Sylvia's Journal

The early morning writing has, besides a therapeutic value, also a more physical function. While I am writing I move my shoulders, wiggle my toes, stretch my legs and help them get ready for the day. This is a far cry from my jumping out of my bed at 5 AM to go play squash with my seventy-something partner. She probably still can do this.

We are learning to accept whatever comes our way and that the images we may have had of ourselves as sprite 50 and 60 somethings is, at least for the foreseeable future, not going to be. Sometimes this is very hard, as with the contra dancing, or when Axel takes our Sunday visitors out on the beach and I have to stay behind, but then I remember the words ‘it is what it is,’ and I do my exercises instead while looking at the cove and discover that it is the best place in the world to do my exercises. Whatever is in front of me at the moment is actually not a loss but a present.

When I was younger I remember being convinced that the grass on the other side was greener. It was hard for me to enjoy what was right in front of me. It was an attitude that gave me some advantages. I was the best at anticipating what would come next and be ready for it. Instead of savoring the end of day hot bath or the joy of snuggling between well worn sheets in a warm bed I was busy imagining the cold and wet ride to school in the dark and making sure that everything I would need, book bag, clothes, lunch, was ready to go. I did not know at the time that I was also depriving myself of this other gift which is called ‘living in the moment.’ When it was vacation I wanted to be back in school, when I was in school I wanted to be on vacation. My grandmother once chastised me that before dinner I wanted it to be during dinner, and during dinner I ate so fast, practically swallowed food whole, so it could soon be after dinner and I could go back to play. I think I sailed through the most wonderful events in life always thinking about the next landing.

If I were to maintain this attitude now I would be pretty miserable much of the time. Fortunately I seemed to have lost it at the crash site. It was a good loss. My morning routine is better now: a slow rising to the surface of wakefulness. I pick up the computer from my bedside table, open my eyes and stick a pair of glasses in front of them while trying to retrieve shards of a dream that is dancing out of sight. And while all this is going on I register things up and down my body, in my mind and outside, in the physical world. In my work we call this the leadership practice of scanning. And it is only now that I realize how it is connected to living in the present. After all you cannot scan the future since it is not yet there to see.

I look out of the window at Lobster Cove (now in the clouds) and register the weather. I already know the temperature because it is projected on the ceiling throughout the night together with the time by a smart little clock that beams this information up in big red letters. I check to see if Axel is awake (he is not) and either start writing in my dream log, or, if already too late (as today), in my Caringbridge journal.

The last two days have gone much too fast for me to do all I had planned. There was little time for my MSH work although I managed to attend (virtually) a brown bag lunch about corporate involvement in the kind of work we do. But most of the time seems to go to phone calls, exercises and physical therapy. For Axel this is about to change and get more intense. We have ended the meals on wheels program, with gratitude, but continue to need the wheels part of the program for Axel’s many rides to Peabody. I will need larger chunks of time to concentrate on my work, with deadlines hovering at the end of this week and the following ones.

We heard last night that Joan’s brace is off as well. If her experience is anything like Axel’s it will be both a loss and a gain the next few days, but after that only gain. Welcome to the world of the people who are plastic-free, Joan!