Sylvia's Journal

I wrote about patience on August 10. I looked for the entry (because I am impatient this morning) so I could take some of my own medicine. I have been suffering from the kind of impatience that is expressed with the words “are we done yet?” Re-reading my journal, in search of that one entry was indeed the medicine I needed: we have probably covered a good part of this recovery marathon and we are now in the last quarter. It’s like I imagine the last quarter of a marathon to be: painfully slow and tedious.

My foot is developing a tendinitis and I was told to hold off on exercises for a bit. One can be too enthusiastic. It may have something to do with walking around the house on slippers; I am told to wear shoes with lots of support and to give myself ice massages (done by tiny Dixie cups with water frozen in them and then peeling back the paper as I massage my unhappy tendon). Since I already have a tendinitis in my right shoulder which is painful and incredibly slow to heal (months and months and months) I hope to nip this one before it gets as bad as the shoulder.

I also asked the physical therapist what do to about my hands that wake me up several times during the night because they are so painful. She told me to experiment with pillows around my body and this seemed to have worked last night. So here we are, both hugging pillows instead of each other, as we try to support muscles and tendons that give us a hard time if we don’t. This is how Axel combats lower back pain in the morning. We really still have a distance to run.

I recovered from the long and intense workday of Wednesday and put in about a half day of work. Much of the work is responding to the increasing number of requests that come in to write this, review that, or fill in a form. It doesn’t feel like very productive work but it helps others do theirs and it does show up as a check mark on my to-do list. And every day there are emails or Skype calls from family, friends and colleagues from around the world who are inquiring about our recovery.

One of such emails came in yesterday from Ummuro, a colleague from Kenya. He is pleased that my first venture outside the US is to Kenya. He stuck a little gift into his email by quoting his grandfather who was a very wise man: “don’t look for meaning in life……human life is pretty meaningless without a sense of the sacred……the answers to your troubles may in fact lie in your own shadow.” I wish I could remember such a quote from my grandfather. I suppose this is the advantage of coming from an oral tradition, you remember words so much better. We end up with journals in hard-to-read handwriting that get stored in some closet. There is a lot to say for an oral tradition and learning things by heart.

Today I am getting ready for a two-day Board meeting at Babson College of the Organization Behavior Teaching Society. It will be another stretch, two days in a row. I will stay over two nights in their Executive Education Center which will be nice so I don’t have to drive back and forth. It will be my first two nights away from home since I came back from the hospital. I will go armed with ice packs, heat packs and my flex band. It’s like a practice heartbreak-hill as I am gearing up for the real thing in another 9 days.

Axel will be in good hands with Sita and Jim who are in a very good mood because the Red Sox won big time last night; a punishing victory as Axel calls it. I of course did not watch (which nobody here understands) and was refueling in Tunis with Antoine de St. Exupery on his way from Paris to Saigon, falling asleep just before something bad happened to him somewhere over the desert (and from which he recovers of course, as the lucky ones always do).

Yesterday was long, exhausting and wonderful. I’d do it again but not right away. I left the house at 6 AM and pulled up at home exactly 12 hours later. Getting up early was not hard for me; I am an early riser. But it was hard for Axel. He did not have to get up but he insisted on making my breakfast. The drive in to work was OK although longer than I remember, over one hour. Somehow since July the traffic seems to have increased at that time of the day. Being at work with the early risers was nice. Then slowly everyone trickled in and there were more ‘hey you’re back!’ and the surprised look how together I look. I am not sure what people were expecting, but it is true that, with my scars covered up and when I am not walking, I look like a slightly more slender version of my pre-July 14 self.

I had a wonderful time with the team of facilitators. The sort of coaching I was engaged in yesterday is one of the things I love to do and had missed doing. It was the reason I came in for this very long day and why I had dismissed counsel to stay at home. Ready or not, I had been home long enough. Writing and reviewing, writing emails and being on the phone, all things I can do at home, are good ways to be involved and participate in the work, but it is not where I get my jollies. This is also why I agreed to travel again, even though I am a little anxious about it and there are voices again who advise me not to do this yet.

The hardest part of yesterday was actually the ride back. I would have liked a driver to be sitting outside the doors of MSH ready to drive me home. Alas, no one there. I hit the traffic of course at 5 PM so it was a slow start. I wore the wrong shoes for my neuropathic foot and pushing the gas pedal for one hour was very uncomfortable (not dangerous). The first thing I did when I came home was a long footbath followed by an icepack. That calmed things down while we had a wonderful speakerphone conversation with Tessa, sitting around the table as if she was with us. We even had a plate for her. It’s when we had to disappoint her that there would not be a puppy when she’d come back for Christmas.

In the middle of the day I was alerted by colleagues that a new entry had appeared in the Caringbidge journal. It was indeed Axel’s although not, as I had expected, typed in by the computer via Axel’s voice. He is still training his computer and gave me a little demo last night. It is truly amazing, and yes Edith, you are right, it has come a long way, since you worked at Kurzweil Speech Systems, but not quite as long as you thought.

In the evening we watched the videotaped interview that Jim Wiegel and his wife Judy did with us on September 6 for their ICA story legacy project. The beginning part is with both of us on camera. We were astounded to see how broken Axel still looked then, only a few weeks out of the hospital. It is when I see him squinting on camera that I realized he has not done this for a long time. It is easy to understand the exclamations from people who have not seen him in along time; he has come a long way. I watched myself in fascination as I told my ICA stories and explained my philosophy of working with groups. I noticed the fidgeting and constant movements of my arms, hands and legs while in my wheelchair. Part two of the video is about the aftermath of the crash; a related topic since it is still about groups (networks) being productive. Axel had left by then so last night was the first time he saw it. It is an amazing record of the first 6 post-crash weeks and we are very grateful to have it.

I have posted the pictures that Sita took of our ‘Thank-God-We-Are-Alive’ party that was held on August 26, on my flickr website (go to Caringbridge ‘links’ tab and click on http://www.flickr.com/vriesneus). You will see various subsets of our network mingle on a warm overcast August day as well as the remnants here and there of Fatou’s great food.

Axel still needs rides for a while longer (announced on the Airset calendar, another link). We appreciate everyone who has stepped forward.

Another morning that’s not normal, that’s for sure. In a period when the physical challenges have often been novel and the solutions required either cleverness or persistence or both, the types of challenges for the future I imagined would be the ones that had always been there. Challenges of how to be a better, more inventive designer, how to juggle time, how to stay focussed were what I saw as being ahead. And they were the kinds of challenges I had faced before the crash. But ‘normal’ even for the future seems to have changed.

It seems now that the challenges are veering away from the course that had been set – so I thought – years ago: a repeating loop that has filled my journal pages, fueled my counseling sessions and resisted the advances in psycho-pharmacy. I – and I think I can say we here – are emerging from a rather narrow and constrictive tunnel of recovery into a rather larger tunnel of life reconstruction. This newer tunnel is wider, lets in more light and leads me to know that there are changes in me that I know but cannot yet tell about. I get hints of those things now that pain is dropping off me like scales exposing the new skin underneath.

So what are the hints that there’s a new skin? And what’s apt to be underneath? And what hints are starting me on this exploration? For me some of the conceptual and sensory images that are coming up are about my attraction to doing something ‘significant’ with my life, a sort of early fixation with doing earth-moving things in order to fill a deeply excavated hole in me. Wanting to do something ‘significant’ isn’t in itself a good or bad thing, but the need, the compulsion to do the ‘significant’ has always screamed at me to be rooted out. The ‘significant’ was always something handed to me by someone else’s voice, by some other totem, some other netherworld figure, but not me. The crash has hinted to me in a profound way that there are other spirits, other emotions in me that can propel me in more interesting, and less corrosive ways than the quest to do the ‘significant’.

So what has the crash given me to begin making sense of my life? A sense of the power of how I think about and use time. I observed – in my broken condition – that comparing the past to the present can be a poisonous thing to the present. I felt that the present was good, particularly considering that there was a present to begin with. I understood that some visions of the future could also be destructive of the wonderful quality of the present. Both the past, and the future can blank out the wondrous colors of the trees in autumn color, the smell of drying pine needles, the sound of Sylvia’s breathing at night, the beauty of fog, the wonder of hugging Sita and Tessa, the early morning smell of salt air. Life is too short to let these things pass.

So these bits and pieces are working together, leading to what I’m not sure. But I do know I’m smelling the ocean, seeing the colors and feeling all of my body, crying as bidden. Sylvia too has had intimations of new understanding of herself and her role in the world. But I will leave her to reveal that.

And in other ways things are not normal either – whatever normal is. Our dear brother Joe and sister Rita have abandoned their home outside San Diego to the wiles of the fires consuming San Diego county are awaiting the verdict of wind and flame. They had been spared in the fire four years ago and were called as the wonderful people they are to serve the valley and the others not as fortunate as they, changing lives in a positive way when it appeared that all was destroyed. They have a calling and it will be carried out in many ways in this case as well as the last, however painful passing through the eye of the needle is going to be.

And my cousin Anne is being tested in another way – physically something is wrong and she and John and the rest of us who love her await news of its meaning. I wish I could be in Palm Desert to be with them, and in Alpine to be with Joe and Rita. But I am right now here. In the present, where I am thankful to be. I will hold all those others in the light, with all my heart, right now.

This will be a short entry. It is 5:30 AM and my first day going back to work the way I did before the crash: up at 5, out the house at 6. It will be a long full day, more than 8 hours probably to avoid traffic on both sides. I will be training a team of Russian-speaking facilitators at the launch of our first Russian-language virtual leadership program. One the facilitators is a young woman from Baku who I met at a facilitator training in Nepal where I saw her transform from a shy person in a spunky and competent facilitator. That is why we picked her for this job which we will be a stretch for her. This is why I am doing this full day today (in case you wondered).

Yesterday was a difficult day again as I struggled to maintain some work discipline in what is still an immediate post-calamity household. Dreams of big waves taking me out, but at the same time a small sailboat with Sita and Axel in it who are always close by to pick me up. That is sort of the talk we had at dinner last night, the three of us, when I was finally asking for help.

Part of the help offered is Axel joining the writing team; now that he has his voice-activated writing software, this should be a cinch. He has much to say but little strength to type it. So stay tuned.

I am sad to say that Joe and his wife Rita are now in full calamity phase as Southern California is burning (again). They have left their house and their belongings and moved in with a friend in the city (San Diego), waiting for the fires to go out. Those who know them, keep them in the light.

I woke up with a terrible pain in my hands. I wonder why, why now and how it is that I must be sleeping to upset them so much. It takes awhile to get rid of the pain. I feel rather dazed because of the vivid dreams that mingle with the hand pain. I spent a few minutes catching as much of the dreams as I can remember and writing bits down. The themes are clear, it’s all about travel, long corridors, keys, lost luggage. I am reminded of a quote from Antoine de St. Exupery whose Wind, Sand and Stars is sitting on my night stand, ‘The trip becomes a journey after you have lost your luggage.’ We should all be traveling light. There was also something in the dream about shipping puppies. Sita is trying to talk us into getting a puppy.

As I am quietly contemplating all this information so early in the morning and starting to write, Joe calls up from San Diego where it is now 5 AM. We don’t usually get calls from him this early. Something is amiss. Four years to the day his valley is on fire again. Joe had learned much about calamity management and network mobilization from the 2003 San Diego fire that raged through his valley. He brought his expertise to manage our calamity and mobilize our network so successfully in July. Now he is back to his own calamity, calling from his car as he is moving stuff out of the way. Other than talking with him there is little we can do and we feel rather powerless. The wooden ramp he built for us is of no use to him. He needs prayers, not stuff that burns.

For us, as intended, things were quiet yesterday. We were blessed with another gorgeous fall day and the trees appeared in fire in their bright orange, yellow and red colors, the kind of fire that Joe would prefer. I spent a good part of the day outside sitting in the sun and reading. I also finally had a chance to dig up my potatoes, something I watched other doing over the summer and was so anxious to do myself. I harvested probably another 10 pounds, the last of the season. The little ones that Ann Lasman had left in the ground a few weeks ago had grown into full size spuds. We ate the new crop of the baby potatoes last night, ending, with that, the possibility of one more harvest.

And now we are off to another intense week of physical therapy and exercises. Axel’s eyesight is steadily improving and we are beginning to contemplate getting his driver’s license renewed. It expired in July. He is not ready to drive yet but we think the day that he will is getting closer. We saw no more muscle twitching in his left arm (I still haven’t seen it with my own eyes). Betty had prepared us for this possibility, so we remain patient as well as patients. I’ll get to see it one of these days, I am sure.

Yesterday started out so full of promise. For once the journal writing was a joint activity, me writing, Axel talking. I was full of plans and optimistic that I’d get them done. But life had something else in mind and it appeared I needed a lesson. The flat rubbery corn pancakes I made for breakfast should have been a sign that things were not going to be easy and from there things went downhill.

I tried to tackle a job I had postponed for some time, the re-strapping of Penny’s old lawn chairs. I should have followed my own advice about not taking on something new during this Mercury-in-retrograde period but I thought the re-strapping of old chairs would be OK. It wasn’t. Not only that, it was hugely difficult, physically strenuous and more or less impossible. Several hours later, with one chair only half done I gave up, exhausted. There are things that I am not physically able to do but it took me a long time to accept defeat.

This experience of not being able to complete something affected me deeply. Axel sat me down for awhile on the bench by the cove. He had hoped that sitting in the afternoon sun would cheer me up. It hardly did. I went inside, exhausted and settled on the couch with a book on my lap. Instead of reading I worked myself up (or down rather) thinking of the things I failed to accomplish.

Axel promised to make dinner, Sita and Jim had gone to their old stomping ground for the weekend and I calmed down and read and napped for awhile until it got dark.

Not one to take advice easily, I started to tackle another (old) project. I tried to finish a baby sweater I had been working on for awhile. But no matter how much I tried and re-worked the piece I could not get it right. I finally gave up, in a fit unraveled the whole darn piece and cried a long overdue cry. It was a cry of defeat, frustration and mismatched expectations. But it also was a cry of sadness and loss; about the things that had gotten overshadowed by all the good news and the encouragement about our progress. I either have a deep reservoir for tears that takes a long time to overflow, or a shallow reservoir with a very slow production of tears. Either way, last night the floodgates opened and the reservoir overflowed; enough with being strong, able, competent, optimistic and fit for the world.

Maybe this had something to do with my body coming out of its shocked state. I know this because old ailments and physical conditions have returned after an absence of three months. There must be some trigger, hormonal or other, that is signaling my body to go back to its old preoccupations. Menopausal symptoms, suspended as a result of the crash, are back, hot flashes and all. So is the tingling in my hands indicating that my right hand carpal tunnel is still pressing on the nerve. I had scheduled an operation for this on the 25th of July which was canceled for obvious reasons. However, the 15th of July the symptoms disappeared. They have just come back.

It is too easy to slide back into my old ways of trying to be superwoman. I am not as agile and not as strong as I used to be and I am rather stubborn in (not) acknowledging that. I suppose yesterday was a shot across the bow. So I am resisting making any plans today and just let the day take me where I need to go. Quaker meeting first. It’s Sunday, after all. A day of rest. Try me!

While the rest of eastern Massachusetts was out in the sun, we stayed shrouded in deep fog all day long. We have had that experience before, some three months ago, figuratively of course. It has been very easy to stay in that fog and there is a certain degree of comfort in not seeing far beyond one’s own place. On July 14 we became the center of a very small universe, a little foggy place.

As I am going back into the world, and soon quite far into the world with my trip to Kenya, I realize how small our world has been the last three months with everything and everybody revolving around our well being: the attention of friends and family, the attention of doctors, the health system, work; everything aspiring and conspiring to make us feel better. It was a great success.

Sita and Jim, the first to be at our side after the crash, are now also leading us out of our fog. They are still a great help, and wonderful to have so close, but they are no longer jumping up to attend to our every wish. They have a life of their own and that needs their attention first. What comes with the desire to be normal and part of the world again is the necessity to give up this place of privileged attention; we try to stop talking about ourselves and inquire about others; we try to stop complaining about our aches and pains and ask others about theirs. All you readers out there, are you well?

Having asked that question, let me tell you more about us and our aches and pains then. Apparently there is such a thing as too much exercise. Axel has stepped up his exercise level and had a bad night with many interruptions and needing a muscle relaxant in the morning. I have maintained my exercise level (3 sets a day) but with my added mobility it turned out too much. We went for a walk up our driveway, first to the right to the Merrill’s driveway and then to the left to Masconomo street; a distance of at most 400 yards. By the time we walked back our pace, and mine in particular, had slowed to a crawl and our uneasy gait increasingly visible. When I arrived an hour later at the physical therapist’s I was in great pain. She packed me in hot packs and then proceeded with the usual ultrasound and gentle massage. That helped and I emerged out of the session feeling nearly brand new; new enough to participate in dinner preparations: I did the Swedish meatballs, Sita the potatoes and Jim the vegetables. Axel was out on the town, hanging out with the guys at the Manchester club.

Yesterday I drove in to MSH for the first time since Friday July the 13th. That Friday the 13th was the last day that everything was right. It will be June 2008 before we have another Friday the 13th and I hope by then everything will be right again. Hanging in the eleven months between two Fridays the 13th, there we are, plodding, away from the accident and towards our recovery.

A few weeks after I got home in August we were told that our accident had something to do with Mercury being ‘in retrograde,’ a peculiar constellation in the skies that make it seem as if the planet Mercury is moving backwards vis-à-vis the earth. Mercury is in retrograde 3 times in 2007 and in those periods everything that Mercury rules over (the mind’s processes, studying, communication, businesses, travel) is affected we were told.

Axel has more of a Cartesian mind than I do and does not buy this. But I am more susceptible to contemplate the powers and energies that hover in the universe and do thing we do not understand. There was so much that went wrong in July that I had to know more. So I googled Mercury-in-retrograde and found more than a million entries; If it is superstition, at least I am not alone and I have plenty of stuff to keep me reading for years.

Here is what I learned. Mercury in retrograde is upon us again (since October 12). It is a time in which the mind turns inwards to analyze its own thoughts and follow familiar thinking patterns. It is a good for time for meditation but not a good time for new intellectual pursuits. Since Mercury appears to rule computers, communication and travel you can expect that things will go wrong in those spheres in the form of unexpected failures, delays, and crashes. The advice is to be prepared and hold off on buying Mercurian items such as books, cars (or planes), computers and mobile phones. More importantly, this is also a time to refrain from signing important contracts, which includes marriage, by the way. Instead we are urged to do the things that the Mercury retrograde period is good for (in character with its reverse flow): re-do things, double-check, re-read a book, study an old topic, see old friends, and travel to places you’ve already been to before. Apparently this is also a good time to tackle that old unfinished project and everything else you never finished. And in order to prevent any bad things to happen, double-check your agenda, call your business partners to confirm that everything goes as planned, have everything ready before the deadline and leave some extra time for unexpected events. Make copies of your important files and documents, and please do back up that computer!!

I particularly like the suggestion to go on vacation or at least slow down the pace of your projects. All in all, the message is about going slow and stay on familiar terrain.

Now that I know all this, I did OK yesterday. Axel and I started off with our weekly massage (slowing down) and then I traveled to a place I had been before (MSH) and took it easy (half a day of work); I saw plenty of old friends and colleagues and we did a brainstorming in our meeting that only generated familiar stuff. After work I picked up Sita at South station and there I made a mistake of not re-checking how to get there and promptly missed the exit and got stuck in the 5-o’clock-leaving-Boston traffic. But everything turned out all right in the end. We came home to a dinner that Axel had cooked for us. And today I think I’ll tackle an old project.