Sylvia's Journal

We had another party last night, to celebrate Jacek and Sula’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. Axel has known them for 46 of those years; so he felt a little old, even though at least half the people there were older than us. We also felt a little old because we have to sit down frequently which is awkward with everyone else standing. Stand-up parties remain a challenge for us. And of course the topic of conversation was nearly always the crash. We don’t quite know what to say when people tell us how happy they are that we are still around. It is a strange experience, to have almost died, and for people to tell you they are happy you did not. It’s like you are listening in on your own funeral when people say how much they cared about you or loved you. Except now it is in the present tense.

Once again I was astounded about how many people are pilots, were pilots or grew up with pilots. Aviation was certainly a big part of the Makowski family; Jacek’s father was one of the founders of LOT Polish Airlines and stories abound about pilots and wars.

I finished reading Spitfire Women; more stories about the war and pilots, but this time the women pilots. I am sorry I finished the book; I feel like I have gotten to know some of those remarkable women, and as the book ended, had to say goodbye. I feel privileged that I have at least known one of them, Ann Wood Kelly. Jacek knew three of them; one of them was the daughter of Jozef Pilsudski, head of state of the second Polish Republic. The stories about the Polish pilots who escaped during WWII and then served with the RAF is written up in another book, Forgotten Heroes. It does not talk about the women, but is remarkable as well. The only thing wrong with those books is that they make war seem glorious. In the war you could be somebody; that was true for the women as well as the men. I am sure that has attracted thousands of young American men (and some women) to fight in Iraq.

With the internet connections still problematic at home, working from home has become a little more challenging. Tessa sits in back of her huge screen in the living room, Axel upstairs and I in my own office. We negotiate who gets to have the Ethernet cable now. Since my work actually brings in money, I usually had first dibs, but not always. Working as a reviewer on a proposal was somewhat problematic because my colleagues communicate per email and assume that I am instantly informed. I was not.

I saw Ruth for an hour and we talked about Joan not being OK yet and my strong reaction to that news and the stressful week that followed. I also told her about these occasional flashes of memory that zap through my mind and, for a millisecond, take my breath away. They are moments of understanding or illumination about the crash that are hard to describe in words; I think I experience them as the biochemical processes that they are; synapses firing and synapses receiving, carrying messages encoded in chemicals. They are very different from the memories that come up when I talk with people about the crash. That is very superficial stuff; I use words that are not connected to anything. I am reading a book called the Synaptic Self in order to understand this. I marvel at the complexity of our brains and wonder, like so many others, how the mind fits into all that. Clearly, Ruth and I have some more work to do. My homework for next week’s session is to find an image that captures this tangle of feelings and biochemical processes. And then we will ‘emdr’ it.

The St. Johns came by for tea and we exchanged gifts. I managed to write a poem (while the Ethernet cable was with someone else and I could take a break) that tried to capture what Andrew and Katie-Blair had meant to us during our ordeal. It made Andrew’s eyes go wet, so I think I succeeded. We sent Katie-Blair off with this most Dutch contraption (theebeurs met knip), a rather serious tea cozy that snaps closed and with a handle to carry it around. Andrew got a framed picture of his beloved, taken at our beach, reminding all of us of warm weather and love.