My Favorite Cashew

As he stood up in the middle of the church flower bed, brushing the dirt from his hands, the sun cast golden highlights on his light brown hair. His neatly trimmed beard reflected auburn accents. Behind his round, wire-rimmed glasses, his blue eyes squinted a shy smile. His black and red plaid jacket made him look like a broad-shouldered woodsman even though he was on Lunt Street in Chicago, Illinois. That was one of the first times I remember noticing Tom Anderson. Years later, on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I would give him a card that said, “If I had to choose all over again, I would still choose you!” And, I would. In spite of the demons that haunted him, I would choose Tom Anderson all over again. It was the early spring of 1977, when a Christian sister whispered in my ear to “check out” a brother named Tom Anderson. Ever so slowly, Tom and I began to take notice of each other at church activities and at school. Tom was a pre-med student at Northwestern University where I worked in the accounts payable department. At the beginning of the semester, he came hesitantly to my window to pay his tuition. We chatted lightly. When our church decided to start a lunchtime Bible study on campus, we both attended. Always a little late, Tom would come bobbing into the classroom with his distinctive walk. Whether it was the turn of his hip or a slightly shorter left leg, we were never really sure, but Tom was easily recognized in a moving crowd with his slight bounce from side to side as he hurried from one place to another. His buttoned-down, oxford shirts, creased pants, and round, wire-rim glasses conveyed an old-fashioned aura that contrasted sharply with the faded blue jeans, pony tails, and tie-dyed T-shirts of the late seventies. One afternoon, at the end of our lunch-time Bible study, Tom leaned over and asked, “Do you like to ice skate?” Having waited for weeks to get better acquainted with him, I quickly responded, “Sure. I’m not great at it. I mean, I’ve only skated on corn fields that flood in the winter and freeze over. So, I’m good at dodging things like protruding corn stalks, but I don’t do figure eights or anything.” “That’s okay. I’m just learning. I’ll meet you by the pond at 6:30 pm on Friday.” Then, he was out the classroom door and down the hall. After two or three Friday evenings of ice-skating, he shyly took my hand and pulled me forward as he skated backwards. Skating led to ice cream dates, snow skiing at Mt. Trashmore (a waste disposal site turned into a ski slope) in Evanston, Illinois, and finally, trips to “the farm,” both his and mine. Tom’s family farm consisted of 550 acres near Jacksonville, Illinois, while my homestead was in Carroll County, Indiana. Tom’s family had moved away from the farm and rented the land to a local farmer, but my family still worked their farm ground and raised hogs for market every year. Leaving Chicago and going to the Indiana farm, meant a weekend of castrating young male hogs, baling hay, or any other farm work that needed to be done. The least favorite of these jobs, castrating hogs, meant hours of tackling fat, male pigs who needed to have their testicles cut off. No farmer wants to raise a herd of virile male hogs which would be smashing through fences to breed the females. Neither does a farmer want to be docked at the sale barn for trying to sell fat hogs with their reproductive glands still attached. The best price was paid for neutered livestock. However, farmers are notorious for not getting those male organs off soon enough. Hence, the job evolved of wrestling a too big hog, holding him down, slicing with a surgical knife, and pulling out testicles the size of baseballs. The squealing alone reverberated in the eardrums for hours after the job was done. Tom never shirked any of the farm work, but rolled up his sleeves, cut, yanked out, and flipped over his shoulder as many hog testes as anyone. One weekend, the most pressing job was to clean out the oat bin. My brother, a law-school student at that time, Tom, and my Dad shoveled dusty oats for several hours one Saturday afternoon. That night, all three of them started shaking with chills, coughing, and spitting up black mucus. They each had been affected by the mold spores in the oat dust. It was an illness that Tom would vividly remember when he later treated many farmers in his medical practice in rural Indiana. A weekend of visiting Tom’s family farm in southern Illinois, did not involve nearly so much hard labor. We stayed with his brother and sister-in-law drank his brother’s homemade wine, talked until the early hours of the morning, cooked out at the cabin that his brother had built on a hillside in the woods, and sometimes walked the rolling hills of the farm. Regardless of which farm we escaped to from the city, Tom’s passionate love for the land and preference for a rural lifestyle was evident. Returning to Chicago, Tom would adapt himself just as diligently to academics as he did to farm labor. With the intent to apply to medical school, Tom worked very hard to make top grades. But, for him, medical school was about more than acquiring knowledge and skills. On his application to medical school he wrote: Shortly before high school graduation, I had a very deep Christian experience which caused me to completely re-evaluate all of my ideals. At that time, I was planning a career in medicine, but I had to interrupt those plans because I felt the need to work full-time in a Christian ministry. I spent the next eight months talking to people about my Christian experience. During this time, I traveled throughout the United States, talking to all kinds of people with every kind of need. I learned a lot about people. I found that I was able to help some people with their problems; but, for most people, I could do little. I found out that people needed more than just my words; they needed my help in a practical way, a way which would speak stronger than my words. I felt that the most practical way for me to help people would be by becoming a physician. My next nine months were spent working in a greenhouse and a chemical factory in order to earn money for school. During my first four quarters of school, I reconsidered my goals many times. Medicine seemed to be the perfect way for me to help people, yet I had one fear – that the pressures of the educational system, coupled with the opportunity to make a considerable sum of money, might change me into a person who would be more materialistically-oriented rather than people- oriented. It was uppermost in my heart that I would not allow this to happen. For this reason, I changed my major to another interest: horticulture. In order to change majors, I had to change schools; therefore, my transfer was made to Triton College. Within three weeks after my transfer, I realized that horticulture was not the profession in which I belonged. I loved people, and I loved medicine. I became determined to do two things: to apply myself to the utmost in school in order to make a way scholastically for me to get into medical school; and, to not allow anyone or anything to make me be materialistically-oriented rather than people-oriented. I felt that a more competitive school would increase my opportunity for acceptance into medical school, so I transferred to Northwestern University and have pushed toward this goal ever since. During this time, I have done volunteer work at Evanston Hospital, along with work as an orderly in their operating room. Currently, I am working in pancreatic cancer research at their laboratories. These experiences, plus two more years of maturity, have made me fully aware that medicine is where I belong.