Sylvia's Journal

I don’t think I have woken up this late in the last three months, at nearly 8 AM. This doesn’t mean I slept through the night. I think I did that only once or twice. But the nights, interrupted as they are, are generally good. I woke up around 6 to the usual stiffness and pains and did some of my exercises in bed rather than wait for the hot shower. This took the edge off and I fell asleep again. I retrieved my dreams which came in two parts: before the exercises and after. I was not able to retrieve much of the older batch. The newer batch was all about Leiden, my alma mater, with relatives and friends in it that no one here would know and who I have not seen for awhile (Jet, Ineke, Clariet), some not for more than 30 years (Paul Kist). What brought them into my consciousness I wondered? I did not look at their pictures, or talk with them. Something about my student years that came to the surface. The mind is such a mystery.

What this does trigger is thoughts about my consciousness and unconsciousness during the crash itself. In the early days of my journal when I was still ruminating daily about the crash itself, I already wrote about this. I know that the moment I became conscious of losing control of the plane my consciousness shut like a trapdoor. I am sure it did that for a reason. If I had gone consciously into our free fall, I would have tensed up and probably broken every bone in my body, if I’d survived at all. Much like I get tense when I see calamity movies on TV. My being unconscious allowed my body to relax and thus absorb much of the impact, whatever remained of it after the bog absorbed much of it. I imagine myself something of a rag doll as we hit the ground. And then, when I needed too be conscious again, to help my rescuers know what was broken and painful, it returned.

Axel and I have few conversations about the crash. And when we do it is usually because someone is visiting and asks the question. I always see Axel wince; sometime I can see his body physically move away from my words. His mind has stuffed the experience into a far away place where it is not accessible. This is another protective trick our mind plays on us. He knows he has to retrieve it some time but right now there is too much else going on that needs his full attention and concentration.

Another yesterday rushed by filled with phone conversations to untangle bills or settling them, exercises, which have practically tripled in a month, our daily visit to physical and occupational therapists. Axel now had physical therapy added to his regimen and had to make two trips to Peabody. Thank you Roger and Diane for driving him.

I prepared my first dinner for our dinner guest John Gorsline. For once it would be us feeding our guests rather than our guests feeding us. But lo and behold, a partial dinner was dropped off in the morning by Ellie and Rick plus a recipe for the other part. This was a repeat from an earlier dinner they had cooked for us and which was among our top ten dinners (I will post the recipe on the Airset calendar). So that’s what I cooked. Of course John did not come empty-handed either. He brought a bottle of 1% wine which we did not even know existed and Axel sampled a very small glass; he also brought two chunks of real Dutch cheese nd a multi-grain bread and pasties from the best bakery on the North Shore (King in Salem).

Sita came home enthusiastically from the Topsfield Fair where she’d gone with her old friend Tim. She proudly showed us her winnings and new acquisitions: a giant stuffed manatee with baby sewn onto its breast and ‘faces’ from a bobcat and a fox (sort of like a scalp with the skin only), both probably illegal and rather creepy looking with her fingers through their eye socket holes. Maybe that brought on the weird dreams.