Faces from the past

When I'm jogging, it's a very rare occasion that I see somebody I know. I used to see my neighbors every now and then, and once I ran into a coworker of H's. Every so often I'll recognize a face from the gym and nod in their direction, but no one to pause and chat with. Normally, it's stranger after stranger.

Philadelphia is big, and neither H nor I grew up here. We, in fact, settled here less than three years ago. The people in our lives are scattered over cities, and even over continents across the world. I suppose that it's the true, modern American way. Yet when I'm jogging in the park, I'll often see someone walking ahead of me and, as I come up to them, there's just one suspended moment where I'm convinced it's someone from my past. Is that Lizzie Johnson from high school? Sarah Morgan who played violin with me? Mike Rust from graduate school? I never see people from Philadelphia in those perky gaits, those swinging pony tails, those informal clothes - even people I know from Philadelphia. It's always someone from other times and other places. And as I gain on them, come up on them from the side, I always turn my head just slightly to see for sure.

It's, of course, never who I think it is. Sometimes I can tell while I'm still behind them, from the jaw line or the temple, and I adjust my gaze before they notice. Other times, I give them a full-fledged side glance as I pass, usually greeted with a surprised, annoyed look as the long-shot of a friendly reunion melts away to a stranger's face. I wonder now if I'll still do this once we've moved even farther, once we're settled across the ocean. Perhaps the farther you get, the stronger the urge to look. And I'm sure I will look. But the glance won't be long, and I promise, after that moment when reality sets in again, I'll quickly avert my eyes and focus once more on the road ahead of me.

Palm Springs

When you really get down to it, all major hotel chains are alike. Stay at the Holiday Inn or the Hilton, you'll get a room with tightly-tucked sheets, a desk with a leather-bound folder, complete with laminated restaurant suggestions, a humming air conditioner and windows that are bolted shut. If you're going really classy, the room will probably be done all in white. If not, the bedspread will match the tropical flower pattern of the curtains.

Two weeks ago, we whiled away the days in sunny southern California with a quick trip to Palm Springs. H had a conference. I didn't - I had a date with a lounge chair by the heated pool at Korakia Pensione. It felt so luxurious. It was ninety every day. I wore flip-flops and spent my days ordering smoothies, taking short hikes and then recovering with a swim. But what made it really special was the fact that we weren't in a hotel - we had a sweet little bungalow all to ourselves, with doors that opened to let fresh air in, and stone floors that kept the place cool during the day. There was no white tile in the bathroom, and there was a large, friendly, spine-cracked coffee table book of American photographs sprawled open next to the couch. Open up all the french doors, and indoor and outdoor became seamless and indistinguishable.





After a gorgeous week, weather this weekend was Philadelphia classic - much too windy to be spring, with the sun making cameo appearances too often for it to be considered really cloudy. I traded my running gear in for a trip to the dark, musty gym. The windows stayed shut, and the whir of the fans kept the air circulating. I missed that California sunshine, that poolside, and even the desert heat.

A sloppy lunch

I work with the public, and my office is off the main lobby of our building. It's an area that's normally swarming with people by 11 a.m. or so, and I can see it all happening - shortly after I began here, my boss insisted a window be put in my door. So people could see if I was in. Brilliant idea for someone who works with the public, so long as they always look presentable. Normally, I don't mind. It keeps me connected.

Then there are the indelicate moments. I usually eat lunch in my office - browse the web or read a magazine or just work through the hour on something with a deadline. The leftover lunch after spaghetti night is always a social gamble that I make because it's just too delicious to give up. Let me clarify, I never learned how to eat spaghetti properly. Whenever I try, I always end up with a forkful that's way too big to fit in my mouth, or tiny nubs of spaghetti that are impossible to catch with utensils. I go for the all-out stuffing method. Grab a forkful and fit as much in your mouth as possible. Then bite. The slop, the mess, the potential for serious stainage is all something I take into consideration, but my partiality to the meal always wins out. So, when I'm hunched over, stuffing like mad, and I hear a faint knock at my door only to look up and see a colleague eying me awkwardly and shifting anxiously through my little window, all I can do is finish the bite, wipe my mouth, and pleasantly wave them in.

A rare condition

I had a biology teacher in high school who decided that we needed to know about rare genetic disorders and diseases. He gave us a packet with short descriptions, an encyclopedia of toe-curling, spine-tingling, nerve-twitching knowledge. Perhaps it was just a lesson to trick us apathetic teenagers into engagement, but if he was particularly morbid, we were particularly fascinated. Tissue turning into bone? Bad muscle control? We're listening. I remember distinctly learning about Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's disease through this unusually grim set of papers.

The Mutter Museum (part of the College of Physicians) here in Philadelphia is like a Pandora's box of "medical oddities" as they like to call it. I've been there three times myself with tourists in Philly. It's interesting that half of the visitors we have here shake their heads with large, terrified eyes when we mention it as a destination, and the other half already have it on the top of their list. Colons the size of a car tire. Bodies of conjoined twins. Skulls with holes in them. It's always a curious visit. When you go there and as you wander, it eventually occurs to you, between the hernia replicas and the giant ovarian cyst, that no matter how respectably 'medical' they try to make it, the collection will always come across as really more of a Ripley's Believe it or Not, a type of dark Carnival, than a scientifically relevant showcase. At least that's the way it feels to me.

I had reason yesterday to do a bit of research on rare diseases myself (not that I have one, or anyone I know has one), a topic that seems strangely lacking in the annals of Google (isn't there some guy walled up in his basement whose hobbies include web development and unusual chronic illnesses?). The best I could come up with on the fly was the Diseases and Conditions Encyclopedia from Discovery Health. I can tell you that the rare genetic disorder, Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (the one where tissue turns to bone) is not included. But I always knew that airline travel with children should be a true medical condition. I've suffered from that several times in my life. Clearly, and as the Mutter Museum must learn, one's definition of 'diseases and conditions' has to remain flexible.

Right now, the Internet seems vast and scary, and I'm missing my handy-dandy paper encyclopedia of rare genetic disorders. I remember it still - I kept it in a little red notebook that I'm pretty sure I tossed (with a little whimper) a few years ago. In a junkyard somewhere, the only biology lesson that has kept my interest to this day.