Tag Archives: Johns Hopkins Hospital

Circling

making a story, Memoir, memories, storytelling, , , , ,
 
Working on my new story, Love Notes, keeps me focused on days in Baltimore when Jim and I met.
Not complaining. I love it.
Especially as it seems to be creating some serendipity connections between then and now.
When I boarded the train in Charlotte to head to Baltimore to enter Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing I was carrying a book that a nurse gave me “to read on your trip.” I did read “Miss Susie Slagles” by Augusta Tucker as the train clipped off the miles toward Baltimore. By the time I reached the nurses home to check in my imagination was fired by Tucker’s novel and her romanticized version of Hopkins in the early 1900s. I loved it.
I have been re-reading Tucker’s novel as part of my “research” for my new story. It prompts many memories.
Yesterday my friend Kay called from Texas, “Do you want to go back to Hopkins in June?” Before I could say, “YES.” she added. “lets stay where we did last year?” She read my mind. Those words were on my tongue. Last year we stayed in a renovated row-house on the street where Jim and I lived when we got married. Talk about walking back into the past – – it was great. “YES”
Now, the plans are underway and I am very excited to return to the old neighborhood.I have also been reading a history of Hopkins as a teaching hospital.
Last night at family gathering a new acquaintance suggested I read “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” which is the story of a major breakthrough in research on cervical cancer which occurred in 1951. Jim came to JHH in 1952 and I arrived in 1954. I recognized the names of researchers. I was sure Jim would have known them. It would have been so great to talk about it with him.
That led me to call one of Jim’s classmates. He is an OB-GYN – its his field. “Yes, I read the book – went to see the author speak. She was terrific. Several of the researchers had been professors at time we were there. You were right to recognize the names.” He and is wife may be coming to the scientific meetings the same time Kay and I will be there. Maybe they will try to stay in the same area we are.  Yes, he would like to talk about the days he lived in a boarding house very like the one in Miss Susie Slagles. “I remember it well.”There are others I want to see and talk with and places I want to go.
I know I will have to work hard to walk down memory lane because so much has been changed.But  – – it will be worth the struggle.
I really love it when life moves in circles

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Where Do Stories Begin?

making a story, Memoir, , , ,

For me the beginning days of a New Year bring on spurts of cleaning out, letting go, reflecting and musing on the past. I have a long-time habit of making lists, sorting out, neat-en-ing-up, and day-dreaming as I prepare for an early year week-end workshop with storyteller Donald Davis.  Donald is a brilliant guide  to work with as you tip-toe into a new story.

Often I open long-closed boxes because there is no telling what you will find – – especially when there might be photos among the papers. Sometimes it takes more time than the initial finding for the possibilities to emerge. It reminds me of gathering scraps when I am thinking of a working on collage. In this instance its collecting  a bit of this and a bit of that until you can feel and form a story.

For instance: last year I found a few black and white photos of cars in the snow on North Broadway, Baltimore, MD circa probably January 1954.
Snow at JHH March 1954

My husband Jim took the photos from the roof of his fraternity house which was across the street from Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was a few doors down from Hampton House, the Nurses Home where the student nurses lived.

Jim came to Baltimore in 1953 from Madera, CA which is located in the heart of the fertile and sunny San Joaquin Valley and in sight of the majestic snow-capped Sierra-Nevada Mountains. Snow was not  unfamiliar to him – when he went to the mountains – but not piled up on city streets.

As I looked at this picture I realized it was taken before I arrived in Baltimore in September 1954.  It is a moment before we met – – before our first date – – before our  courtship and wedding –  that led to the 57 years of our life together.  Before death “did us part”.

We don’t exist together in this moment.

Jim was 22 years old and a first year Medical Student at Johns Hopkins. I was 17 years old and a Senior in High School in Charlotte, NC with no “fixed ideas” of where I would be after Graduation.

We were poised on the edge of a story that was not known or even imagined.

Maybe this is the moment for taking  a “long-view.”