Sylvia's Journal

It is very early in the morning. After waking up every hour from midnight on I decided at 6 AM that it was OK to get up. I am putting in about 10 hours a night since I returned from Kenya. And still I feel crummy. It must be the cold.

I sit by the window and look out over a pink cove. The sunrise is breathtaking. The water in the cove is flat like a mirror, except when the mallards cross the part I can see from where I sit. There are traces of frost on the ground. It was our coldest night yet. Everything is completely still.

When I shift my gaze from the cove to the yard I see a square patch of brown dirt that needs to be reseeded. It is where the back door ramp was taken away. At the front door the grass has grown back in and nothing reveals that I wheeled myself over a ramp there, some months ago. Inside the house only a few things give away that something happened this summer; the big recliner at the dining room table is still taking the place of a regular chair; blue, red and yellow thera-flex bands hang in various places for our muscle strengthening exercises; in the living room there are pillows on the ground and a yoga mat and bolster are ready for ground exercises. On the refrigerator is the most telling picture, the one where our fingers touch, across our hospital beds.

Our recovery is still in full swing. We have been told to count on a year before we will be our old selves again; that means another 8 months. This phase of our recovery is without drama; it is tedious, at times discouraging and painfully slow, but that is the pace at which soft tissue revives and the nerves regenerate. A study in patience, again.

And then something mundane happens that gives me hope, like when Axel mowed the lawn, something unthinkable even a month ago. The exercise did him good. I watched him from inside where I was holed up in my comfy chair, the entire day, finishing another book. We had a quiet leftover dinner by the fire, more soup and pumpkin pie, more reading, while Sita and Jim when out with friends.