Creative power and patient work
- Ufrieda Ho
A medical man shares his hobbies, where discipline is rewarded by beauty
Sidney Hirschowitz isn’t very good at golf. It’s a fact worth noting, because at 82, Dr Hirschowitz has a considerable list of things he is good at, and that’s not counting his day job as a gynaecologist and obstetrician.
It’s not that he’s showing off. Rather, the octogenarian has over the years developed a deep regard for the role hobbies play in what it means to live a full life and in being vehicles for quiet expression and personal enjoyment.
On a sparkling autumn afternoon, Sidney has shifted work appointments to show me the hobbies that fill his Saxonwold home. Others his age may have retired (or been on the golf course) but he continues to lecture and to see patients, though he’s retired from delivering babies.
This is the home he shares with his wife of 58 years, Elaine. He leads the way through the front door and here is the first hint of how he spends his time.
The wooden door is a carving of careful design, fine narrative detail and masterful artistic expression. It’s a layered story that’s close to his heart. The doctor points out how the bottom of the door is his depiction of the Jewish holocaust. It’s full of the horror of slaughtered souls. Following the length of the door the story in wood rises, depicting Moses with the tablets holding the Ten Commandments, two people at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and the holy sites of Jerusalem.
There are three more similarly decorated doors in the home. They’re statement pieces but Sidney says his woodwork was spurred on years ago by more practical needs.
“I grew up on a farm in Bethal and I was always encouraged to make things in our workshop. In the early years of our marriage I made all our furniture,” he says. Today there are beautiful pieces all over his home, all made by his hand. And he continues to turn wood into function and beauty.
His garage doubles as his workshop, and among the tools and machinery is a cabinet he’s finishing. It features one of his current obsessions: marquetry. Marquetry is the technique of inlaying pieces of woods of different grains and shades to create an image. It’s time-consuming and exacting and it keeps him in the garage for hours each week.
From the kitchen Elaine quips that it’s just as well, because it keep him out of her hair.
Sidney laughs, adding that it’s Elaine's artistic bent that has influenced many of his designs over the years. They’ve shared many passions, from art and travelling to the health sciences. It’s been like that since they first met washing hands at Wits medical school – he was a doctor in the making and she an occupational therapist in the making. (He graduated MBBCh at Wits in 1959; she started with her Diploma in Occupational Health in 1957 and went on to an MA in Clinical Psychology in 1980 and Postgraduate Diploma in Librarianship in 2005.)
He says: “I spend a few hours in the workshop every day but a project is not about following a timetable. If that were the case, then it would not be a hobby, it would be a job.”
Lessons from trees
Hobbies and projects are lessons in patience and refinement for the doctor. It’s no surprise therefore that his other hobby is growing bonsai trees. He has 150 of them.
“They are really manufactured trees,” Sidney says of the careful transplanting, pruning and care that has gone into creating his own miniature forest. As he shows them off he picks up some cutters, trim backs some branches and restrains other bits in wire braces for shaping.
“There are very specific rules that you follow with bonsais,” he says. The discipline is exact but this too suits a man who has collected a clutch of medical qualifications. He also has the highest qualifications in his other hobby, one which he says could have become his profession.
Photography captured his imagination when he was a boy and had him building his own darkroom by the age of 12. In Sidney’s study, among the medical books he’s written are also the books of photography that he’s self-published or had bound in his own wooden covers. Many more prints are mounted and placed in organised stacks.
Among his trove are a book on Johannesburg, one on landscapes around the world and one that’s especially dear: a tribute to the late Professor Phillip Tobias.
As he pages through them, he pauses at the images of Tobias in his home and office.
“He was a hero of a mine – a real human,” he says of the renowned paleoanthropologist, who was one of Sidney’s lecturers at medical school and eventually became a personal beloved friend.
“I could have been a photographer and I still love making pictures, but medicine became my first love,” he says.
The choice of medicine as a career stemmed from interacting with the local farm community doctor when Sidney was a boy. Dr Johnny Meyer’s imprint on Sidney spurred him on to study at Wits Medical School. As a student he asked to shadow Meyer as he visited the local farms.
“One day we visited a woman who had an ectopic pregnancy and in the emergency Meyer asked if I wanted to assist. That’s when I realised I wanted to specialise in obstetrics and gynaecology,” says Sidney.
A parent’s duty
Over more than 60 years he has delivered thousands of children. He may not remember each one, but he does acknowledge the potential in every child. The father of three sons and grandfather of 10 children believes that it’s a parent’s or guardian’s duty to develop a child’s varied talents.
His immigrant father arrived in 1925 from Lithuania with barely a penny to his name and unable to speak any of the languages in South Africa. He started out by trading in skins, then became a successful farmer.
Even as he understood the value of pure labour, he and Sidney’s mother always encouraged their children to follow their passions and creative outlets. “Talents in whatever way they manifest are gifts. It’s the duty of parents and guardians to help children develop them,” he says.
Sidney and Elaine did this in earnest and when their eldest son took up show-jumping as a boy, Sidney gave it a shot too and went on to become a competitive rider himself for many years.
Hobbies are about lifelong self-discovery and improvement, Sidney believes. It’s why he’ll keep at his bonsais, keep chasing the light and finding the right shade of wood for a marquetry project. He’ll probably keep working on his golf swing too.