musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

The Atlas


Ahh retirement, a time when it is impossible to escape your memories and yet difficult to believe they once had a life of their own…

“Daddy, what’s a ‘stralyer’?”

My daughter has a habit of coming up with sounds, part-words, and checking them out on me. “You mean trailer, don’t you sweetheart? It’s a thing on wheels that you pull behind you.”

I could see a sly look come over her face as she prepared to correct me. “That’s a wagn, silly.” Pronunciation was never a strong point with my children. “I asked you about a ‘stralyer’.”

Catherine is only about three feet tall, so it’s hard to look her in the eye without considerable effort. She also insists on wearing at least one of her golden curls on her face -to hide behind if necessary. She wasn’t hiding, however, so I crouched down as best I could and tried to read her expression. Actually, I was trying to read her lips. She repeated the word with me about six inches away and nose level, but it didn’t help much.

“Where did you hear the word, Cath?” Sometimes you can trace these things.

“From Michael.”

I waited for an explanation, but Godot would have arrived before she caught on. “And what was Michael talking about?” Michael is my son, and he’s terribly precocious for seven, I think. His questions are worse, though, because I understand them.

Catherine looked at me as if I were inordinately dense. “About ‘stralyer’, of course.” Sometimes I can see too much of her mother in her, with her hands on her hips, one foot tapping impatiently, and an expression of utter condescension nailed to her forehead. Only with Catherine, it looks benign -comical, almost. Except on weekends, they live with their mother, so I suppose neither of them will adopt any of my mannerisms.

Children are tautological creatures; they have the good sense to stick to their guns when all else -adults, by and large- fail them. “Ahh, you don’t happen to know what else Michael said, do you?”

She nodded her head vehemently, convinced she was getting somewhere with me at last.

“Well..?”

She just looked at me. Sometimes I wonder if she is really five, or whether she skipped ahead somewhere around two and a half.

Finally, she got the idea. “He said it was under something.”

That’s what I like about Catherine: just like her mother, she remembers only things that stick out: a flower outside a thousand year old French cathedral, the smell of Machu Pichu, the colour of the mud in Manaus… Context, for her, is merely the background against which the really important things are displayed.

“I don’t suppose he happened to mention what it was under, did he?”

She was silent for a moment -no mean feat for Catherine- and then a smile lit up her face and her eyes grew large. “Under the water, I think…”

There are only so many things that sound like trailer and are under stuff -especially water. I took a stab at it. “Australia?” I said in my best adult voice.

“That’s it, Daddy! What is it?”

“Well,” I said, not entirely sure how much she wanted to know, “it’s a country…”

“But we live in a country.”

“Mm-hmm.” I also nodded to give it added strength.

I could see her playing with it for a while before leaving it on whatever shelf she files such things -Catherine’s face is a movie screen sometimes. But after a minute between shows, I could see a new thought growing. “How many countries are there, Daddy?”

That’s a good question, actually. Does anybody know? I was so relieved that she hadn’t asked me what a country was that I offered to look it up. “Have you ever seen an atlas, Cath?”

A new word! She perked up immediately. “Anatlus? Nope. Is it what reindeer wear, Daddy?” Where do kids get their ideas nowadays?

“Antlers are what reindeer have, Cath. Atlas is what I’m going to use to count the number of countries,” I said, but I don’t think it stuck. I think she liked the idea of finding countries on reindeers’ heads.

“But don’t the reindeer have to know where they’re going?”

“Huh?”

“You know. On Christmas eve.”

Actually the thought had never occurred to me. I guess I just figured they did it by the stars, or that Santa kind of navigated by instinct, or something. Kids aren’t satisfied with the old stories anymore. “Ahh, well maybe if you looked at my atlas you’d understand what I mean.”

Her eyes positively sparkled. “You mean you have some reindeer here?” She looked wide-eyed around the room, expecting to see a nose pop out of a closet any moment, I’m sure.

“Cath, we don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Just wait here, okay?” I went into the den and rummaged around for the atlas. It was an old Reader’s Digest variety -you know, solar system in the front few pages, then what each country does for a living and how many did it, at least in 1969. The rest was a smorgasbord of colors and names that brought back painful recollections of Miss Pleasance in Grade 4 and having to pronounce them in front of the whole class by memory. I could never say ‘Afghanistan’ and everybody would wait for it and laugh. Not Miss Pleasance, though. It’d just get me another turn the next day. I hated geography.

When I returned, Catherine was prowling through the cupboards and sniffing. I didn’t ask why. “This is an atlas, Cath,” I said proudly, holding it in front of me like a jewel.

She took one look at it and her face lost interest. “That’s just another book, Daddy,” she said, her voice pleading with me to say I was kidding.

“Just another book?” I pretended to be hurt. “Catherine, this is a genuine, nothing-else-is-remotely-like-it Reader’s Digest version of the world.”

Her eyes resumed their dinner-plate imitations and her mouth fell open. “The world! In there?” I had the sinking feeling that I’d lost again. “Lemme see,” she said grabbing the book firmly, but reverently from my hands.

I was pleased to see she at least started from the front but she whipped through the solar system at a break neck pace and was half way through the gross national product of the Netherlands before she slowed down. “Awhh…” She leafed through a couple of pages of countries outlined in their pale reds and yellows, crammed with lines and unreadable letters and put the book down gently on the table. She looked at me -sadly, I thought- and shook her head. “Daddy,” she said slowly, and carefully, sounding for all the world like she was choosing her words carefully so as not to offend me. “Daddy, did you pay a lot for the anatlus?”

“Atlas,” I corrected as gently as I could. “No, not a whole lot. Why?”

“Well.. I think you got jipped.”

“Huh?”

She stared at me and sighed with a little shake of her head -just like her mother used to do. “I saw the world on TV and it’s different.”

She’s right, you know. And I’ll bet they pronounced Afghanistan correctly, too.

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gozzter

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