For as long as I can remember, I have loved and admired those in the medical profession. Dr. Goldman was our family doctor and he made house calls, which was normal in those days (a time known as Early Pleistocene). I remember how he sat on the bed and placed the cold stethoscope on my chest and looked down my throat. He carried a special black leather bag full of shiny things, but mostly he brought comfort into the home of the sick.

Dr. Goldman committed suicide not long after his last house call. Since then I haven’t needed much from the medical system, but what I have experienced has not betrayed my trust in general of doctors, nurses and all those down the line who manage to save lives and relieve pain. It takes a special person to become a doctor. I once roomed with a doctor on a ski club trip to Michigan. He seemed a nice enough guy to share a room with, but I began to notice that while we were watching television he laughed only at the commercials, never the jokes.

My parents were first-born children of immigrants from Eastern Europe. My grandfather left his village when he was 12 years old to apprentice with a tailor in London. Learning a trade or going to college were the choices our parents gave us here in the world that was still new to them. The highest stature you could attain in our neighborhood was to become a doctor. When mothers got together to play canasta or mahjong inevitably the discussion turned to the children and who was going to law school, who to med school and who was the hapless English major.

Lucky for me, my kid brother graduated from the University of Wisconsin Medical School. I attended his graduation along with my parents, and afterwards he and I went to Yellowstone National Park to camp out. So I met the family in Madison and hung out with them and the rest of the family and friends of the medical school graduating class of 1980. One afternoon we were at a med school picnic on a lake in the middle of Madison. Rolling fields of spring grass stretched from horizon to horizon and everyone visible would be a doctor the next day.

“Mama,” I said, stretching my arm out to a striking view of men and women as far as the eye could see, in small and large clusters, playing volleyball, Frisbee, all of them young, eager to take care of my mom and all mothers everywhere. “Look,” I said, “as far as you can see, doctors. All doctors.” Her eyes got that dewy look. She squinted one way, squinted the other way.

“If you don’t feel good,” I said as I laid a compassionate hand on her shoulder, “now’s the time to faint. It’s a good school. You’d get the best care.”

Experiencing the coronavirus pandemic is a good reason to be thankful to our doctors and other medical workers who have helped so much. Bless them all.

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