Tag: retirement

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Why I Would Make an Excellent Coxswain

An open application to Georgetown Rowing, submitted from a highly qualified bench near the Potomac

There comes a time in every retired physician’s life when he must ask himself the big questions:

Have I contributed enough to society?
Have I learned enough about the human condition?
Can I still yell at young people in a constructive manner while sitting down?

That last question, I believe, points me toward my next great calling: coxswain.

For the uninitiated, the coxswain is the small but mighty field general of a rowing shell. While the rowers provide muscle, sweat, blisters, and the faint aroma of wet Lycra, the coxswain provides direction, rhythm, motivation, steering, and what my family would describe as “a socially sanctioned opportunity to be bossy.”

In other words: I was born for this.

I am retired, which means I possess the most important qualification of all: availability. I am also increasingly immobile, which in ordinary life might be considered a limitation. But in rowing, the coxswain is not expected to row. He sits. He observes. He commands. At last, a sport has emerged that rewards my current athletic profile.

I spend time down by the Potomac, watching Georgetown students glide across the water with youth, discipline, and suspiciously healthy knees. I admire them. They are bright, strong, and purposeful. I would like to help. More specifically, I would like to sit in the stern of their boat with a bullhorn and improve morale through a combination of nautical insight, grandfatherly encouragement, and mild cardiology-level urgency.

My recent piano studies would also make me invaluable. Rowing, like music, depends on tempo. Too fast and the boat becomes chaos. Too slow and everyone looks like they are commuting to Rosslyn. I am learning rhythm, timing, and the spiritual power of repetition. I can already envision myself chanting:

“Row, row, row… gently? No. Firmly. Together. On my count. Again. No, not like that.”

The classic song Row, Row, Row Your Boat has been criminally underused as a training tool. With enough metronomic precision, I could transform it from nursery rhyme to aquatic battle hymn. Imagine eight Georgetown athletes, blades flashing, shell surging forward, while I maintain perfect tempo like Leonard Bernstein in a life vest.

I also like bullhorns. This is not incidental. Some men collect watches. Some collect golf clubs. I appreciate amplification. A bullhorn gives the retired man what Medicare does not: projection. I could deliver crisp, actionable commands across the Potomac with the confidence of a man who has spent decades telling patients to avoid seeds, nuts, alcohol, red meat, stress, and Google.

My medical background would be a bonus. Should a rower complain of abdominal pain, I could immediately distinguish between appendicitis, gas, overtraining, and “you’re 19, keep rowing.” If someone develops blisters, I can offer empathy. If someone becomes short of breath, I can say, “Excellent, that means you are exercising.”

I would also bring maturity. Many coxswains motivate with youthful intensity. I would bring something different: historical perspective. During a race, while other boats shout “Power ten!” I might call:

“Remember the Peloponnesian War!”
“Think of Washington crossing the Delaware!”
“Imagine your tuition bill chasing you!”

That sort of thing stays with a crew.

And yes, I am still looking to earn a university letter. Some men letter in football. Some in baseball. I am proposing a new category: Distinguished Late-Life Coxswain Emeritus. I would accept a sweater, a blazer patch, or frankly even a laminated certificate. I am not proud. I am, however, very available for ceremonies.

The photograph of the rowers says it all. There they are, powerful and synchronized, cutting across the Potomac with purpose. And there I am, not pictured, standing nearby thinking: “Those boys need rhythm, wisdom, and possibly a retired gastroenterologist with a megaphone.”

So, Georgetown, consider this my formal application.

I can sit.
I can shout.
I can count to eight.
I am learning piano.
I like your students.
I own comfortable shoes.
And I promise never to confuse port and starboard more than twice per outing.

Put me in the boat.

Or at least give me a bullhorn and a letter sweater.

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Tree Surgeon

The second hand swept past twelve midnight on the operating room clock as the retractor dug into the palm of my hand and my biceps lactate level soared. “Hmm, you’re choosing Internal medicine?”, intoned Dr. G, as he directed the surgical resident to place catgut sutures into a human gut that was defiled by a stab wound in the heat of a gang altercation in East Los Angeles in 1977.  I pulled on the retractor as Dr. G. sermoned his soliloquy on the superiority of surgical practice. “Who is going to save the patient with appendicitis or peritonitis from certain death? The surgeon!”, he emphatically answered. 

Morning arrived quickly and surgical rounds began as a retinue of visiting professors, fellows, residents, interns, social workers, case workers, physical and occupational therapists and finally third year medical students filed in behind Dr. G. In my sleep deprived mind, I saw his surgical cap as a tri-cornered hat, his pocketed stethoscope as a sword and his entry through the door of the large L.A. County Hospital ward as passing under a faux Arc de Triomphe after his conquests at Austerlitz. Moments later, he transmogrified into a fusion Perry Mason and Clarence Darrow, as he interrogated a profusely sweating surgical resident who had the misfortune of a post cholecystectomy wound infection.

Many decades later, playing “where are they now?,” I did the perspicacious detective work of finding out what accolades Dr. G. had received in the 21st century.  In other words, I had googled his name. Up came the answer: He had retired to a South Pacific Island to manage a greenhouse and take care of plants and trees on the island. He had become a plant and tree doctor! The head of Los Angeles County Trauma Response who had mended miles of injured intestines, cauterized thousands of bleeding blood vessels, and drained an ocean of abscesses had become a tree and plant caretaker. I was gobsmacked to say the least.

 Trees were meant to be cut down to make way for McDonalds’ parking lots, inspire insipid poems that 4th graders needed to memorize, and knock down errant golf balls.  (Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of D- Day and former  U. S. President, urged Augusta National Golf Club to cut down a tree on the 17th hole that consistently stymied his tee shot).

As the years peeled away and I grew more gray, I learned respect for green. Peripatetic journeys with my botany-wise spouse and selected artificial intelligence plant apps opened up the world of beauty and ecological necessities of our flora. The mountain ash leaves feeding an army of tadpoles, our Red Osier Dogwood stabilizing our topsoil and preventing erosion, sunflowers blooming in summer and providing sustenance for bees, the Oregon Crabapple providing shelter and food for the Bluebird and Cardinal, and the joyful human stroll under the elevated tunnel of American Elms lining the Literary Walk at Central Park, are fine examples of the edification and beauty I had discovered in my new-found hobby of tree identification and exploration. 

Dr. G had seen decades of turmoil and tragedy mending the human body in East LA. He found tranquility and peace tending the South Pacific flora thousands of miles from the mainland. His time spent caring for trees, I would like to think, was like a healing tonic for a soul undoubtedly troubled and fractured from the many toils and challenges of practicing medicine and surgery for decades.  In a sense, he was finding his humanity and giving back to the planet what we have taken for granted for so long: the life-giving beauty of the Kingdom Plantae.  I have to admit, I completely understood.