My Father's Shoes

This poem was written by Teresa Griffin Cascino, RN, MSN, in honor of her father, Charles G. Griffin.

Dr. Griffin served as a medic in the European front during World War II and later attended the Georgetown University School of Medicine (Class of 1952). He did his general surgical residency at Kings County Hospital, Fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and practiced as a surgeon in Valparaiso, Indiana for 40 years.
He died in 2002.
​
"My Father's Shoes" was published in Surgery, Volume 141, September 26 2006,
​and is reprinted with permission of the author.

My Father's shoes were white
They were made of soft, pale 
Handmade buckskin leather
He wore them during
His six year surgical residency
Over time, deep grooves of heavy,
White shoe polish
Caused the leather to stiffen and crack.

Every morning
My father would wipe the leather down
With a cotton rag
Saturated with a bleach solution
After the shoes were dried,
He'd take the bottle of white shoe polish
With its stiff, inflexible sponge tip
And rub the tacky sponge head
Which would haphazardly bleed polish
Across the face of the shoe.
Painting the front, then front to back
Back and forth,
Right shoe, then left
Methodically, like a surgeon,
Preparing a surgical field.

Under the day's mask of shoe polish
Were layers of minute specks
Of dried, caked blood
In various clouds of decaying, smudged colors
No matter how dad tried
He could never wash away completely
The random pattern of drips and drops
Which were always sprinkled across his white, polished shoes.

These shoes were part of his duty uniform
Like a soldier wears marching into battle
He wore a starched stiff white jacket, shirt, and matching pants
And the clean, newly polished pair of white leather shoes
In the operating room,
He was fully smocked in his tied white cap,
Soft gauze facial mask
White sterile protective gown,
Thick opaque brown, rubber gloves
And polished white, leather shoes
Which soon had blood spattered,
Dripped, dropped, and plopped
Depending where he stood in the hierarchy
Of the surgical suite.

This was at a time,
When the GI War bill
Paid for the medical education
Of an Irish American
Born in the slums of Brooklyn.

When HIV was still
Deep in the jungles of Africa.
When the differences between 
Hepatitis A and B were unknown.

When words like CD4,
RNA replication,
Viral load and transmission
Didn't scare a nation
Into universal precautions.

When three little girls
Were amazed to see
Their daddy's polka-dotted shoes
As he fell asleep exhausted
At the end of his long, endless call.

My father spent many critical, crucial hours
In those white speckled shoes.
Meal after meal in the cafeteria
Meeting patients, making ward rounds
Answering pages and patients' questions,
Assessing, diagnosing, evaluating, and preparing.
Incising, exploring, closing, and repairing
Emergencies, lacerations, abdominal pain, and incarcerations
Taking orders from the Chiefs,
Consulting with colleagues
Learning the latest techniques
Seeing his own children born
Waiting and waiting
For a bus to rescue him
From a cold, wet storm.

In those white, speckled shoes
My father's surgical view of the world
Was shaped and sharpened
Like a knife with two incisive edges
Forged in one fundamental design
Mentors and colleagues developed his professional side
To be the poised, deliberate, and astute surgeon
His family and patients graced his compassionate tone
During his lifetime,
He discovered
Life's delicate balance
Between them both
​In concert.

​Dedication
from "Underwoods"  by Robert Louis Stevenson

​
There are men and classes of men that stand above the common herd: the soldier, the sailor and the shepherd not unfrequently; the artist rarely; rarely still, the clergyman; the physician almost as a rule. He is the flower (such as it is) of our civilisation; and when that stage of man is done with, and only remembered to be marvelled at in history, he will be thought to have shared as little as any in the defects of the period, and most notably exhibited the virtues of the race. Generosity he has, such as is possible to those who practise an art, never to those who drive a trade; discretion, tested by a hundred secrets; tact, tried in a thousand embarrassments; and what are more important, Heraclean cheerfulness and courage. So it is that he brings air and cheer into the sickroom, and often enough, though not so often as he wishes, brings healing.

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