The circles of life (everything is temporary)

Circle - Edie Brickel & The New Bohemians - 1988

Sorry about the english. If you're interested, please use any translator (if possible not Google, it's the champion at sucking all your personal data each time you use it).

Sometimes I write in english because it happens that, for some meanings I can't find the exact word in spanish. This happens to me since at the young age of 27 started a new life in England.

I went there to do the Paediatrics specialty.

The hispano looks, with my ponytail and my fleury shirts going around was provoking confusion, attraction, rejection and shock, equally in women and men. 

If english are in general quite pompous and very stiff in the way they get dressed and they behave, in the hospital environment it was even worse. All doctors were dressed with a suit and tie under their white coats. 

I barely understood them, they barely understood me, I spoke louder than them and I couldn't almost hear them, and the everlasting smile in my face was bothering them in some way. And of course, for them I was the poor spanish that probably didn't study in a prestigious university as they did, and I was coming to their country to profit their system to get a specialty in medicine. What they didn't know by that time is that in the way to become specialists, they were going to have to work as hard as me, like real slaves. 

England had a good system for medical specialties, without having to go through a hard exam like in Spain (MIR), but they weren't giving it away for nothing. They would suck you all your energies, up to the last possible hour. Even 48h non stop on calls weekends, where in other countries that system was already forgotten. By simple logics, a person cannot be 48h non stop, sleeping little or nothing, and be expected to have his brain and emotions 100% functioning, which is expected in a doctor covering the Emergencies of a hospital.
It wasn't enough to demonstrate them in the day to day bases that spanish universities weren't as bad as they thought, as I was learning english quickly and I wasn't making any mistake.

Then my spontaneous strategy in front of their initial rejectión was pushing further my differences with them: "you're treating me as a poor spaniard clearly under you level of english arrogance? Then you you're gonna have the full pack of the spanish latino".

Never wore a suit (didn't have one anyway), nor normal shirts or ties, and wore always my jeans (the same I wore to go out). I started treating all the personnel, and of course the patients, as if they were spanish. It was kind of a revolution! Nobody was prepared for that. 

The firsts ones to welcome the difference were the patients; to touch them gently, talking a bit with them, even sometimes a little joke, made them smile and forget for a while their illnesses or their pains. 

It costed only few days for the nurses to have the confidence to call me by my name, not the all serious Dr. Martinez, they were calling me instead, Paco, even shouting across the corridors, Pacooooouu! ;) They couldn't pronounce it properly but for me was a big success. They would never resist any of my petitions anymore.

In the other side, my boss realised that my unconventional behaviour was't being a disturbance in the good functioning of his service, and more important, I was learning well and not committing any important mistake. And demonstrated that not only british people can be hard workers.

At that moment I was living on the hospital grounds, they had acomodación there, not only for foreigners, but also for british that were coming from far away in the country.

My tactic of showing the real McCoy latino, not only help me make few friends (mainly foreigners) but gave me an unexpected result.

We could have the results of blood tests through the computers, but they used to take long time, so we used to call directly to the lab and ask for a specific patient's results.

When I used to do that, there was always a very sweet and pleasant lady at the other side of the phone. And one day I considered the most natural thing to do, to go down to the lab and thank that technician that was always so helpful and nice (in fact I was curious of who was that english lady that treated me so well, not knowing me, and with my terrible accent).

When I arrived to the lab, the scene was a bit comical; me asking for "the lady that gave me the results of blood test with a pleasant voice (I had much less filters than I have now) to thank her for her job". A nice young woman came up, I thanked her and gave her two kisses (full pack ;) and little later I left.

But I didn't noticed that while I was shortly speaking with that technician, her sister, also technician, was watching the scene, back in the shadows.

I managed to go to the cinema with the technician of the nice voice, but she turned out to be more stiff and less pleasant than I recalled her at the phone. 

So by chance, one day she introduced her older sister to me, little I knew how important for me was going to be that sister.

Later on they organised a party on the pub of the hospital (yes, inside the hospital grounds!) with Karaoke and all. When I went into the Pub, oh my God, it seemed I was entering a different England! No ties, no suits, and even some english folks seemed to be smiling, even a couple laughing!

I spotted the sisters and went to say hello, they invited me to sit with them. That moment I realised how beautiful were the older sister's black eyes and her black straight hair.

Soon after the Karaoke started, my conclusion was that, where global level in karaoke use to be low, the british sanitaries level was way below the global average...

Then it was a patriotic duty to show them the spanish level ;)

Went to the stage, grabbed the microphone (shame=0, that has changed with the years ;(. 

First I sang "Brown eyed girl" from Van Morrison, that was for her heart. I had an advantage, when I was younger I studied musical studies and piano. The second I sang was "La Bamba" from Ritchie Valens, this one was for her eyes. People started clapping hands and shouting, I think they've never seen someone moving his hips in that way. I have to recognise that in that time I was "más chulo que un 8" ;).

And that was the beginning of all. Later we went to Central London on my old R5 GTX...

And a month later I was living in her house.

With a little detail, she had two kids from her previous marriage, two and four years old. With my, by that times, lack of experience, and  sensibility, I didn't think it twice, my parents at 27 had already two or three kids. But well it wasn't the same situation. For starters, I wasn't at home where I could get help from my family. Then these kids weren't mine which made the thinks more difficult.

Anyway I won the trust of those kids enough to start calling me daddy after only a year. And then we had our own baby.

At 27, in one year, from a single fleury latin lover (or that's what I believed I was) became a father of a three kids family, quite a change...

All this story was just to explain why sometimes I need to speak and write in english. At the end of 6 years, at my job and in my family life, I did everything in english, even at some point I started dreaming in english. 

But anyway, this story illustrate well the title of this entry.

That's what I got of that CIRCLE of life, a now 26 years old son that lives in England, some experience on looking after and educate children of different ages, a decent level of english, and a good experience in Paediatrics (without the title of specialist), that helped me in some jobs and also in some relationships.

Almost all of us have gone through circles in our lives, some more, some less.

For example my little two brothers married their first girlfriends, and they're still together after 30 years.

But well, they also must have had their circles in life, even married. The crazy in love times at the beginning, without children, the exhausting times with the small children, the more relaxed and mature times when children have become young adults...The change of jobs...The death of a mother...

I was putting the example of my siblings because in comparison with them, my life has been a continued carrousel, with more circles than I can count.

Has it been good or bad?

Judging by the end result, probably more bad than good.

What did I get at the end of my crazy life?

Loneliness.

It's true that I enjoyed of many of those circles, but at the end, they were all painful.

I can deny all I learned in the process, but what for?

I got two kids, one 26 year old, living in England, that I have seen him more or less regularly and with whom now we are in touch by phone regularly. And also an 11 year old that lives with me half of the time, he is my major source of happiness, and I feel like, at least I got that objective in life; to take care of him, educate him and try him to be happy with himself, with his mother and with me.

But well, the rest of my life is a disaster, still waiting for the doctors to give me the green light to start working. With no clear plan of where is gonna go my profesional career from now on (and I don't have any job waiting for me when I get cleared to work).

And yes I can have nice conversations with my 11 yo, he's very clever, but he is not an adult. I have some close friends, but physically not close enough to have those adult conversations, with the warmth of the human touch.

And love, little by little, accumulates inside me. And I feel like day by day, that love goes to waste, and nobody will ever get it.