I’ve just checked in at the courtyard of Ross Hall, at 23rd and Eye Streets in downtown Wash DC, where I showed up 24 years ago to start my medical career.  I’m back for my 20th year reunion.

Sadly, I had to work in the hospital up in Baltimore this morning, and one thing after another came up, and I didn’t manage to get here in time for the hospital tour, nor for the speaker from my class.  If things had been crazier at work, I wouldn’t have made it down here at all, and was going to head to Rockville to spend shabbat with friends, before a bar mitzvah celebration tomorrow morning.

But I did make it, and I had a little time (since I’d missed those other events), and I decided to come into the library, where I spent many hours of my student days, and tackle email and deal with notes (the wonders of electronic medical records – I can sign my notes on the patients I saw today in a totally separate city!).  I was able to get a temporary access code, and sat down to work, when I suddenly realized that I might be sitting in the exact spot that I spent hours, during the first year of med school, emailing my distant significant other, who would become my husband.  He had to stay back in California during that first year, to finish projects with his post-doc position there, and to arrange for his fellowship position at the NIH here.  We weren’t sure, during that year, if our relationship would last the year of separation, but when I returned to California, he had planned the wedding, and we were married in August of the summer between first and second years.

Funny how life goes, huh?

So, now I’m back here, to reconnect with old friends.  I will still be travelling back up to Rockville tonight, to stay with those gracious friends who will host me for shabbat – another modified shabbat in my calendar – and we will join together tomorrow morning to celebrate the coming-of-age of one of our sons’ favorite friends.

Life is good.  Shabbat shalom.