This evening, it was our pleasure to host out friends Dr. Archie Dan Smith, Dr. Enrique Spindel, and Mrs. Monika Spindel for a Bug Boil. Monika and Enrique have joined us for the culinary ritual in previous years, but not since the onslaught of the COVID Apocalypse.
Archie and I were residency colleagues back in the late 1970s to early 80’s. He was a year ahead of me. We both stayed in Austin and made our place in Central Texas Medicine. Enrique arrived in Austin after his Fellowship in Gastroenterology; he was my “go-to” GI consultant for the years that I was in private practice. All that was decades ago.
Archie Dan and I have been retired for quite a while. Enrique continues to practice Gastroenterology parttime. Like my pediatrician brother, for Enrique, the clinical art still has a hold on the spirit of the man. I respect that.
We shared updates of our families. I shared a few items of our mutual friends and former clinical colleagues, the Dooleys and Delgados, with them. Archie Dan remarked that it seemed so odd that we all had children in their mid-thirties, and we still thought of ourselves as young. It’s a dissonance that I share with Archie Dan.
We ate bugs, drank a libation or two, and shared our family stories. It was a delight.
To my right is Archie Dan Smith, and next to him our colleague Enrique Spindel. To my immediate left is Monika Spindel (Math and Childhood Education specialist – also Legal Court, Spanish-English Translator), and spouse and long-suffering partner, Susan in red.
Of all the things that I have missed during the COVID apocalypse, human contact has been the most acutely felt.
How fun! And delicious!