Robbie's Memories

           In 1972, the year after I graduated college, my mother took me to England for a week as a graduation present.  We went on a charter of people going to the Crufts Dog Show (my mother was a dog show person; we had a Keeshond we showed and she edited Kee Topics, a breed magazine.).                 We had a banquet the night we arrived.  Afterward, my mother said, "Let's take a walk.  I'll show you where Buckingham palace is, and where you can see the changing of the guard.  Then tomorrow, you're on your own".  So we walked from Marble Arch up past the palace at about 10:30 at night.  The gates were open and all the lights were on.  Suddenly the bobbies in their helmets dashed out and stopped traffic, and the queen came by and waved at us!  What a way to start the trip!                 The next day turned out to be the 21st anni...

From "Med School Talking Blues" (written by me while in med school):       "If you want to be a doctor, I'll tell you what to do,        You've gotta start premed by the age of two." Written on a med school bathroom wall:       Will Rogers said he never met a man he didn't like.  Will Rogers never met a premed.       I had wanted to be a doctor since the age of 5, when I had a crush on my pediatrician.  I detoured slightly in high school, wanting to be a vet, but by the time I was sixteen, I had gone back to wanting to help people instead of animals.  But I finished college physically exhausted, financially broke, and wanting just to get out of town.  I got a job in Baltimore, and after a switch, ended up working as a cardiac cath lab tech.  A year later, I knew if I didn't apply to med school now, it would never happen.       This was 1972.  The last of the all male me...

           Not that I ever really got to dress Diane.  Her first words, after "Mommie" were "Me do!"  Her gross motor development may have been delayed but her fine motor skills were way ahead of schedule: she could zip zippers and button buttons well before her third birthday.               Our first Sunday at home after her week in the hospital, where we celebrated her second birthday, I found myself fighting her fists into the sleeves of a little yellow dress, saying "You'll wear this dress because I say you're going to wear this dress!"  Shades of my mother!  I promised us both, then, that we would never fight over clothes.                 Even at two, Diane had definite opinions about clothes.  I quickly learned not to buy her anything without taking her with.  It didn't matter if it was new; it didn't matter if I really liked it; if she didn't ...

           Our family loved croquettes.  At Thanksgiving, my grandmother would buy a 25 lb. turkey for the four of us.  We would have it for Thanksgiving dinner, turkey sandwiches that night and the next day, and the entire rest of the turkey would be ground up for turkey croquettes.  Mommom would get out her meat grinder, attaching it to a cutting board since the table rim was too wide for the vise connection.  I sat across from her many times as she turned the crank, pushing the turkey meat down into the grinder with her other hand.  I, of course, sampled the ground turkey as it came out.                 Mom would mix the ground meat with a thick white sauce, seasoned with salt, pepper and fresh parsley.  She had great contempt for people who added mashed potatoes or rice.  I thought that had probably been the point of croquettes, to extend the meat, but not Mom.  She would ...