Open-hearted - Part I

Facing major, scary surgery last December, I was fighting a decidedly non-Buddhist stare down with fear and the inevitability of death. Even after several pre-op procedures, walking through a hospital door toward open-heart surgery to repair a leaky mitral valve required a level of intestinal fortitude I did not possess. Plus, Christmas was a few weeks away. I took a last look at the pre-surgery notes I'd scribbled down on a pad of paper: wash with a special cleanser, don’t eat after midnight, hold off on meds, and the rest. As I put down my notepad, I noticed that the bottom of each page was inscribed with the name of a funeral home. Not a good sign.

For two years before my surgery, I had tried to summon a different kind of strength, one requiring that I face my doubts about my book project, and so, about my writer self. Would my observations about our quirky, serious, silly, life-altering (for me) twenty-four years together at MIT’s Stata Center be of interest to readers outside of my MIT world? Or to more than the staunchest fans of my long-time boss, Professor Noam Chomsky? Hadn’t I already worked through this question of self-worth? What scared me the most was one vital and inevitable question I had to ask him. Would he reply favorably? 

My fears had me half-heartedly finishing my book proposal, a necessary step toward finding the right agent to put my manuscript into the hands of an enthusiastic publisher. Noam had read a few of my blog essays in the past, and liked them, saying things like, “You have stories to tell about your adventures here, and you write them well. Keep it up.” This was generous of him, considering he was a main character in my stories. Since that initial nod of approval, others followed, usually with a humorous remark like, “Why don’t you put that in your book? Why don’t you write about how you follow two old men around to fix computer problems and find lost things?” But his life circumstances changed. He and his new wife required privacy, and although I had carefully chosen my words and scenarios, writing only from a place of affection, respect, and discretion - not easy when trying to publish a book these days - I worried how I would go forward with my project, should he not give his final blessing. 

I pushed forward and began querying publishers, receiving dozens of remarkably positive and encouraging rejection letters, but when a few asked if they could contact Noam about my manuscript, I discouraged them. A rookie mistake? I thought I was being honest and straightforward by citing freedom of speech and asking why I would need anyone’s approval, just as I had seen Noam do a thousand times. But my response, my doubting mind imagined, may have signaled to them my fear that Noam, in the end, might not approve, and what publisher wanted to face that possibility? For two and a half decades I had watched him recoil from anything shining a light on him, even as he gathered and shared globally the truths of political and human rights matters. He wanted his writing and lectures to be the focus, not himself, but that didn't mean I couldn't write to reveal this world-renowned luminary as a real, mortal human being, a mensch, as the Yiddish would say. I had learned from hundreds of responses to my blog posts that making the person behind this great mind more accessible, showing him enjoying family, boating, friends, gave other activists permission to do this hard work without burning out, as many before them had, some dying by their own hands.

So now, as I was about to endure what would turn out to be a nine-day ICU experience at the Mt. Auburn Hospital on the other side of Cambridge, not far from MIT, I found the courage to ask him that question. What did I have to lose?

I’ll answer this question next week, when I'll also share a peek into the wild world of the cardiac ICU, as viewed from inside my mind, through my own quirky lens.

💝