countdown

T minus 20...
19...
18...
     I park the car, grab my luggage and find the bus to take me over to the airport.  Once there, I submit myself to the rather dehumanizing airport security.  And wait.  Wait, wait, wait.  Eventually, enough seconds tick off the clock to allow me to board the airplane.  There's an almost claustrophobic feel to the closeness.  All the irritating aspects of humanity seem especially exposed.  The overhead luggage never fits right and neither do my broad shoulders fit into the seat.  Inevitably, someone nearby is hacking germs everywhere and I think to myself, "great, now I get to inhale those things and get sick."  And no flight is complete without the crying infant.  I wait, and wait, and wait.
     Behind the scenes, airtraffic controllers are controlling the chaos and the pilots are going through their preflight checklist while we the passengers sit unwittingly at their mercy.  By some seemingly abitrary decision that might as well come from the clouds, we are cleared to go.  And something happens once the pilot comes over the intercom.  Something starts to happen.  The plane begins to move.  Potential energy (waiting) turns into a kinetic energy (one of movement).  The throttle kicks in while my body is forced back into the seat demanded by the laws of physics, and I am simply amazed at the brilliance of those mental giants who made flight possible.  The airplane parts from the ground and rises through the clouds.  There's almost a magical quality to it.  But of course, it's not magic.  It's all vectors.  A million things went into making not just that particular flight, but the general concept of flight possible.  And countless failures.  But we trust that the pilots know what they're doing.  That some mechanic did their job despite having a fight with their spouse.  That some air traffic controller double and triple checked everything despite battling some illness.
17...
16...
15...
     I felt some of that same awe of being propelled down the runway yesterday.  My dad is heading to stem cell transplant.  It really is happening.  Things are beginning to move.  The waiting is nearing an end.  There is a sensation of being forced back into the seat.  Gravitational forces take over.  It's all vectors now.  The way things move are no longer within our control.  But what about....???  Those questions never end.  At some point, they are answered with "MD Anderson is THE best."  Intellectually, we know that to be true.  But still, there is that crushing doubt that exists.  Yet it exists simultaneously in that same space as the awesome notion of replacing someone's stem cells with another human being's.  It's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein writ large.  Or, her alternate title, A Modern Prometheus.  They are truly stealing the knowledge of fire from the gods, or the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge.  What religion, or even humanistic philosophy, does not place value on the sanctity of blood?  My dad's blood type?  Gone.  It will soon be his brother's.  All the immunizations that my dad received as a child, as an immigrant, as an adult.  Gone.  They will soon be his brother's.  All the abilities and susceptibilities to the various colds and bugs that afflict some but not others?  All the immunological memory to infections in the past like chickenpox?  Gone.  They will soon be his brother's.  In exchange for eating that fruit, there is another chance at life.
14...
13...
12...