BLOG: Memories from my father
During my recent visit to Jordan, my brother’s family showed me some of the belongings of our late father. What caught my eyes was his old glucose meter (Figures). The device may be 15 years old.
I tried to turn on the device, not expecting it to work. To my surprise, when I put in a new battery, it did.
I plan to try to use it to see if it works accurately, especially since the test strips contain chemicals and may have a specific duration of function.
In a previous post, “My father’s sugar log,” I talked about my father’s diabetes and how my nephew Mohammed meticulously managed his grandfather’s diabetes. He kept my father’s glucose in a reasonable and safe range, with HbA1c around 8%, just appropriate for his age and comorbidities.
My late father was a role model for me. He taught me so many things. I had an inquisitive mind and wanted to learn a lot of things from him, from the essentials of mechanics to the skills of home improvement. Perhaps that is what may have instilled the passion for engineering in me; as I wrote in prior posts, I really had wanted to be an engineer, not a doctor.
There are numerous memories from my father that keep crossing my mind.
During our trip to Jordan, I spent time at our extended family's house in Jabal Al-Ashrafieh, a crowded and popular section in Amman, the capital of Jordan. The word “jabal” means mountain or hill; Amman comprises seven major jabals plus few smaller jabals.
Jabal Al-Ashrafieh is the largest, the highest and the most famous, where the largest public hospital, Al-Basheer Hospital, is located. Another landmark is the King Hussein Community Establishment for Children, a boarding school for orphans and children who have no families. It houses around 400 to 500 children.
I grew up in this family house from the late 1960s until the late 1980s, when I left the country. In this house, I went to school and then to medical school.
Our house is located on the southern part of Jabal Al-Ashrafieh in a busy and crowded neighborhood that is considered below middle class. Our late father, Abu Ibrahim, was a blue collar, hardworking man. He was a general mechanic who specialized in well drilling and heavy agricultural equipment.
Our father built the house in three phases as my two brothers and I were growing up — ultimately into a three-and-a-half story building — so that each of us would marry and live on one floor. My wife and I lived on the third floor apartment for the first year of our marriage; I was a young, freshly graduated physician. We had our first daughter in that apartment.
My wife worked as an RN in King Hussein Community Establishment, a short walking distance from our house. Her work was very busy as the in-charge nurse for the children, providing routine health care to the children, in addition to taking those who get ill to nearby hospitals.
Now my younger brother lives in the house with his family.
Perhaps my most beloved memory is when my father taught me how to drive.
Learning to drive had been a dream I began to aspire to achieve in early childhood, perhaps like all other boys. In Jordan, children are not allowed to drive or have license as young as age 15 years, as the case here in the U.S., but rather at age 18 years. But I had wanted to learn to drive earlier. When I turned 16, I asked my father to allow me to work during the school summer vacation on the same large commercial farm where he worked. He approved, and it was a pleasant present to me. But he told me that I will be treated like any other worker, expecting to work hard. I was pleased that I would be paid a decent monthly salary, around $60, which was very good for a 16-year-old adolescent.
One day during that summer work on the farm, I asked my dad to teach me to drive. I could not believe that he chose a huge tractor for my first driving lesson! I will tell this story in a future post.
What wonderful memories from my late father!
Collapse