Sylvia's Journal

This morning my right foot and left hand were numb when I woke up. It is very frustrating because if this happens as a result of the way I sleep I don’t know how to change it. I try to fall asleep lying on my back, but I don’t wake up that way. Luckily the numbness does tend to disappear quickly after I get up, except for the piece on the sole of my foot that has been numb since July 14th.

Yesterday Axel and I started the day, while still in bed, by getting on each other’s bad side. This meant a fight over money. These fights never quite get resolved because when we see each other’s hurt the fight stops and goes underground for awhile. This time, because we are literally and physically also on each other’s bad side, the kiss and make-up part was not as easy as it used to be because of Axel’s plastic splint contraption and his limited movement shoulder. In the past I could simply crawl under his arm and all was well again (if he let me). Such crawling now would probably add more pain; bad sides slapped together; aww, that hurts!

We did, some time ago, try to change our habitual places in bed so that we’d be on each other’s good side only to discover the power of habit. Apparently, over the course of the night, I inched back to my old place, slowly pushing Axel to the edge. He finally got up and took the wise decision to resume his old place, while I was blissfully dreaming on.

Yesterday was an intense work day for both of us, feeling very much like the old, pre-crash days. The only thing that is different is that we both are quite stiff by the end of the day of all that sitting.

Sook and Roger saved us from sitting some more in front of our computers in the evening and invited us to dinner with some friends. We discussed the upcoming primaries and argued for or against Obama or Clinton. If we’d held the election with us as the only voters Hillary would have won: imagine a woman in the White House!

Although it was a seated dinner, I got up after a while to do more exercises. Others joined in and we compared our stiff knees and backs. When we talk about joints in this new phase of our lives we mean something different than we did 30 years ago. Exercising will be the new rage, now that the baby boomers have come to accept that they have to do this in order to keep up their image of health, strengths and possibilities. Axel and I have a head start. We know that our exercise regime is for life, forever.

We drove back through a light dusting of snow and tumbled exhausted into our bed, on our usual habitual sides.

I woke up at 4:30 AM, my usual time for getting up and being in time for an easy commute. But today is not a commuting day so I turned over and slept another 2 hours, full of dreams about things healing, stalling or breaking down.

I had a 3:30 PM appointment for physical therapy yesterday and so I left MSH right after lunch. I had been very alert about walking the right way all day and by the time I parked my car I was ready for a perfect walk into the PT office. I did, but no one was watching. I sat down and read a few pages in my book when I was called in. At that time a stabbing pain, like an ice pick behind my ankle bone, stopped me in my tracks. I limped into the treatment room. So much for showing off!

This is the new phase of healing, sometimes I feel on top of the world and I think I’m done with the healing and then there are those setbacks with muscle pains and the site of the break/dislocation reminding me, with these stabbing flashes of pain, that it was not quite 5 months ago and that I have a ways to go.

Although it was neck and shoulder time for the PT treatment, Julia, breaching insurance policy, gave attention to the muscles in my leg as well as those in my shoulder. Both got a good massage.

I found Axel hobbling up Bridge Street in the darkness, on his way home from the station. He had gone to see his therapist in Brookline, a five hour trip from door to door if done by train, for a one hour consultation. He was exhausted and irritable from the long trip. There must be a better way. Nevertheless, he cooked dinner because I could not stand up all that long for cooking.

And while he was doing that I was reading in my new book about the battles that the 1940 women pilots had to wage to get into the male bastion of war and flying.

“The trouble is that some many of them [women] insist on wanting to do jobs which they are quite incapable of doing. The menace is the woman who thinks that she ought to be flying a high-speed bomber when she really has not the intelligence to scrub the floor of a hospital properly, or wants to nose round as an Air Raid Warden and yet can’t cook her husband’s dinner.” (C.G. Grey, editor of Aeroplane Magazine, 1940)

It is true that I was incapable of cooking my husband’s dinner last night and I do have this thing about flying (no bombers though). But we’ve come a long way, as a society, in our thinking about what women can do. All that in a mere 60 years!

I never knew I had a Psoas muscle. It’s a big one that goes somewhere on the inside of my thighs. I also learned, from experience, that if you don’t ‘toe off’ well all sorts of muscles in your legs and hips get out of whack. In my evolution from walking with my big black moon boot to walking on regular shoes again, I managed, without the physical therapist noticing, to cheat on the toe off. Instead of flexing my foot (ankle) I did (do) something that looks like a swerve as I bring my foot forward. As a result my psoas muscle has gotten tight or short and leads to more limping, just when I thought I could walk normally again. The mechanics of my body never cease to amaze me. There is no cheating.

This new development thus calls for a new set of exercises. There is one that requires lying on a kitchen table and dropping one leg while holding the other knee; and there’s another exercise that is slightly indecent.It requires assistance from Axel. I won’t describe it here but he will like it.

Axel is making terrific progress with his left arm. He can raise it quite high now. He can’t move his fingers yet but he can raise his wrist so it is level. We have noticed quite a bit of progress just in one week. If he wanted to (and doesn’t wear his splint) he could fool anyone that his hand is completely normal. Now that he is driving, the improved movement of his arm and hand comes in handy. Our spirits are quite buoyed by this. The nerve is regenerating. It must be the no-alcohol diet; the nerves are not being distracted by these nasty neurotoxins!

Yesterday I went to Cambridge again for a three-quarter day. Sitting in front of a computer and two hours driving is wreaking havoc on my upper back, neck and shoulders. The muscles, tendons and ligaments remember the trauma and are clearly not done with it yet. My computer-centered lifestyle is not helpful and requires constant alertness. I have to watch my posture and pull my shoulder blades back; but even then it is hard to get comfortable. I look forward to the Tuesday and Thursday sessions of PT when that part of my body gets attention with a hot pack, ultrasound and massage.

I also need to be alert as I drive home. I nearly drove into the back of the car in front of me on my ride home yesterday afternoon. Its driver decided, quite abruptly, to let a gaggle of Canada geese cross Memorial Drive. For a split second my mind imagined another crash and its aftermath: car out of commission again, and me probably too, with muscles that would scream ‘enough!’ Both Axel and I have this fear of a car crash now. It’s funny that I feel quite safe when I am up in the air; but on the road I don’t. I think it has something to do with control, and the number of cars. There’s much less traffic in the air. On the road there are too many turkeys, in addition to those Canada geese.

English speakers, just bear with me for the next few lines. Today is a rather special day in Holland that requires a rhyme.

Een klompje met wortel bij de haard
Wachtte op een bezoek van Sint en paard
Maar vanochtend was het klompje leeg
Zelfs geen koekje van eigen deeg

Het zijn vast die terrorist wetten
Die Sinterklaas hier beletten
Om stiekum huizen binnen te gaan
Daar hebben ze echt een hekel aan

Stel toch eens voor, zo’n zwarte piet
een blanke die je van roet voorziet
Politiek is dat hier niet erg korrekt
slavernij die door een traditie lekt

Hier wacht men op Santa uit ’t Noorden
En weet niet van rijmende woorden
Men koopt zich wekenlang dol en daas
Geef mij maar Sinterklaas!

Today Sint Nicholas (Sinterklaas) visits Holland. Last night on the other side of the Atlantic, little Dutch kids put their shoes, boots or wooden shoes (traditionally) near the fire place (or if missing, near a heat source). They fill it with straw and carrots for Sint’s horse. Black Peter will crawl down the chimney and put presents in the shoes. At least that’s what I believed happened and what I did when I was little. Tonight the grown ups and the kids who have figured out who really gives them their presents, sit around a basket filled with gift-wrapped packages in all shapes and sizes. The basket was delivered on their doorstep after a loud knock on the door but with no one there when the door was opened. You then say ‘Thank you Sint and Piet’ into the empty street. Each package has a poem attached, supposedly written by Sint and/or Piet, in rhyme. They will write whatever there is to say about the recipient of the package, good or bad. The package itself may or may not contain a real present. When it doesn’t, it usually requires a search to find the real present someplace else in the house.

Sinterklaas is another of these rituals that is hard to explain to outsiders. It was always my favorite event. Technically speaking it is not a holiday. You don’t get the day off like you do for Christmas. I do miss it here when December 5 comes around. We still celebrate it, when the girls are back, on Christmas Eve. We start around midnight because it takes us all day to get our rhyming and surprise packaging done.

Axel did get a present yesterday, but not from Sinterklaas. He was able to retrieve his driver’s licence from the registry of Motor Vehicles in less than fifteen minutes. Hats off to the registry! Armed with his license we then picked up the car at the garage. It is fixed in the way that old people are fixed after they get another piece of their body replaced; things will be OK until the next thing goes, which could be anytime. We keep our fingers crossed that this ‘anytime’ is not in 2007. Replacing a car is one thing we cannot quite handle at this time, nor any more big repairs like this.

With the car back Axel did something that he dreamed about for the last couple of months: go to the grocery store on his own and buy exactly what he wanted. It was a great feeling of freedom, he reported after he returned several hours later. This simple pleasure of shopping on your own!

This was supposed to have been the first full week of work, or mostly full. I think I will continue to need some down time on Mondays and Fridays. ‘Full’ means three days of commuting to Cambridge. But the car is still in the garage and we don’t know when it will be fixed. I did the calculations for train travel and decided to stay home and have my planned meetings by telephone. It’s not a great sacrifice even though I enjoyed being in the office last week. I won’t miss the commute.

The snowstorm that first brought rain and sleet and later snow kept me inside on my birthday, except for one sortie to the physical therapist late in the day. I told Julia that after her last intervention, painful as it had been, I had limbered up considerably. Of my own free will I requested a repeat. The appointed 30 minutes stretched out to one and a half hour with much mobilization exercise, topped of with a 20 minute (stationary) bike ride and the usual 10 minutes of icing. The last half hour means I get much reading done which is part of the attraction. I am fully immersed in the experiences of the spitfire women.

Neighbor Ted was our physical therapy appointment driver. He took Axel to Peabody and later me to downtown. I had planned to take the bike but the weather was too nasty and he would not have let me. What would we do without our neighbors!

I had a nice Skype conversation with Tessa. Because of the fancy computer she has I see her on my screen (and everything/everyone else who happens to walk by her). This is something I remember from sci-fi movies a long time ago, the picture phone, and here it is, as if she is right there with me. The florist delivered her gift, a small square bouquet with a ribbon that looks like a wrapped gift box, quite nifty. It sits in front of me, the gift that never opens.

Sita is busy with her scribing in India. She sent me her birthday wishes on December 2 because it was already the 3rd for her, confusing Tessa. Sita is having a wonderful time. I don’t think she has set foot outside the fancy hotel yet but hopefully, after all is over, Nathalie will show her another side of India; a side that is probably not represented as the high and might meet at the Taj Palace Hotel to discuss India’s economic future. She sent us the front page of a newspaper with her at work. Axel discovered that you can see her at work at http://www.pbase.com/forumweb/india2007&page=all

Axel had planned a festive mussels and fries dinner but being without a car, he had to make other plans. He cooked a spicy stir-fry beef instead that left the house in smoke and me coughing but it was worth it when the smoke cleared, the coughing stopped and we sat down for dinner. We shared the Belgian Duvel beer that Gary gave Axel sometime in July, half a glass each. It reminded us of how much pretense there is in a pretend-beer.

Axel went to a town event in the evening with his buddies. Afterwards they always land in a bar. Being on a no (sometimes interpreted as low) alcohol regime I wondered how he fared, but did not stay up to find out.

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.