Sylvia's Journal

Sunday, August 26, 2007

We are ‘having it our way’ and we aren’t. We are constantly surrounded by people who are there to attend to our every need. But they attend to our needs in their way, unless we intervene and dictate our way. This was the big struggle yesterday, more so for Axel than for me, as I have a three week advantage over him.

Axel’s hand and eye problems make it hard for him to write. His computer, so much part of his life before the crash is now frustrating him. It took several days for him to write one letter. For me the injuries do not interfere with writing or reading and the computer connects me to the rest of the world and also to myself in this daily journal and this new reality of total dependence that we have been living for the last 6 weeks.

We had had a few moments together, alone, where we have started to talk about the experience of being cared for, and having the house managed, daily living orchestrated, stuff put away in ways that are, of necessity, different than ours. We have also started to talk about the difficulty of having to ask for help, so much, so often. We have always been so independent and so completely self sufficient. There are old parent tapes and the need to have some measure of control that mingle together. The mingling would be fine if it wasn’t for the accompanying need for Axel to get up (or down to the cellar) and get things, open drawers, and do it himself. As a result he tires himself and gets cranky. And I watch this from my (usually) sitting positions and become a nag.

When people come and go it is hard to set one’s own agenda and even harder when one of your defining features is pleasing others, even those who come to help. We can easily end up in a no-man’s land where everyone is trying to please everyone else and no one gets what they need or intended. This is our struggle these days and I do believe that writing is a good path through it. We have to learn to be very intentional about our needs (I need to sleep now; I need to be sitting quietly and read or think; we need to be together now and talk privately).

Such intentionality is going to be tricky today, the day of our party. But my intentions for the day are fairly clear. For me it is truly a day of celebrations: that we are alive and were given another chance, that we have our two amazing girls with such supportive partners, that we are surrounded by a network of loving family and friends which collectively has all the resources that we (and our house, our appliances, our flowers and vegetables) could possibly need to get through this rough spot, that we have health insurance and that I am employed and have a good number of sick days to keep the paycheck coming for a bit longer. It is also an early thanksgiving for the miracle of our survival and all the good that has come our way. And finally it will be a day of (re)connection and (re)discovery as the various subgroups within the network have a chance to meet, and I get to see colleagues from work I have not seen for 6 weeks.

Yesterday was the hottest day in the area but we enjoyed a steady cool breeze throughout the day. Sita came home early from Dallas while Tessa was away at work. I never even saw her before I went to bed. A long hot day for her no doubt.

In the morning Fatou showed up with the first batch of her cooking and now has her own refrigerator especially dedicated to West African food in the basement. She also attended to our every need for the next several hours, massaging Axel’s neck and shoulder muscles, preparing and serving us a restaurant like lunch fashioned creatively out of leftovers and carrying stuff from one place to another. Susie Wadia Ells stopped by to transmit an offer from Joe the healer to come by some time again. Later our friends Ruth from DC and Ron from Atlanta flew in from their respective cities for a weekend stay and cooked us another leftover dinner so that the refrigerator was sufficiently empty to handle whatever comes next. Some of this ‘what comes next’ had an early appearance in the form of Diane Neal Emmens returning from a funeral in town with three large platters of sandwiches, so the refrigerators were immediately full again. Tim and Deb stopped by briefly emerging from the other direction (the cove) and by touching their cool and wet skin we could experience the cool water of Lobster Cove by association. We miss that experience terribly. They left their kayaks on our land for our party guests to enjoy.