August 8, 2025: “Adolescence,” White Coat Ceremony, “SpongeBob Gives My Daughter Advice When She Starts Medical School”

It has been a long, incredible day.

We all go through rites of passage as young people—kindergarten graduations, First Communions (if you’re Catholic), bar mitzvahs, high school graduations, first sexual encounters, weddings.  You get the idea.

Sharon Olds writes about a rite of passage . . .

Adolescence

by: Sharon Olds

When I think of my adolescence, I think

of the bathroom of that seedy hotel

in San Francisco, where my boyfriend would take me.

I had never seen a bathroom like that—

no curtains, no towels, no mirror, just

a sink green with grime and a toilet

yellow and rust-colored—like something in a science experiment,

growing the plague in bowls.

Sex was still a crime, then,

I’d sign out of my college dorm

to a false destination, sign into

the flophouse under a false name,

go down the hall to the one bathroom

and lock myself in.  And I could not learn to get that

diaphragm in, I’d decorate it

like a cake, with glistening spermicide,

and lean over, and it would leap from my fingers

and sail, into a corner, to land

in a concave depression like a rat’s nest,

I’d bend and pluck it out and wash it

and wash it down to that fragile dome,

I’d frost it again till it was shimmering

and bend it into its tensile arc and it would

fly through the air, rim humming 

like Saturn’s ring, I would bow down and crawl to retrieve it.

When I think of being eighteen,

that’s what I see, that brimmed disc

floating through the air and descending, I see myself

kneeling and reaching, reaching for my own life.

Olds’ poem isn’t a sex poem.  It’s a poem about a young woman figuring out who she is, what her values are.  She’s obviously aware that what she’s about to do is illegal (“Sex was still a crime . . .”), but she doesn’t care.  She’s a college student, and the world (and her diaphragm) is in the palm of her hand.  A rite of passage.

Today, my daughter had her white coat ceremony for medical school.  There are 104 students in her class.  That’s a lot of white coats.  My daughter looked radiant—this is something that she’s been thinking about for a long, long time.  (My sister, Sally, was a surgical nurse, so I know that medicine is in her blood.)  Did I shed some tears?  Of course.  Did I cry when I hugged her after the ceremony.  Of course.  Did I tell her she’s amazing?  Of course.

We went to Olive Garden for dinner (her choice).  She ordered the eggplant parmigiana, as did I.  She ordered an apple sangria, and I ordered the berry sangria.  At one point, she held my hand as we talked to each other.  It was perfect (and I don’t use that word very often, because nothing is perfect).

I’m now back at my hotel with my wife and son.  We’re all kind of whipped because of the day’s happenings.  My wife is sleeping, and my son is on his way.  The other thing about rites of passage:  they are emotionally and physically draining.  

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Think of a favorite cartoon character.  Write a poem where that character gives you some smart (or not so smart) advice.  For example, maybe Homer Simpson wants to discuss healthy eating.  Or Elmer Fudd wants to talk with you about gun safety.  It can be a cartoon character from your childhood, a movie, or a currently-airing show.

SpongeBob Gives My Daughter Advice

When She Starts Medical School

by: Martin Achatz

Now that you’re wearing that white

coat, I will impart to you

my secret sponge wisdom,

passed down from the Sponge Oracle

of Bikini Bottom:

First, if you can’t fall asleep,

eat a Krabby Patty.  If you still

can’t fall asleep, eat a Krabby Patty

with cheese.

Second, if you feel depressed,

eat a Krabby Patty.  If you’re still

sad afterward, eat a double Krabby Patty,

cheese optional.

Third, if you need to lose weight,

eat a low-carb Krabby Patty,

then go jellyfishing.  Or

skip the jellyfishing and just

eat a Krabby Patty with extra cheese.

Fourth, if you catch fin rot, anchor

worms, or hole-in-the-head,

take two Krabby Patties and call

me in the morning, if you’re still

alive.

Fifth, if you think you’re dying,

eat as many Krabby Patties as you

want.  It doesn’t matter.

Sixth, a list of other things

a Krabby Patty can cure:  stonefish

syndrome, athlete’s tentacle, scale loss,

paranoia, panic attacks, pica,

pectorile dysfunction, guilt, killer comets,

hook-in-mouth disease, and

stiff pinky complex,

Seventh, remember the motto

of all med students: I’m ready,

I’m ready.

NOTE:  This message was sponsored 

by Eugene Harold Krabs.

May 11: Those Weeks in June, Forks in the Road, Robert Frost

Merton spends some time with friends . . . 

The cottage was crowded, and that meant that there were far more dirty dishes piling up in the kitchen after those perilous meals of fried, suspicious meats. But everybody was busy with something and the woods were quiet and the sun was as bright as ever on the wide, airy landscape of rolling mountains before our faces. 

Presently Seymour came from New York, with Helen his wife, and Peggy Wells came to the cottage, and later came Nancy Flagg who went to Smith and for whom Lax had written a poem in the New Yorker. Gibney and Seymour climbed into the tops of thirty-foot trees and built a platform there about ten feet long between the trees, reached by a ladder up the side of one of the trees. It was so high that Lax would not even climb it. 

Meanwhile, in the early mornings, outside the room where the girls lived, you would see Peggy Wells sitting and reading one of those fancy editions of the Bible as literature out loud to herself. And when Nancy Flagg was there, she sat in the same sun, and combed her long hair, which was marvelous red-gold and I hope she never cut it short for it gave glory to God. And on those days I think Peggy Wells read the Bible out loud to Nancy Flagg. I don’t know. Later Peggy Wells walked through the woods by herself puzzling over Aristotle’s Categories. 

Rice and Knight and Gerdy sat apart, mostly in or around the garage, typing or discussing novels or commercial short stories, and Lax grew his beard, and thought, and sometimes put down on paper thoughts for a story, or talked with Nancy Flagg. 

For my own part, I found a good place where I could sit on a rail of the fence along the stony driveway, and look at the far hills, and say the rosary. It was a quiet, sunny place, and the others did not come by that way much, and you could not hear the sounds of the house. This was where I was happiest, in those weeks in June.

Merton is still living the life of a person who sees the future perfectly.  He knows where he's headed, and he knows how he's going to get there.  The tone he uses in this passage is one of complete satisfaction and clarity.  "I am holy and above all this," he seems to be saying.  "I don't care about novel writing or girls with marvelous red-gold hair."  All he needs is a place apart and a rosary.

I wish I had that kind of vision.  It would be comforting to possess the kind of self assurance of being exactly where you are supposed to be, knowing exactly what you are supposed to be doing.  I haven't had that experience since middle school.  Maybe grade school.  When teachers and parents tell you exactly what to do and how to do it.

Adulting is full of choices.  Places where, as Robert Frost wrote, two roads diverge in a yellow wood.  What branch of that fork do you take?  Then, when the road branches again, do you take the path less traveled again, or follow the well-worn trail?  And the next branch?  And the next?  It's a never-ending process.  The destination never any closer.

And, really, is life about destinations?  Because we're all headed to the same place, eventually.  Life is about the road itself--the choices you make along the way--not the place you end up.  It's sort of like Christmas.  I prefer the build-up to the day.  Christmas Eve is better than Christmas Day.  Wrapping a gift better than receiving one.

In the passage above, Merton has reached Christmas Day.  He's followed the star to the manger, and he's found salvation.  That's the source of his peace of mind and heart in this passage.  He's been to the manger.  Unwrapped his Christmas present.

An unquiet life is a life of constant searching.  Never trusting in the universe or a higher power.  I'm just as guilty as the next person when it comes to this.  Even though I call myself a devout Christian, I live a daily existence of fear.  Sitting on my couch every night, I have to force myself not to let my mind fall down the rabbit hole of tomorrows.  Human beings are creatures of the present moment.  And what I do right now--the path I choose to take--is the only thing within my power.

I can't backtrack to old forks in the road and make different choices.  And I can't look into the distance and tell where the bend in the road leads.  The past is over.  The future will become the present soon enough.  It's all about the current intersection.  And trust.  Frost says at one point in "The Road Not Taken":  "And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black." 

So, tonight I will publish this post, make my lunch for tomorrow, set out my clothes.  When I wake tomorrow, I will pick one of those ways leading on to way.  And I will leave the rest up to God or the universe.

Saint Marty just hopes there's an Olive Garden along the way somewhere.

May 14: Mother's Day, Classic Saint Marty, "Heart to Heart"

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there--mothers and aunts and sisters and neighbors and friends.  All the women who nurture and care for people.

My daughter danced this morning.  Pretty soon, we will be heading to Olive Garden for lunch--my wife's choice.  I have to say that she is the most patient and loving and understanding mother.  When I am ready to go medieval on my kids for something, she is the person who takes the chains and whips out of my hands.  Every day, she demonstrates how much she loves our children through small sacrifices.  She is amazing.

On this Mother's Day, I have an episode of Classic Saint Marty that aired about two years ago, when I was dealing with my daughter's first step toward independence . . .

May 14, 2015:  Vague Depression, Daughter's Trip, Little Princess

Although he had confided in his father about his decision regarding the seminary and it was hardly a secret in their household, Robert could not bring himself to tell his mother about his doubts, for the young man truly believed that one of his jobs in life was to seem independent.  So even though he suffered through many a bad day, even after talking it over with his father, when a vague depression came over him, as if he already knew about his true future, and wanted to rest his head upon his mother's lap, to feel her reassuring hand on his head, he kept his feeling bottled up inside--at least around her.

Robert Ives is a young man struggling with very adult issues for the first time in his life.  He is not going to college.  Or getting married.  Or starting a new job.  Robert has decided to devote his life to God.  He's terrified and confused, and, even though he craves his mother's attention, he can't bring himself to admit it.  He's growing up.

My daughter is going on a class trip tomorrow morning.  In sixth grade, it was a day trip to Mackinac Island.  Seventh grade, a couple of days at a survival camp.  This year, it's Great America.  Tomorrow, I will drop her off at 4:45 a.m., and she will climb on a bus and head off to Chicago.  Without me or my wife.  Wearing a tee-shirt that says "Class of '19."

Yes, I know I'm being melodramatic.  My daughter will be back in the bosom of her family around 3 a.m. on Saturday.  She will be crabby and tired, and she won't want to tell me about what she did over the past 24 hours.  She will get home, climb into bed, and proceed to sleep for the next 12 hours.  Maybe she'll get up to go to the bathroom.  I may slide a pizza under her bedroom door about noon.

My daughter is a good kid.  She studies hard, gets straight A's, and reads all the time.  On weekends, she goes to church on Saturday and Sunday (sometimes with a little grumbling, if not outright hostility).  And she's going to be a high school freshman next fall.  She's already talking about getting her driver's license.

Yes, I'm feeling a little nostalgic for the times my daughter would lean against my chest and let me be her daddy.  These days, when I wake her up in the morning, I have to announce to my wife, "I have released the Kraken." 

Saint Marty isn't ready for his little princess to turn into a prom queen.

Not this kind of prom queen

And a poem for Mother's Day . . . 

 Heart to Heart

by:  Martin Achatz

Luke says Mary kept every-
thing—angels roaring in
the night, shepherds crawling
through dung and hay, camels,
comets—all these things,
gospels and gospels, stored in
the four chambers of her heart.
I wonder if Einstein’s mother
had room enough in her
ventricles for quanta and
atoms, light’s slow passage
through the eye of the universe.
Or Darwin’s mother enough
space in her atria for
all the creatures of the Galapagos—
tortoises and iguanas, butter-
flies and cormorants.  Lincoln’s
mother died before she had
to squeeze Gettysburg and
emancipation under her ribs,
and I believe Shakespeare’s
mother departed this mortal
coil without Romeo or
the Globe nestled beneath
her breast.  My mother is
still packing things in
the attic of her chest.  Just
yesterday, she asked me if
I still write poems.  Yes, I told
her.  I’m writing a poem
about you right now,
I said.  She nodded, looked away.
I imagined her opening a box
with my name on it, wrapping
this poem in newspaper, placing
it beside the lanyard I made
for her in third grade, closing
the box again, putting it
back on the shelf in her bosom.
When she gets to heaven,
my mother will meet Mary
on a street corner,
and they’ll unpack their
hearts.  This, mother will
say, is a poem my son wrote
for me for Mother’s Day.  Mary
will hold out her hand, show
my mother the first tooth
her son lost, a tiny grain
of enamel in her palm.  They
will find a diner to have
coffee together.  They will sit
in a booth, brag about how
their kids changed the world.