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Posted by Alex Lickerman  Print  Email to a friend  Every once in a while (or perhaps more frequently than I’d like to admit) I find myself overwhelmed by my own life. Taking care of patients, blogging, writing, maintaining relationships (with my wife, son, family, friends, and co-workers), exercising, practicing Buddhism, marketing my writing, answering pages, answering emails, handling unforeseen crises, cleaning out our cats’ litter boxes—suffice it to say one of my greatest challenges is not only getting all these things done day after day but also finding time to enjoy a few leisure activities, too. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  While I was growing up, my brothers (I’m the eldest of four boys—I know: my poor mother) often chided me for being so much like my father. I suppose it was inevitable that I would be; firstborn children tend to be rule followers (if you believe in the significance of birth order) and I fit the stereotype. Some boys use their fathers to push against as they struggle to establish their own independent identities. I used mine as a role model.
My decision to do this was largely, though not entirely, unconscious. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  “What do you want for dinner?” I asked my wife.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “What do you want?”
“How about hamburgers?”
“No, I don’t want hamburgers.”
“What do you want then?”
“I don’t know…pasta.” Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  My wife and I are similar in a number of ways, but we’re completely opposite in how we feel about trying new things. I resist and often fear it, while she positively craves it. For as long as I can remember, I haven’t even liked trying new foods (an aversion my family and friends have alternately found amusing and consternating), preferring instead to eat what I already know I like. My wife, in contrast, almost never orders the same thing twice. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  A few weeks ago, a colleague and I were discussing the devastation in Haiti. He told me he thought he should go down there to help out—but that he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. His heart went out to the people suffering there, he said, but apparently not enough to get him to hop on a plane.
I asked him what was stopping him. He thought about it for a moment and then said: “I don’t have anything left to give.” His answer took me by surprise. I thought his reasons would have been the same as mine: it would have been too disruptive to his life here, too frustrating to go down and be ineffective as a physician without adequate infrastructural support, and too personally uncomfortable or even risky. But what he meant was simply this: he was too tired. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Several years ago, someone I know told me he was contemplating divorcing his wife. I wasn’t surprised. He’d been unhappy in the marriage for some time—and, in my opinion, with good reason: his wife was jealous to the point of being neurotic, often behaving in ways that were shockingly inappropriate, offensive, and stress-inducing.
Or so he’d described to me. Though he’d managed, over the years, to paint a clear picture of her personality and character, I couldn’t personally verify any of it. I’d never met her. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Lately, my wife and I have been having trouble with our water heater. Over the last few months we’ve been finding the blower blowing but no gas running along with it to actually heat our water. Recently, the gas would turn on for only 10 minutes before shutting off, leaving the blower going, sometimes all night while we slept.
You don’t fully appreciate what you have until you’re threatened with losing it, especially hot water. So my wife leapt into action. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  One day, about a year and a half ago, my wife and I were walking along a street near our home when she grabbed my arm and suddenly exclaimed, “I think that woman is in trouble!”
I followed her gaze to a car stopped at a light and saw to my horror a woman being prevented from exiting the passenger side door by the man who was driving. He held her hair clumped in his hand. She was screaming and crying and trying to free herself to no avail. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  Several months ago, my wife and I began toilet training our son, Cruise (the Montessori method is to train toddlers to use the toilet as early as possible). We’d diligently put him on a small potty in his bathroom as often as we could drag ourselves into doing it and repeat over and over to him, “Pee pee on the potty, Cruise. Pee pee on the potty.” In order to get him to remain sitting on it so that he might actually pee into it, we’d read books to him, which he loves more than almost anything.
Like many toddlers, when his bedtime arrives, he often prefers to stay up playing with his parents. One night as we were laying him down in his crib, he surprised us by grabbing his diaper with his hand and exclaiming, “Pee pee on potty. Pee pee on potty” in a plaintive, expectant voice. But we knew he didn’t need to pee as we’d just taken a freshly wet diaper off him. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman Print Email to a friend  My wife and I vividly remember the anesthesiologist’s statement: “You may feel a little pressure.” She spoke the word gently, as if to imply that’s how it would feel, and we believed her. Epidural blocks, she explained, don’t numb the sacral nerve roots that deliver sensation from the pelvic floor so my wife would likely feel something as she entered the last stage of labor and our son began passing through her birth canal. But we were both reassured. A mild bit of pressure seemed no threat to our hope of having the same experience my sister-in-law had with her first child: she’d had to be told when to push at the final moments because she couldn’t feel anything at all. Continue reading…
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