Home(s)

I was warned I would be asked a multitude of questions in my clinical year. Rumors of which attendings are known for “pimping” (a term that still greatly confuses my family) abounded and reassurance that getting answers wrong is not the end of the world was given so often our egos must have appeared as fragile as meringues. However, in my two months of clinical year, what I’ve been asked about the most has not been about the critical view of safety, what nerve I should be trepidatious about cutting, or what tests I think should be ordered for the patient we are caring for. Instead, a different question fills the space after my name for every new meeting. Even though I get this question all the time, and always have, we all have, I still feel a sense of panic in that moment. My chest tightens and part of me, deep inside, freezes.

“Where are you from?”

To many, it is the simplest question to answer after their name. It is somewhere they were born, became a human, had their first kiss, failed their first test, come back home to for every break, sit around the kitchen table with a bowl of their mom’s saag, their grandmother’s chicken soup, their inner child’s Annie’s mac and cheese. For me (and many others, I make no claims to be unique in this regard) it is a much more difficult question to answer.

Do I say where I was born? Where I have spent the most consecutive years of my life? The most total years? Where I feel most fluent in the language? Most satisfied by the food? Most comfortable with the bus system?

It would be easier to pick a place and stick with it. I know, trust me I know, that this overcomplicates what is meant to be an easy question, a softball, a way to build familiarity before we get into the nitty gritty of anatomy and antibiotics. But the different pieces of me don’t allow that; they balk at the idea that their histories will be silenced and worry that if they remain unspoken they will eventually fade away entirely.

As a Jew, I am told to never forget. We are told this over and over and over. Never forget the Holocaust, the pogroms, your family’s challah recipe, to fast for Yom Kippur, what your ancestors lived and died for, where you came from. I feel the same about these parts of me that feel at home in different places. I want to preserve the girl within me that is insistent about what constitutes true hummus (pumpkin spice chickpea mush does not count, looking at you Trader Joe’s), puts tahini on everything, and hangs hamsas from her walls. I want to save the angsty teenage girl that has the Saugatuck River shoreline memorized and can walk to her best friend’s house down the block just like in every YA book ever written. I want to keep the daughter that finally knows more than two hiking trails in Boulder and the one that knows what to order at Barney Greengrass to get the most smoked fish for the least expense. I want to cherish the elementary schooler that devours piles of books from the local library and can recognize the garden styles common throughout different periods of British history. I want to hold on to the actually-starting-to-feel-like-an-adult that knows exactly which stalls at the Clement Street farmer’s market she’s stopping at each weekend and what route through Golden Gate Park will add up perfectly to 6 miles.

This is not to say I always love all of these parts of myself. I have often felt revulsion, shame, sheepishness, guilt, and nostalgia. But also joy, comfort, pride, amusement, and gratitude. And that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to lose them.

Physicians have their own ways of asking patients the same question. “Where did you travel from today?” “Do you have a long trip home?” “Are you from here originally?” Obviously these questions are important to ask in terms of assessing transportation needs, access to healthcare institutions, and possible exposures to conditions or critters endemic in other parts of the world. But they also help pin the patient, like a wall of butterflies, to a map in the physician’s mind. They nod knowingly at the patients’ answers while I wonder how it changed their perception. The same way I wonder how it changes their perception of me.

“Where are you from?”

I used to avoid the question entirely, afraid to choose one place over another. “Oh, I moved around a lot.” That often was enough to satisfy the asker (because they’re rarely actually interested, are they?). Now, I embrace the long answer (although still an abbreviation of the whole story).

It’s interesting to see people’s reactions. Some eyes glaze over and some look confused, but I keep watch for when they light up. Maybe they, too, miss a true New York bagel. Maybe they miss commiserating over the trials and tribulations of riding BART. Maybe they were waiting to find someone with whom to share their favorite falafel place.

And maybe, even if we’ve lived in none of the same places, they too understand what it’s like to be from more than one place and have more than one home.