by Malia Kirby

Over the past few years working with Blue Poppy, I’ve been asked a number of questions.  Part of the time, I’m asked for help with diagnostics.  Other times, I’m asked about my opinion of a particular formula, book, or class.  Occasionally, I’m asked for my experience with a particular needle line or if there’s a certain brand and/or gage I use exclusively (there is, but this is not that post).  The most common question I’ve been asked over the years, however, has nothing to do with the medicine at all.  The most common question I’m asked is what Bob is like and what it’s like to work with him.  So today, for giggles, I’d like to tell all of our readers out there my favorite story about Bob that I think of each time someone asks me about what he’s like or who he is as a person.

I first met Bob during my first semester of my first year of TCM school.  Being that I have nerdy tendencies, I sauntered into Blue Poppy one morning to order a few supplies and while I was shopping, I decided to pick up a copy of Teach Yourself to Read Modern Medical Chinese for grins, thinking that I would have plenty of time on my hands to learn the Chinese language while I was learning the medicine.  On that shopping trip—that was back when we were still at our old location on Western—Bob ended up bringing out my order for me from the warehouse and shook my hand, giving me a big grin.  At the time, I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, that’s pretty down to earth, the owner of the company hand-delivering my order,” and then went along my merry way back to class.

Let’s fast-forward to my graduation day.  By that point, Shawn had already been hired on here at the Pop (he graduated one semester before me), so we had both been invited to the company Christmas party.   After finishing up my final in internal medicine, I remember looking at the clock on my way out the door and realizing I had less than two hours to whip up my world-famous maple-pumpkin-pecan cheesecake with bourbon whipped cream, my internal perfectionist started to get a little nervous.  I hauled booty home, looked in the refrigerator, and realized we were out of eggs, so off to the grocery store I went.  By the time I got back home, I had little over an hour left to finish baking the cheesecake and get it travel-ready for the party.  At this point, I was wigging out over how much time I had remaining, not to mention mentally reviewing every single question on the exam I had just completed and wondering if my answers were “good enough,” even though I had no reason to worry.  Needless to say, because I was freaking out to the point that I could have benefitted from sedatives and my attention was on everything except what I was working on at the moment, I under-mixed the batter and forgot all about setting up a water bath…so that cheesecake cracked like the Grand Canyon.  When Shawn arrived at home to pick me up for the party, he found me sitting on the floor in the kitchen, leaning up against the stove with the cheesecake in my lap, losing my proverbial dookie, tears and mascara running down my face.

I don’t know what had possessed me to think that I would even remotely be capable of making cheesecake during the same week as my last week of finals —although I think it’s a fairly safe bet that the assumption came from the same place that made me think I could master the Chinese language while working my way through the accelerated track at TCM school—but today I’d say that I had lost my damned marbles.  Seriously, who has the time or energy to make anything after a long, difficult week, let alone someone who had been working and taking exams after three full years of pummeling his or her spleen qi with long nights of studying?  It wasn’t the cheesecake I was upset about (Well, in a way, I was.  I’ll admit that.  Undermixing plus no water bath is a noob mistake with cheesecake, and I knew better, but like I said earlier, I was freaked out so it’s not like I was thinking clearly…which should be obvious since I was attempting to make cheesecake immediately after my last final).  It was the fact I’d just finished up a rigorous Master’s program on time and taking as many electives as possible while I was enrolled.  It was that I graduated in December, making graduation a non-event, leaving me with very little closure and few friends or family members remembering the event happened at all, and one I was particularly proud of achieving.  It was that I was frantically trying to make sure everyone I knew and loved had their presents ready for Christmas.  It was that I could no longer rely on student loans to help pay my bills and that I would soon be repaying them.  It was that I had to hit the ground running with my practice, that it was sink or swim time.  It was that I was completely and utterly exhausted and I had pushed myself to my limit.  That was the point where I broke.  

Shawn, bless his little heart, picked me up off the floor, knowing fully well that my state wasn’t actually about the cheesecake at all.  He gave me a huge hug, wiped the tears from my eyes, and told me that no one would care that I wasn’t showing up with the cheesecake and that they would, in fact, be thrilled with just a simple cheese plate or even just the fact that I was there with him.  Ushering me to the car and to the cheese department at Whole Foods, we soon arrived at the holiday party.

As I walked in the front door—I’ll never forget this—Bob was on the other side of the front room.  He took one look at me, crossed the room, literally squeezing past everyone there and gently took the cheese plate from my hands, placing it on the buffet table.  He picked up a glass, filled it to the brim with a margarita and then handed it to me with an impish grin saying, “Here you go.  I’m so glad you could make it tonight!”  He then gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze, fixed up a small plate of the cheeses for everyone in the room, and promptly handed them out, one by one, making sure to crow, “Taste this!  Malia brought these in for us.  Aren’t these a great selection?” nodding back at me each time he gave someone a plate.  Next thing I knew, I was being hugged to within an inch of my life by Sunni and Honora.

It may seem like such a small thing that’s easily passed over and forgotten, but at that moment in time, it was exactly what I needed and I’m not referring to the stiff drink, although that probably helped, too.   I don’t know if it was his years of experience treating patients, his time spent in his Tibetan Buddhist practice, or if it was that he was playing the part of jolly Santa Bob to the hilt that day, but he just knew—whether it was consciously or unconsciously—what it would take to help me feel better, to let go of my finals, and just be there with everyone else.

I think sometimes, that we all forget that the map is not the territory.  It’s really easy to confuse our perception of who we think a person is with who that person actually is.  I suspect that every time someone asks me what it’s like to be around him, they’re expecting me to say something about how fantastic it is to be around someone who’s done so much for the field, that he’s super-imposing or terrifying, that he’s standoffish, intimidating, brilliant, or any of the rumors out there.  In a way, I suppose Bob is all of those things and yet none of them.  To me, however, when I think of Bob, I don’t think about any of that.  I think of that one moment of kindness.