musingsonwomenshealth.com

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

I am the table


What is it about an organism that makes it a table setting for posterity, a book with no words, a classroom with no teacher? History is one thing; it has events, and usually documentary accounts and descriptions of its occurrence: a monument here, a written mention there. Evidence…

But what about culture? How could the cadence with which our ancestors spoke be transmitted? How about the accent they used; the type of welcome a group may have given to a local orator; how they clapped to whatever music they may have enjoyed? Culture seems almost too evanescent, too translucent to describe. Perhaps it has to be observed, practiced to be really understood, experienced to be truly absorbed.

And yet despite the obvious difficulties in its transmission, wordless remnants persist, so I’m not sure I can explain it: somehow, sometime, somewhen, I am my past. I don’t mean simply in my genes (if that’s simple), nor for that matter, in my memories (they can only stretch back so far, after all). Surely it’s not just a matter of my lived experience, my family, or the things I have read in the all too brief sojourn of my days… And yet it’s there -or, rather, here in my body: a past; a heritage; a culture.

But am I merely rationalizing my habits and according them a status they don’t deserve? Rewarding my feelings with a mysterious history they don’t possess? Of course, perhaps we all do that as a way of demonstrating, at least to ourselves, that we are special -or maybe valid representations of, well, something in a distant time we cannot remember.

‘In the 1960s, the media theorist Marshall McLuhan portrayed culture as a vast and all-encompassing medium. In such a ‘sea’, we can absorb information and practices by osmosis, even unknowingly. In the 1970s, the anthropologist Edward T Hall suggested that culture was more like an iceberg: we can see only a small portion of it, the deeper parts lie hidden. And in the 1990s, the psychologist Michael Tomasello explained the ‘cultural ratchet effect’ in which human learning accumulates over time, like a metal ratchet that moves forward only as we build on knowledge from the past.’ [i]

Some things just elude description, however. After all, what is culture? The concept itself is a moving target. Is it merely a group’s social behaviour? Its customs? Or is it something even deeper than that: its ideas, and appreciation of things we may not think of as relevant -if we notice them at all? How could an archeologist, or an anthropologist ever hope to understand what made ancient people smile, or more importantly perhaps, what made those living in a distant epoch from our own, cry?

Clearly I don’t have access to the resources the professionals do, but I still have curiosity about how things -albethey familiar things- have changed through the years. I remember striking up a conversation with a lady in an elder-care home when I was waiting for my grandmother to return from the bathroom. A group of elderly people were sitting around just staring at the recently emptied tables in what I assumed was their dining area. Some were slowly making their ways to more comfortable couches scattered around the room, but the lady who had been sitting next to my grandmother was busily folding and unfolding her paper napkin on the table. She suddenly looked up at me and smiled.

“You must be Eena’s grandson, eh?” she asked, then busied herself again with the napkin once I had nodded in reply. “She’s had quite a life, eh?”

I nodded once again. “I always enjoy talking to her about it,” I said, trying not to stare at her obsessive folding and refolding of the napkin.

She glanced up from her task and smiled mischievously. “I learned origami from my grandma, and I’m trying something different. Something she never taught me… I’m Florence, by the way… Flossie to my friends.”

“Everybody calls me G,” I said and smiled at her.

I looked more carefully at the increasingly crumpled napkin and shook my head in admiration. “Don’t you usually use a different type of paper for origami Florence?”

Her face wrinkled as she smiled. “Call me Flossie. Well, grandma used regular paper, but origami paper usually has colour on one side. Still, it helps if the paper can hold its shape as you fold it…” Her eyes twinkled as she tackled the napkin again, but it was obviously far too soft to retain anything more solid than food stains from dinner.

I was fascinated at her determination. “Where did your grandmother learn it?”

Flossie chuckled at that. “Well, I’m 97 now and she taught me when I was just a little girl. She was in her 90ies then, so who knows, eh?” Flossie stared at the napkin for a moment, obviously planning her next fold. Then she sighed as she reached for a fresh, unrumpled napkin to try again. “I think she said something about her grandma from the old country teaching her…” She glanced at me for a moment, and then concentrated on her napkin again. “This is merely a proof-of-concept trial with the napkin, but I’m pretty sure I can do it,” she added, and frowned the frown a French mime like Marcel Marceau would have been proud of. “I’m trying to find out if a napkin would help to make the rounded shape of the folded wings of a bird look more realistic…”

“I see you’ve met Flossie, sweetheart,” my grandmother whispered in my ear as she resumed her empty seat. “She’s been trying to teach me some origami, but my old fingers don’t seem to work like hers anymore. I think you have to learn it when you’re young to be any good at it.”

Flossie sighed and started to refold the newer napkin. “Well, I’m not very good at it nowadays, but I was just explaining to G that I remember enough of the basics to experiment with new shapes.”

My grandmother smiled at that. “If anybody can do it, it’s you Floss…”

Flossie shrugged and smiled at me. “Something tells me my fingers will figure it out if I don’t overthink it, eh Eena?”

My grandma smiled and patted Flossie’s arm. “It’s what history is for, don’t you think?”

Flossie looked up suddenly, a smile dwarfing her face. “I think I’m getting the wing already, Eena… Look!”

I stared as well, but I’m afraid I still only saw a couple of wrinkled folds in the napkin. Still, I’m sure she was on her way to something, and I nodded enthusiastically. After all, you can’t really expect History to look the same for each of us…

[i] https://aeon.co/essays/how-do-we-transmit-culture-when-it-cannot-be-put-into-words

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