Sylvia's Journal

On of my new goals for this week is getting back as much as I can to ‘normal.’ Normal means having a bedside table that doesn’t look like it belongs in a hospital. Normal also means using my clothes closet again rather than the basket under my bed with the 3 drawstring pants and the 3 Tee shirts I have been wearing for the last 7 weeks. Normal means cleaning out my email box daily and starting to read attachments that come from work. Normal is also on Axel’s mind. It means taking more responsibility for paying bills and household administration, for small household tasks that don’t require bending or twisting his spine. And today normal means going to Quaker Meeting for the first time since July 8.

But this is where ‘normal’ stops. Our bedroom still looks like a hospital, with its pee bottles, commode, pill bottles, skin lotions and occupational therapy contraptions (old and new) and piles of pillows littering the place. Our helplessness at night is still complete. Our furniture still needs to accommodate the wide passage required by my wheelchair. Our estate management, including gardening, repair and winterizing, will have to remain in the hands of others. The meals on wheels arrangement is still much appreciated as it relieves Sita and Jim from having to think about cooking and shopping, something still entirely beyond our abilities.

Yesterday we all piled in Sita’s car and went on an outing to the bank and then to the Atomic Café in Beverly, stopping at yard sales along the way. I stocked up on yarn for the winter knitting season. We must have been quite an apparition, me with my crutches and moon boot and Axel with his turtle shell, his squinting eye, his rehab cane and his enormous scar. But no one asks or says anything and there weren’t any innocent little children about who would feel free to ask or stare.

For anyone who knows where we live it is probably hard to imagine that we would voluntary leave Lobster Cove to go sit on a sidewalk drinking coffee on a busy street in Beverly on a gorgeous late summer day. But for us it was a treat: great coffee and being out in the world (yes, Beverly!).

We returned home and were soon joined by Sallie Craig from MSH who brought a great loaf of bread, fresh fruit and a huge tube of skin cream for my recovering leg. She then set to work vacuuming the house and doing laundry. She sat outside to recover and read until a seagull crapped on her, while Martin Imm quietly went about fixing more things and finding new projects around the house. We will never be able to let him go. In the meantime Axel did what he should be doing every day, taking a nap, and I tried to sort out stuff I had postponed for weeks and which required some serious thinking. This is something that is still a challenge for Axel and me. Our heads were severely shaken seven weeks ago and we are trying to get them back into gear. These steps to normalcy give us a small measure of control and a sense of accomplishments that is outside the physical realm.

Tessa called from Canada with an enthusiastic update about her new home and the progress in settling in (bank account, phone line, etc.) We still miss her a lot and the feeling is mutual, but at least she is with Steve. We had a family meeting with Sita and Jim about running our ménage a quatre and planning next week. They are both going to be in New York next weekend (from Friday September 7 through Sunday night the 9th) and we will need someone to spend the night in our house for those three nights. Let us know if you are available for light night nursing duty on these dates.