Sylvia's Journal

I woke up to a rainy drizzle which is good for the new grass in the backyard. It is the kind of rain that is not good when you are feeling low. And although I did not sleep through the night this time, I am not feeling low this morning because my right ankle woke up with the rest of me more limber than yesterday. It was a little like Axel doing a double take when his fingers suddenly extended themselves in ways they had not been able to do before. I went to bed with a very stiff ankle and great discomfort along my belly scar and all that was miraculously gone. I have already written the alphabet twice with my right foot to make sure I am not making this up.

But then again, maybe I was making this up. While being distracted by Axel who needed some fine tuning of his position in bed, the ankle reverted back to is former stiffness and the belly scar became tender again. I have learned to accept that we are on a zigzag/up and down rather than a straight-up trajectory. As it turned out, my first waking experience was one of those leaps forward followed by regress. But I celebrate these small victories while they last and before they evaporate like many of my dreams.

If there is something that I learned over the last two months it is to recognize that there is poetry in experiences like this because it wakes me to my senses (body) and feelings (mind/heart) in ways I wasn’t used to before. Life isn’t straightforward or up and up and up (or backwards and down and down and down). It is as much a walk through impenetrable deep grasses that cut and obscure, or puddles that can swallow you whole as through flowering hills and spectacular mountain passes that take your breath away and make you want to fly. But these highs can be spoiled by sunburn, thirst and biting bugs while the lows can lift your spirits if you notice the small wonders that live there.

David Byer, our night nurse, treated us to a bagel and lox breakfast accompanied by music, gave Axel a shower and dropped me off at my therapist. He then took Axel to his appointment and they ended his night shift late in the morning at the Atomic Café in Beverly with coffee and talk. In the meantime I had an intense therapy session, making connections between my experience of the crash and other experiences in my life that were more similar than I had ever imagined. I am exploring and (re?)learning what being strong means and how to give form to all the emotions that are tied up in coping with adversity and examining early life experiences that served as my blue print and need some adjustments here and there. Cousin Barbara picked me up and left me at home with a bag of bars she baked and which she told me to cut in half (I did not and regretted this for about one hour afterwards). I had Beirut gazpacho for lunch, had my hot and cold footbath and read for a couple of hours in the sun. Later, Axel and I even tried to do some weeding together, each being able to do something the other cannot do; real team work but oh so very slow and largely ineffective given the scope of the task.

Jim returned from Western Mass, Sita emailed us from Shanghai about her first China experiences and Tessa clocked in at dinner time as usual. Jim’s mom Helen and Ed dropped of a wonderful dinner which Jim embellished with some grilled veggies from the garden. I went to bed at 9 PM while Axel puttered around the house until the wee hours and put himself to bed leaving his brace on. Which caused the interruption during my writing this morning (he wanted it off) and led to the reversion of my ankle fortunes and thus to my musings this morning, showing once more that everything is linked to everything else and nothing can be interpreted in isolation.