Field Notes from Fifty-Five Fruit Street #6. Context Dependent

In our family’s work, each of us is involved with team building and creating unified efforts with articulated goals across our chosen areas of expertise — medicine and healing, the arts, technology, and sports. One thing we all appreciate is that most everything in life is context-dependent. In my own efforts right now to create a winning team and an effective healing effort, this has never felt more true.

I mull this over in my long fluorescent night and two examples spring to mind. Over the many years of healthy check-ups at MGH, I have had the chance to explore the Healing Garden on the 8th floor of the Yawkey Building. I have felt underwhelmed by it, compared to the farm flowers and my own unruly and verdant yard, walks on the Hadley dike, sweeping views from our backyard Mt Pollux, not to mention the 100s of breathtaking places, human-made and natural, I have been fortunate to visit, hike, walk, swim, and experience across the globe. A few plants, some rocks, a bench. Okay there is a killer view of the Charles River and the iconic CITGO sign.

But a few days back, untethered from Ralph, I was granted a half hour clemency to go there with a nurse escort. To step out on my own power into the sunshine, into the plant space, into the real world. I burst into tears! How much I miss taking deep breaths of fresh…