October 9, 2012
On a summer evening forty years ago, my grandfather asked me a question and it changed something in me. I think of that summer moment every year when MPA Grandparents and Special Friends Day rolls around (next Wednesday, October 17).
Roberts Rugh was a biologist. His specialty was vertebrate embryology and he had authored a number of college textbooks with catchy titles like “The Frog” and “The Mouse”. He lost an eye in his youth and wore an eye patch his entire adult life, which was amazing to my wife when I first met her because her grandfather had an eye patch, having lost an eye fighting in the first world war. But that’s another story.
When my grandparents retired, they moved to DC, where my grandfather took a “retirement” assignment with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Around that time, he co-authored his only book designed for a general audience. Called “From Conception to Birth” it was a primer for young couples who wanted to know more about their baby’s growth cycle.
On one of our visits to their summer place, I found myself sitting alone with my grandfather on the screened porch facing the setting sun. That’s when he asked me the question. “There is a group that wants my professional opinion on the question of when life begins,” he told me. It was the summer of 1972 and the Supreme Court had not yet decided the Roe V. Wade case.
“When do you think life begins?” my grandfather asked me. I could tell that he really wanted to know what I thought. That simple fact changed something in me and made me think I might actually have something of value to say. I thought about it for a few seconds – more than enough for a teenager, who has, by nature, a superficial confidence in his ability to crack any really tough question.
“I think life begins at conception,” I answered. It wasn’t a political, philosophical or spiritual answer, it was just what I thought at that moment. It made sense to me. In the brief silence that followed, I could hear the waves of the small bay near their house lapping against the beach. The sun had slipped below the horizon. “Is the egg alive before the sperm reaches it?” he asked me. Another easy one, “Yes,” I said. “And the sperm before reaching the egg, is it alive?” he went on. “Yes,” I said, with just a little more hesitation.
Sometime later, perhaps a half hour, maybe more, and after dozens of questions, each one peeling another layer back, tracing a path back in time, we reached the ultimate point. Together we pondered that moment in the distant past when earth went from being a lifeless planet to one with life. It was an extraordinary moment at the end of a fascinating search for answers.
Darkness had fallen and neither of us had bothered to get up and switch on the porch light. My grandfather had become just a voice coming out of the darkness, as he still is for me to this day. I felt small in the presence of this profound idea – the dawn of life on earth, yet large in my grandfather’s intellectual embrace.
Four decades later, that summer evening on the porch is still very much with me. His genuine interest in what I had to say, what I thought, how I worked my way through a tough question made a deep and lasting impression. A single question on a summer evening helped define who I would become.
So thank you, grandparents, for the gift of your time, attention, love and support – gifts that last a lifetime. We’ll see you next week!
MIke Downs, Head
