Page 42 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
rendering of any necessary medical procedures. Rather, it appears that her job was to remain seated on the front bench of the Plymouth or Pontiac (later, an Oldsmobile and, later still, to my horror, a Cadillac) and act as a sentry, ready at all times to ward off whatever dangers she knew must have been lurking in the neighborhood in question. (I do not know when this is being read. For the benefit of readers who grew up in a decidedly different medical environment, I should tell you that if a patient could not easily visit a doctor’s office during regularly scheduled office hours, the doctor would—believe it or not—actually come to him or her! When Danny, my firstborn child, ran a fever of 105 degrees, I was horrified to learn that our Scarsdale pediatrician insisted that he be bundled up and brought to the doctor’s office in ten-degree weather. I should also tell you that there was a time when no American cars were equipped with bucket seats.)
My mother’s medical talents were not limited to riding shotgun during house calls, however. My father did not have a receptionist, a secretary, a record keeper, or a nurse. He had my mother. When the office phone rang (all phones in the house had two buttons: one for the home line, which my mother dominated, at least until I was a teenager, and one for the patients to call on; the ring tones were distinguishable), she would answer it, “Dr. Yaverbaum’s office,” and proceed not only to listen to what the patient had to say but also, despite her lack of medical training, to ask questions and generally converse, sometimes making recommendations. That was fine, because she was, as she believed, an excellent diagnostician.
The home phone number was Esplanade 7-2735, and the office phone number was Esplanade 7-8646. I mention this not to demonstrate my powers of memory but by way of demonstrating the vast improve- ments that have been made by the telephone companies as they entered the days of digitalization. At some point in the early 1960s, the rotary phone was replaced by the touchtone phone, and the circular array of numbers and letters became the more efficient keypad. The gain in effi- ciency resulted, however, in a loss of personality, a loss of poetry. To dial or, now, punch in E-S, the first letters of Esplanade, one presses the keys
• 24 •