2018-08-22 Cincinnati
Happy Anniversary Part 4
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Our Romance Part I: Un-courtship: February 1971 to 18 August 1977
(continued from 2018-08-21)
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April 1975 – January 1977
Months, years ticked by. College graduation. First year of medical school at Case Western Reserve. Howie’s death 5/30/76. Rotary Fellowship to study animal behavior and answer how different from humans are other primates, anyway (and, depending on that answer, defining soul). Deciding to take a year off. Travel to Kenya. Falling in love with Africa. Falling in love with Peter Mochama. Falling in love with the Grrrreat Rrrrift Valley. Falling in love with rural wananchi. Falling in love with medicine.
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Early February 1977: I have a dream.
I’m in the stacks of Widener Library, and see Lawson slumped over a pile of books in one of the basement carrels. I go to him, lean over, put my arm around his shoulders, pat him gently, and comfort him. He is immensely relieved and appreciative.
I write a letter.
The next morning I banged out an Aerogram to Lawson on my tiny manual typewriter. I related my dream, and added a synopsis of the intervening months since we saw each other in Cincinnati. I told him about my disillusionment with medicine during the hours and hours of studying (without helping anybody), my brother’s death, and how my focus in Kenya morphed from ethology to ethnology to politics to public health. I told him that Peter and I were considering marriage, but not until I had returned to finish my medical education in the US.
I asked him what had transpired in his life, including if he had indeed taken a year off to learn English – the way he fantasized back in ’75, and if he and Nancy were still together. I wished him well; my dream reminded me what a special friend he was.
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Late February 1977: Lawson writes back.
Lawson responded to my flimsy single-sheet Aerogram with an 8-page handwritten letter. He was in the midst of his year off from med. school, and indeed, he was studying English – taking classes, acting in plays, reading, and most of all: writing, writing, writing. But no, he hadn’t gone to England, and no, he was no longer with Nancy.
My letter intrigued him in part because he was about to embark on an African adventure. He would be spending the next four months volunteering as a surgical assistant in a mission hospital in Cameroon.
And a PS: “Good work on stretching your arm across the Atlantic. Before deciding on marriage, perhaps Peter should stretch his across in this direction.”
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July 31, 1977: JFK International Airport
Mom and Dad meet me at JFK to welcome me back to terra firma, as Mom always referred to the USA. Their obvious joy at our reunion was no surprise. Nor was I surprised at their lack of interest in the details of my year away, especially the past month hitchhiking down to South Africa. What did surprise me was Mom’s comment, “You can see the whole world before you’re 25, but it won’t get you a husband.”
I was outraged! How could she imply that my independence, competence, education, career, mobility, utter worldliness were less important than getting a husband? And what does ‘getting a husband’ mean, anyway?
Methinks the lady [moi] doth protest too much. Stay tuned.
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To be continued…
VicWulsin 