Three and a half year-old Emma is climbing up the hill at the park.
In her rainbow striped shirt and white hat, she marches to the wading pool. It is a hot day in May and we find that the pool is empty. She looks at me with deep disappointment, then her face takes on its bulldog expression. “Where is the water?” She turns back down the hill, waving her little fists in the air she yells. “There should be water, the people want water, the people need water!” The people, turn to watch this activist toddler. This is Emma.
Over the subsequent 30 years, she has not materially changed.
I came to family medicine with all the passion of a convert. Having drunk the McGill Kool-Aid in the late ’70s, when all courses were taught by specialists and there was the “not so hidden curriculum” that being a family doc was not for smart people, I wandered through two different specialty programs before I found my way into family medicine, where I always should have been.
Discovering that I could also deliver babies as a family doctor was the icing on the cake that made it my happy career choice. I have loved it deeply for over 40 years. One of the advantages of moving to family medicine was a better work life balance.
I always wanted four children. Two always seemed too binary. There would be the smart one and the pretty one, the good one and the bad one . . . With three there would always be someone left out, while four, I thought, had rich opportunities for all kinds of relationships and interactions, full scope for people to become themselves. They grew up to be a lawyer, a visual artist, a doctor and a composer, all of them talented communicators. I am inordinately proud of all the kids, but today I want to talk about my daughter, Emma.
At age 14, I am sitting on the couch completing the charts I have dragged home from the office. She confronts me with the eyeroll and contemptuous drawl of the young teenager who has just discovered that her mom is merely a flawed and fallible human and not the Goddess Incarnate. “Don’t think I’m ever going to be a doctor, Mom!”
“OK” I replied, puzzled, because the idea of her becoming a physician had never actually crossed my mind.
Then at age 17, she got a summer job as a receptionist at Zubeida’s Clinic, a clinic where we cared for many refugee and immigrant women. Their stories and their struggles touched Emma’s compassionate heart. She wanted to help them.
When she indeed went to medical school, I was sitting on the couch one day, and she said to me, “I don’t think I am going to be a family doctor, Mama.”
“I know this is a hard choice, sweetheart. Do what will make you happy,” I said.
During her family medicine residency, she was struggling with how she wanted to shape her practice, considering doing a fellowship in emergency medicine. One of her mentors, a former resident of mine, said to her, “Listen, Emma, you love continuity of care, you always advocate for your patients. And frankly, you come alive in the delivery room, you love birthing babies. Don’t not do something you love because you’re afraid of becoming your mother. You’re your own person, you will do this in your own way.”
The other night, we were babysitting Emma’s son, Emile, while she was on call in Labour & Delivery. Before she started her call, we were chatting about the patient with twins that she was inducing. This is a woman who had been spirited out of her country as the bombing began. She found her way to Emma late in her pregnancy. With her bulldog determination, Emma and her team helped her cut through the red tape of the refugee process to get her what she needed. Now this patient was in labour, and would probably deliver that night.
As we listened to the uproarious sounds of my husband Dave and Emile playing in the other room, Emma and I sat on the couch. We shared stories and talked about strategies, as two colleagues who valued each other.
At 6:00 a.m. Emma called me, waking me up. She was flying with exhilaration! Emma told me her story; a triumphant vaginal delivery of twins which she managed with the support of her Ob colleague. She described the husband weeping on Facetime, tears streaming down his face, watching the birth of his children half a war-torn world away. She was proud of herself.
I was proud of her.
I was also really touched that I was the person that she called first.
I feel like the torch has been passed.