Balls and Walnuts

I’ve been thinking about courage lately.

Oops! Not that kind of courage. (Although, you must admit it takes real courage to show your camel toe.) I meant this kind of courage:

(From SueRob’s photostream.) Look at this little guy. You just know he’s about to make a great leap into the unknown, don’t you?

A bit less than a hundred years ago, my ancestors on both sides plucked up the courage to take one motherfluffin’ long-assed boat ride to the States. No internet back then, no way to research the decision, save for letters from family members who had already made the journey:

An Actual Letter to the Old Country

Dear Chaim,

You will love it here in the New World. You cannot turn around without some wealthy goy throwing money at you! I make twenty dollars a week tending bar, pouring gin into the mouths of the Wall Street gonifs. I send half of my paycheck home to Bubbe and still I have more than I need. Like a king I live. And the women. The women! Oy, Chaim, in America? In America, they swallow.

Here’s money for the boat. My advice: come over now and don’t look back.

Your loving brother,

Shmuel

Folks in those days, they knew how to risk everything for a better life. They had real chutzpah.

Yeah, that’s the stuff. So, why should I feel any angst about going to Canada? We don’t have to cross a goddamned ocean. We could know well in advance what our standard of living would be. Undoubtedly, I could have a job waiting for me.

It’s hard not feeling at least some emotional kinship with Chaim. Our goal is the same: a better life for our family and ourselves. Then, as now, such moves were not irreversible, but the financial risks are considerable.

I talk about risk with my patients all the time. They don’t always listen to me, but I give it my best. “If you get your tonsils taken out, sure, you could bleed post-operatively. But if you don’t have them removed, you might continue to get strep throat every few months, and each strep throat carries a small risk of developing a serious problem with your heart or kidneys. No matter what you do, you’ll be accepting some risk. Which risks are you more comfortable with?”

And it’s the same with living in the States. Stay here, accept the risk of finding ourselves unwilling citizens of a fascist nation.

There have been inklings of fascism in the past, of course — Senator McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Reagan & Bush Sr.’s secret plans for martial law. But each time, the world seemed to right itself and our Constitution emerged intact. In the last six years, the worrisome changes have accelerated, and now it’s hard to imagine things going back to normal, if “normal” means the repudiation of Bush’s America (restore habeas corpus and repeal the Patriot Act for starters) and the punishment of the lawbreakers who have forsaken the public trust.

Even if a Democrat takes office in ‘09, I’m not sure we’ll see things go back to normal.

And that’s why I’m starting my research. Karen has agreed to a vacation in British Columbia, so that’s the first step. In the meantime, we’ll see what we can learn on the Internet. I’ll be asking my Canadian friends lots of questions, too.

Like:

Do they have camel toes in Canada?

D.