Prelude and Fugue, in Minors

Abstract

Prelude and Fugue, in Minors Lesmana Lim PRELUDE The first thing you notice about the Shriner's Hospital for Children is the vast expanse of handicapped spaces in the parking area. It immediately imparts a sense of grim pragmatism to an edifice built upon the most optimistic of ideas-that children who need special medical care should be able to get it for free. The handicap signs form a single column stretching into the distance, a long chain ofstern metal posts, a sturdy phalanx set to defend the choicest spots from the lucky ones who still enjoy a full range ofmotion. We park in the back of the lot. I was ten yeats old die fitst time I came to the hospital. Chicago was a wonderful oddity to me then, a schizophrenic metropolis. Chicago was the Latino quarter, where wholesalers gave us coffee and bagels and my dad bought exotic goods for our familygrocery store. Or itwas the alien mystique ofChinatown, with its beautifully strange architecture and herbal boutiques and pigs and ducks hanging in butcher's windows. Other times it was Michigan Avenue, bustling with fashion and movement, buildings taller dian God. It seemed as if the city was constantly disappearing and reappearing, a series of urban Brigadoons, each unaware ofthe existence ofother Chicagos. It was any other city, as it would look shone dirough a prism, each component expanded and more than the sum of its parts, every hue distinct and luminous. The Shriner's Hospital was not a color I had seen before. I was accustomed to the conventional strangenesses ofChinatown or the wholesale district, but here was a thoroughly unimportant-looking building crawling with old men in peculiar hats. The red fez is a great symbol ofthe Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, distinguishing it from the other Masonic orders. It's considered a sign of nobility and philanthropy, proudly worn by members for over a hundred years. The Shriner's take their fez seriously. I, however, could not. Nothing in the entire history ofsecret playground clubs and special handshakes could rival the absurdity ofthese men wearing those 200} George B. Lawson Essay Award, SecondPlace 5 6 LESMANA LIM hats, which looked not unlike an overturned KFC bucket lovingly perched upon your grandfather's head. This wasn't MichiganAvenue. I couldn't decide what part ofChicago I had gotten into. The confusion only deepened when I saw the hospital commons. It was a spacious, well-decorated area, designed to take full advantage of natural light. A generous number of trees and plants brightened the atmosphere, along with a few well-kept potted flowers. There was a black, baby grand piano with a bright tone in one corner, and two colorful play areas for smaller children in others. And everywhere were wheelchairs, prosthetics, splints and braces connected to children of all sorts. It was like stumbling into some postmodern incarnation of Leonardo's workshop, or John Cage composing the human form, an etude ofirregular symmetries and mechanical aides. I didn't know what to think about it, this menagerie of toddlers, but it scared me in ways that left me ashamed. The whole enterprise carried such an air ofdashed expectations, offailure. I sat on a bench, pulled out my Walkman and turned up Gershwin as loud as it could go. When it came time for my appointment, a thin young man brought me to a small lab where they recorded my height and weight, snapped some Polaroids and took a series ofx-rays. Afterwards he led me to a clean, white office where a doctor was waiting. She had a kind face and we small-talked for a bit. Then she asked me, "Do you know why you're visiting us today?" I said no, that my mother only told me that we would be going to Chicago, and that we were going to see a doctor. I'd had shots before and gotten my blood taken once or twice, and it hadn't been all diat bad. "Okay," she said. "Let me just tell you diat there's nothing wrong with you, and that you're a perfecdy healthy boy. You've...