Two Feet Away

I think I might have made a soul connection with another mom at a kid birthday party this weekend. I don’t use the word soul, in this instance, to indicate a particular level of strength or rarity but more to relay what part of me came online as the conversation progressed with this new friend. It was not an unfamiliar feeling, per se, and yet it also caught me by surprise.

Because here’s the thing: I’ve known this woman for almost two years. We each have two kids who are both the same ages in the same two classrooms at the same preschool. We’ve made small talk at class picnics and Parents’ Nights and holiday performances. We’ve said hello countless times without me feeling a sense of “there’s a person who sees me and feels seen by me”. And yet this weekend, something different happened.

Our kids sit next to each other for cake. We chat about what everyone did this weekend. Night shift for me, I say. Oh right, she recalls, you’re an ER doc. She mentions her brother is finishing his emergency medicine residency. She recalls a story he told her recently and says something about how working the ER is hard because of how many sick people we can get at one time.

And instead of nodding and moving on or reflexively building on what she’s said, I tell her what I really think. I hear myself start answering before I’ve consciously decided what I will say.

It’s not actually the sick people, I counter. It’s the ones who come in with something important but not imminently dangerous - people with problems that an ER is not designed to solve. Vague pain for two years. A rash that’s stumped multiple specialists. Non-specific lab findings, normal vitals, no answers. 

I acknowledge that these are the patients that I have had to grow the most to serve well. Because the highest yield thing I can offer them is not a test or a medicine. It’s presence, relational capacity, time. What they need, I tell her, is for someone to listen attentively —  to ask, gently: what would make this a successful visit for you? —  and to sit with their frustration when my honest response is: we will probably not find out what this is today. But what you want, what you’re feeling, that all makes sense. I’m here to help and we will do our best together.

The mom doesn't check out or change the subject. She lights up and wants to probe deeper. I’m curious about what is driving her interest. We talk about moral injury. About burnout. About the importance of doing your own work if you want to show up for other people without losing yourself.

At a birthday party with a bounce house. Behind two five-year-olds with frosting on their faces.

I’ve been thinking about why this connection happened now, after two years of opportunity. I don’t think the answer is just one thing.

There was an element of increasing proximity. My wife had recently spent time with this woman’s husband at another event and came home exuding warmth about their family. We had also started subscribing to a Spanish curriculum that this mom created. She uses her guitar and a puppet to teach kids about the weather, colors, their emotions. Our two-year-old son has been heard around the house saying, “That makes me enojado!” These videos allowed me to see something creative, sweet and thoughtful in this woman from a distance, without ever having a real conversation. In hindsight, I had likely already started leaning toward her without knowing it.

But the thing I’m still sitting with, the bigger piece of this for me, is that I don’t think I would have had the felt sense of being seen at a “soul” level this time last year. Not because I didn’t need or want a new local friend. And not because she wasn’t available. But because despite wanting this sort of connection, I didn’t have capacity.

I’ve been in the middle of what I can only describe as an emotional and spiritual home renovation. Not the kind you plan and execute with a vision board at a time you pre-select as convenient. More like the kind where you realize with some anxiety that your home’s foundation has issues and you start tearing out walls to access the problem and suddenly you find yourself living in the framing. No kitchen. No clear architectural drawings. Just exposed studs and the faith that this is going somewhere even though dinner tonight and for the foreseeable future is going to be microwaved on a folding table in the living room.

This renovation has cost me a lot. Time, energy, productivity, the comfort of knowing who I am and what I’m doing. There are days when I look at everything I’ve put on hold and wonder if I’m making a terrible mistake.

But something is happening that I didn’t expect. I’m becoming more available. Not just in terms of calendar white space - although that’s true too. More here. More in my body. More able to show up with something real to offer and more able to see what is being offered to me. In the recent past, I had been so burned out that although I could still perform connection — be warm, helpful, present in the ways people expected — I had trouble embodying connection. Because the real thing requires something beyond performance. It requires having enough of yourself available to take a small, unscripted risk with another person and to notice what they offer you back.

I didn’t plan what I said to her about my patients and all that followed. It came out because I had room for it to come out. And she met me there because something in how I said it told her it was safe to.

Here’s what I can’t stop thinking about: that connection was two feet away from me for two years. Not because it was hiding. Not because I didn’t want it. But possibly because I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have space. 

How many of us are standing next to something we’re starving for and can’t access? Not because it isn’t there, but because we haven’t yet become the person who can reach for it; see it; receive it.

I don’t have a tidy ending for this. Things are still messy over here. I’m still in the renovation. The kitchen is still missing.

But this weekend, for a few minutes at a kid’s birthday party, I felt nourished by something I had been craving but maybe not so actively seeking. And it is making me wonder what else has been waiting at arm’s length, while I have been busy trying to hold myself together.