Heidelberg in Spring

Heidelberg Castles and Alte Brucke

I am writing what is likely to be my last grant.  If awarded, my scientific life will be spared for five more years - and that will allow me to bring my contribution to science to completion and take me to a respectable age for retirement. If not, and the current  <7% odds at the NIH are definitely not in my favor, then despite the acknowledged unfairness of the situation, I will be unceremoniously stripped of lab space, dusted into a closet and psychologically pressured into early retirement.  All in the service of raising our ratings in the US News and World Report, a rag whose only purpose is to make a facile superficial ranking of US Medical Schools, based in part on NIH dollars per square foot. Such is the life of a US scientist. The hard-earned Cell, Science and Nature publications and the letters from peers attesting to ones standing that rightfully gained us tenure in the past now count for naught – the end will be Darwinian.  To date I have been “lucky” - few of my female colleagues have survived to my age – almost 60 - an age that men of my father’s era used to refer to as “neither use nor ornament”. My older colleagues have fallen by the wayside in droves “to spend more time with their families” - we all know what this means. 

 

A 1911 photograph of Thomas Edison (Library of Congress)

 Be that as it may, my grant writing strategy is, as it always has been, to begin the day by dissipating the anxiety associated with such unfavorable odds and outcomes by fervently putting the more mundane aspects of life in order - the logic being that - if the detritus in the kitchen sink can be tamed - then in the process my thoughts will likewise be brought into order and distilled. It has worked in the past – the epiphany usually comes during the last hour as the final drawer of old socks is excavated.  Creative writers like Doris Lessing, tell the same tale – of days and weeks of seemingly unproductive pacing, of feverish cleaning or daydreaming preceding the emergence of some great novel.  Once, after giving a lecture at UMDNJ, my hosts kindly took me on a tour of Thomas Edison’s laboratory in West Orange, NJ.  Edison had long recognized that he came upon his best inventions after taking afternoon naps and to that end had installed a day bed in his beautiful library to foster and embrace this method.  Somehow intense thinking demands these subliminal rituals to steady the mind and often, as Edison knew, the need “to sleep on it”. 

Yesterday in quest of this necessary Karma, I rose early; it was a beautiful Wednesday market morning. I marshaled the dogs and out we strode in determined husky fashion, on our own private Iditarod to quell the rising tide of panic, past the U.N and on towards Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. There amid the pasture raised eggs, the artisan cheese and the mounds of freshly picked asparagus I found a beautiful bunch of white lilacs -  pervading the market with their perfume. Despite the ludicrousness of straggling home through a sea of commuters, with rambunctious dogs and a backpack full of provisions - I could not resist buying a large bunch of branches. 

The fragrance of fresh lilacs made me swoon. The grim-faced commuters on their way towards a day of drudgery were similarly soothed by their waft and smiled at the blossom branches waving in the breeze and dogs frolicking - a little burst of refreshing life.

This evening the scent of lilac drifting around the apartment reminded me that almost thirty years ago to the day, on a similar chilly May morning, I set out on the big adventure. I took my first flight ever to interview for my postdoctoral position in Heidelberg and had purchased a cut-price airplane ticket (in case I didn’t get the job) - 25 pound sterling return from Eastleigh airport to Frankfurt via Amsterdam. The prop-plane was a low flying hedge-hopper that must have been left over from WW2 – the co-pilot got up mid flight to serve us coffee and boiled sweets to help with the lack of cabin pressure.  “Come for a week in spring when the cherries will be in bloom along the river” my future advisor had said.  Indeed they were – it was “Spargel Season” in the palatinate, the smell of lilacs wafted over Heidelberg and the banks of the Neckar were a riot of pink blossom. It was a pity that it rained relentlessly for all four days, perhaps some heavenly foreboding of a gloomier end. But that day I was young, it was spring, and the air was full of promise.