed Christmas at Dad’s (my mother had had since passed away) with David and his black male lover.

      In 1982, I began my internship in pediatrics at Bellevue Hospital.   The work was grueling, but fascinating.   My brother, in the meantime, had gone to the Studio School not too far away laying the foundation for a painting career.  Will he ever choose something easy, I wondered at the time.   He supported himself by working as a typesetter at the Nation magazine and painted tirelessly in a loft that he had bought in a pregentrified of area of Brooklyn and which he shared with his boyfriend.   I remember being amused that my artist brother owned property before I did, the doctor.   His work habits were fueled by an intense nervous energy.  He carried a sketch pad with him everywhere.  We would on occasion travel out to the country together to visit our father and I would laze around while he would spend virtually the whole weekend tramping around with his easel. 

     David sometimes invited my wife and me to elaborate dinner parties in his loft.  He would hover over the stove carrying on multiple conversations with his guests, usually artists and writers, while frenetically tasting, adding ingredients.  His salads, in particular, were the product of endless additions of minute amount of spices and herbs.  I marveled at all the talents that were emerging and began to feel a tad envious as I compared my conventional life style to my brother’s bohemian bonhomie. 

     In 1981, the CDC reported a cluster of 5 homosexual men with pneumocystis carini pneumonia.  Initially the disease was known as GRID or Gay Related Immune Deficiency.  As it became increasingly recognized that more than 50% of cases were not gay related, it was changed to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.  At Bellevue, we began in the fall of 1982, to see young children with unusual infections.  I remember one infant in particular who was my patient.  Despite all our efforts, she got sicker and sicker.  Drawing blood or replacing an IV in her became a dreaded task for all involved and I remember struggling sometimes up to an hour, ungloved in what was typical during that halcyon era and afterwards scrubbing off all the blood from my bare hands.  Only in retrospect, did we recognize that she represented one of the first cases of pediatric AIDS, usually contracted at birth.  Two years later, a pediatric AIDS clinics was set up at Bellevue. 

     That era in some ways resembled America pre 9/11.  Though the AIDS crisis intruded upon our consciousness far more slowly than the terrorists attack upon the World Trade Center, there are, I think, some real similarities: the sense of an undetectable enemy, a similar kind of fear. AIDS changed our feeling of safety and brought an abrupt halt to the notion of sex without consequences which had blossomed on the college campuses of the 60’s and 70’s after the advent of oral contraception.   Potential lovers were scrutinized suspiciously in the same way that air travelers uneasily eye fellow passengers of Middle Eastern appearance.    Unlike chicken pox, which mounts a frontal assault upon our respiratory tree and then quickly fans out through the blood stream establishing gaudy beachheads in the skin and mucous membranes, the AIDS virus is the ultimate bioterrorist, sneaking into our bodies undetected, biding its time in patient preparation for its assault on the immune system.  In the case of chicken pox, the body’s immune system steadily fights off the infection and the pox marks which initially look like dew drops on a rose petal as they are poetically described in medical textbooks, become cloudy, and then burst leaving a crusted bump.   The patient practically always recovers fully, but yet there is one similarity to the AIDs virus: the varicella virus does not completely leave.  It nestles in the ganglion roots of the spinal nerves establishing a redoubt where it remains dormant, kept in check by a vigilant immune system.

     As it turned out, David was aware of the cluster of cases in Los Angeles before I was.  I prided myself that I kept up with the medical literature, but I missed that report.  The gay community, on the other hand was already humming about it.  He called me that fall, his voice cracking, and there was that long pause that I hadn’t heard for years.  He was frantically worried that he had contracted the gay disease. Over the next few months, it was like old times: late night calls and nervous ruminations.   Looking back on it today, I cringe as I recall my repeated reassurances.  Don’t worry, I counseled, my assured tone fueled by my confidence in the power of my medical knowledge: a confidence that, as is commonly the case among doctors, reached its apogee towards the end of my internship.  Only later, did I come to appreciate the pipeline of information from the gay community that David was privy too, which proved to be a much more reliable source about the nascent AIDS epidemic. Gradually, he calmed down, and by the Spring of 1983, he rarely brought it up and was deeply consumed for preparations for his first solo art exhibition.  On the wards at Bellevue, our conversations turned increasingly to speculation on what was causing this mysterious disease.  As David calmed down, I began, in secret, to worry.

     It was a good two years later that David called me to tell me that he was laid up.  He had an attack of shingles.  He related this to me calmly, mildly complaining that the pain was interfering with his painting schedule.  I feigned an equal casualness as I strained to keep my own voice from cracking.  After hanging up, I stood there and my wife entered the room astonished by the tears streaming down my face.  Varicella, benign varicella, had reared its ugly head after 30 years of slumber in the dorsal roots of David’s thoracic spinal nerves producing a band of blistery eruption which snaked round from one side of his back to near his navel.  Shingles, results from a reactivation of the varicella virus in the spinal nerve.  While merely a temporary, albeit painful, affliction for the elderly, for the young gay male, it is a harbinger of much worse things to come, because it is a sign that the body’s immune system is starting to wane.  Since there was no blood test for diagnosing AIDS at that time, this was the first incontrovertible sign that he had a problem with his immune system.    Once I learned he had shingles, the last vestiges of denial fell away and I knew. 

     Some months later I dropped by on one of my regular visits to his loft and found him stretched out on his bed, breathing a bit heavily and with what seemed to be a slight bluish cast to his face.  He waved me closer with a smile before going into a paroxysm of coughing.  Just a bad cold, he told me and I managed to convince myself that he was not breathing rapidly and that the lighting was a bit funny.  The next day, I came again and this time I brushed away his protestations that this was a cold and convinced him to go to his doctor.  His doctor took one look at him and dialed the hospital.  While waiting for the hospital to pick up, he turned to look at me and I thought I saw a recriminating look on his face.  Why had I not been more alert to the clear signs of respiratory distress that any intern could see?  By that evening, he was in the intensive care unit at Columbia Medical Center on a ventilator.  He showed remarkable strength and dignity while flat on his back with a hose sized tube ensconced in his trachea.  He wrote frequent notes on a little pad with the same frenetic energy that so characterized him. He wrote “I’m optimistic” among other things and was careful to equally divide his attentions among the circle of friends and relatives around his bed.   I remembered his almost disabling anxiety when he thought he might have AIDS and marveled at how well he coped with actually having it.  

     Most people survive their first episode of pneumocystis, but David did not.  I asked his doctor about this, and he did not have a definite answer.  Years later, I learned that subtle genetic differences probably account for the variable outcomes.  We had a memorial at a gallery in Soho.  We stood, surrounded by his paintings and many of us in turn stood up to talk.  As I approached the front to take my turn, I thought how strange for me, a doctor, to be giving a talk in a Soho art gallery. There was one other doctor in the crowd, his doctor, a specialist in infectious diseases from Columbia. Several years later I read an article about the AIDS epidemic in the New York Times Magazine and saw that David’s doctor was prominently mentioned as a pioneer in the early treatment AIDS.   Towards the end of the article I learned to my astonishment that he himself had recently succumbed to the horror of the disease that he had been close witness too as a treating physician.

 ******

      In 1989, my then two year old daughter, Jessica, came down with chicken pox passed down from her older sister.  It was a fairly typical case and on Sunday morning of Memorial Day weekend, the lesions looked like they were mostly crusted over.   Late that afternoon, her fever returned, but now was much higher than it had been at the height of her illness.  Within a few hours I noticed a faint rash, appearing like mild case of sunburn.  I snuck into my study and quietly looked up toxic shock syndrome.  I closed the book, convinced that I had succumbed to that age old malady of med students of seeing in themselves whatever disease they happened to be studying and I calmed myself down.             It was my wife, using a mother’s instincts, who truly recognized the severity of what was transpiring.  I placed a midnight call to one of my partners and together we drove to the medical center.  It turned out she did have toxic shock syndrome, which is a rare complication of chicken pox.  She was in the hospital for a week or so, but completely recovered.                  

     David’s paintings are hung throughout our house interspersed with Jessica’s, who has become an accomplished painter.    I watch her move quickly, about the kitchen and I catch a glimpse of small round scar between her eyes, the only remnant of her bout with chicken box.  She leans over a salad she is preparing, making familiar minute adjustments.  She fixes me, with a look.  “Dad, what’s a matter, you’ve never seen anybody make salad before?”