Waiting for a genius and an explanation

Because I identify as an elderly man, I have been thinking entirely too much about health, specifically my own health. During the past year I have been poked, prodded, MRI-ed, X-rayed, needled, blood-pressured, weighed, etc. Up until last year I never owned a thermometer, never had a scale, never a heating pad, and certainly never a blood pressure cuff. I swear, I was healthier without having any actual knowledge. Some of you may understand.

Thus, I have a suggestion for some genius out there. Develop a means by which a patient can walk through what appears to be a metal detector but instead of scanning for metal the machine reads the body, offering up blood pressure, heart rate, lung capacity, weight, height, cancers in the body, faulty valves, brain waves, history of broken bones, whether hips, knees, and spinal cord are in good shape, whether all of the muscles are attached and functioning. Everything. It can be done. The human condition is important and, well, perhaps Mars can wait.

As I write this a lone doe stands in tall grass just a few feet beyond my front window. She is gorgeous and seemingly inert, like one of those silly statues one sees in front yards. She is staring toward the west where the grass moves like ocean waves. The sun is mostly down. She looks to be waiting, maybe waiting for that someone who will come along and explain it all to us, to her, explain why we’re such a mess, explain why, come January, there will be men firing AR-15s at her. But, as Beckett let us know in “Waiting for Godot,” that person never arrives and we’re clearly on our own.

Recently I attended a spring music concert at a nearby high school. A friend had a son in the chorus and it was a school where I taught English for a semester, subbing for a woman on maternity leave, so I thought I’d return. Sitting next to me was a woman with a very small, vocal child on her lap. Just prior to a performance by the concert band the child turned toward me and asked, “Are you a boy?” It took me by surprise but then she ran her left hand down her face to her shoulder. “Oh, because of my hair?” She nodded, which caused me to wonder how such a young child is already assuming long hair is for women, and short hair is for men. I asked my friend about it and her response was, “It’s because of the dolls we give to girls.” Brilliant. I’ll leave it there.

It's later now and a trip into a nearby town is in order. As I approach along a high ridge I’m reminded of Lerner and Loew’s classic musical Brigadoon, a tale of a magical, mystical Scottish village that only exists one day out of every century. It’s a fascinating conceit. Stopping for just a moment along the side of the road above the town I marvel at the glitter of the streetlights and the houses where others are quietly living their lives. The lights are like the silent, sparkling fireflies that hover over the field in front of my house on warm summer nights, wondrous to behold, but eventually fading to black.

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County. His book “The Iowa State Fair” is available from the University of Iowa Press.