I�m more likely to see the big picture than the little details. When I do notice details, I usually see them as a symbol of something bigger. I�m not one to think about fingers or toes when I can think about arms and legs. Perhaps that�s why this write-about-a-body-part assignment is so tough. I think about bodies, but rarely about their parts.

Yet I called this journal �Under the Microscope� and said I wanted to look at the little things. I even called myself Plankton because plankton are so little and so interesting under a microscope. This body part assignment is a chance to focus and I don�t want to blow it. Yet writing about noses or breasts or ears or stomachs does nothing for me. Thumbs and lips and knees and livers don�t inspire me. I have nothing to say today about breasts and rear ends that has not been said better before (although it�s not from lack of trying. I started writing about my bust but I hated the piece.)

But I am a woman of unexpected interests and I do like the little scientific stuff. Still, stem cells are too controversial and I don�t know what exactly I think about them. Nerve cells, at least my own occasionally malfunctioning nerve cells, get on my nerves. Mitochondria are interesting but the word is difficult to spell and much too hard to type.

So I asked myself what body part makes me truly me and the answer came to me. DNA. I have to write about DNA. I have to write watching the unfolding of the genetic laws that allow a short, dark-haired, dark-haired mother to have one short dark-haired, dark-eyed daughter and one five foot, five blue-eyed, blonde daughter with legs that don�t quit. I have to write about knowing there is a blueprint, of sorts, for me but that the body, like any building, can deviate from that blueprint in unexpected ways.

But is DNA a body part? Well, it�s not exactly one that shows. Most people, including me, have never seen their DNA. I�ve seen models of my DNA, that elegant twist of proteins in its double helix. Still, it is part of my body and so, by definition, it must be a body part but it is more than that. When all is said and done and I am gone, some of my DNA will survive. If I have any immortality, the DNA immortality is it, souls perhaps excepted.

Waxing poetic about DNA is a daunting task. Little rhymes with DNA and I can�t imagine an epic beginning, �Dark Plankton, she of bold DNA...� (Of course, I can�t imagine an epic to me at all so that last comment may be beside the point.) Being literary about it is not much easier. Lewis Thomas could write an interesting book called �Lives of a Cell� but I doubt I can do much more than this page on DNA and even that one page is of limited interest.

Yet my DNA is so much of who I am that I choose it over fingers and toes and heart and mind. Consider this piece my ode to DNA.

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Note: I realized after Jim left me a note that I had unconsciously picked up his theme the other day and had not given him credit. Thank you, Jim, for the theme of �This too shall pass.�

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