Hairdon’t

At the end of July, I had breakfast with one of my former Clinical Pastoral Education peers, who raved over my new very short hairdo. Others have also complimented it, but it hasn’t been a hit across the board. One young hospital patient called me a “dyke-looking bitch with goofy glasses.”

I’m starting to think that, in some ways, holding babies, which I do most weeks in the NICU at County Hospital, is harder than being a chaplain. I twice held a baby who was withdrawing from drugs. He has since left the hospital, and I found myself thinking about him, picturing him crying while his mother shoots up. The thought of this baby being unhappy caused me some moments of real anguish.

Early in August, I headed to school in Santa Fe two days early so I could spend some time with Mason, one of my two peers in my first unit of CPE. Landing in Albuquerque, I experienced the worst turbulence of my life, as evidenced by the fact that never before have I clutched the arm of the stranger sitting next to me and burst into tears. The plane was bucking and corkscrewing and lurching up and down. A flight attendant making an announcement over the PA broke off in the middle of a sentence and rushed down the aisle, holding onto both sides of the overhead luggage bins.

I was one hundred percent positive I was within a minute or two of the end of my life, and accordingly had a word with my deceased grandmother, whom I expected to see in person imminently. I asked if it is safe to die and she again assured me that it is (as she does just before I board any plane). I put my cell phone in my jacket pocket, so my family might have a chance of identifying my body, and considered how I would like to spend my final 30 seconds. It was immediately obvious that human connection is most important, so I said to the fellow next to me, who was clutching the seat in front of him, “If we crash, can I hold your hand?”

He said, “Yes.” Then, in what sounded like an afterthought, “Hope we don’t.” We did not, and that evening, Mason and his brother and I had dinner at a pizza place recommended by one of the Sandia shuttle drivers.

The next day—a blisteringly hot one—I had breakfast in the grand dining room at La Fonda and then Mason and his brother and I saw the oldest house in the country (from the 1600s), and the oldest chapel, which is next door. We saw a church that was the first Gothic structure built west of the Mississippi, and we went to the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts and to the state capitol, which is full of art. We drove out to Ten Thousand Waves, a Japanese spa and restaurant, just to have a look at it.

We had lunch at Souper!Salad! and that evening I had dinner at Tomasita’s with four of my fellow chaplaincy students and two of our teachers.