Sylvia's Journal

There are frost flowers on the window when I wake up. It is really winter now. But I am determined to ride my bike to Quaker Meeting today. The weather calls for long underwear, as if I am going skiing.

I slept through the night with only one interruption and woke up, as usual, with numb hands. I don’t seem to get the shoulders right at night. However, the numbness goes away quickly as I do my first exercises in bed, the ones that will help me go down the stairs more fluidly.

I did not go flying yesterday. Even the die-hard small aircraft pilots returned back from their flights shaking their heads. It was very choppy, even at 4000 feet. It was obvious that I was not going to fly in such weather. We had a meeting with the co-owners of the new plane that replaced N4337P. The new tail number is N8369A. I haven’t learned it by heart yet. In fact I haven’t flown in it yet (but hopefully will today).

The meeting was about money, lots of it, that needs to go in a kitty to pay for repairs (past and future) and upgrades. It was a bit of a shock and made me wonder whether I had lost my mind with this phantasy of flying again. And yet, I have some idea that I will make it work one way or another, even if I have to take on a paper route or start playing the lottery. This flying thing is not something I could drop easily. For one, as I have learned in July, life is too short to postpone the things you really want to do (even if it may also kill you). On Friday night we met a skier who, two years ago, skied off a few cliffs and into a tree and miraculously survived even though, two years later he is still being operated upon and not fully recovered. We had quite a lot to talk about and much in common. He too is going to ski again. Call it stubborness or call it doing the things you love. We’ve got only one life to do it in.

We went to the Magnuson family grave at Rosedale cemetery to put in some tulips and crocuses for next spring. With heavy frost and a snow storm coming, we picked the last day that bulbs could still be put in the ground. There was no postponing. Axel returned home so through and through cold that I had to wrap him in hot packs, and fill him with hot soup to defrost him. This is how Alison, who had come for dinner, found Axel: a blanket around him and a ski hat on, tucked in the big chair, half asleep. Although she was game for going out for our constitutional around Smith’s Point, we decided against it. It was nearly dark after all. So much for good intentions.

I had cooked a meal using a beautiful cookbook-travelogue (Mangoes & Curry leaves) that Axel gave me last Christmas: dhal from Nepal, slow cooked beef and onions from Bangladesh and a veggie dish from India. Except for Pakistan we covered the subcontinent. The cooking had filled the house with the aromas that Sita will be quite familiar with now.

Sita had called us with Skype the other night (she getting ready for breakfast). She had conferenced Tessa in as well (doing her homework). They talked through Jim’s computer which he had plugged into our downstairs sound system. Sita’s and Tessa’s voices were coming out of the ceiling and were audible everywhere downstairs. We could talk back wherever we were as the microphone picked up our voices even at a distance. It was an eerie experience, as if we were all in the room together. We would have considered this impossible only a couple of decades ago, and magic before that. Maybe technology messes up the muscles in my upperback, as I sit hunched over in front of my computer, but I would never want to give up the way it keeps us all connected.