Sylvia's Journal

I woke up to grey skies and rain. Axel woke up to a terrible pain in his back which required emergency massage. I settled him among pillows with a hot pad and made breakfast. It seemed like a good day for breakfast in bed; no appointments, no need to be anywhere for anyone except ourselves. While Axel’s back was calming down under the heatpad I made French toast from Italian bread, the kind that ends up like custard in between crusts of cinnamon toast. While we were eating the rain turned into snow and everything is turning white. Now there really is no point in getting up. I reserved a plane for 12:30 but I think I will let it go. There is more tea to drink, a newspaper to read and a book to finish.

Yesterday was another intense and long workday, and the juggling continues. A somewhat edgy three-party phone call with partners who we also compete with at times ended up producing strong feelings that drain people but also spur them into action; more or different than expected. This is why rational planning often underestimates time – we simply leave out such scenarios, and yet they happen all the time. I ended up spending half the day on something for which I had budgeted only an hour or so.

It was good that the St. Johns called in the middle of the afternoon to tell us that they were going into Cambridge to a comedy show; would we want to join them. Such prods from outside are good and put an end to the possibility of contemplating work beyond five o’clock. We bought the tickets, drove into town, had a bowl of Chinese noodles and sat down in the tiny third-floor comedy club, and laughed, which is what we paid for. I had not realized there were so many styles of stand-up comedy. I could not understand everything, sometimes because of accents and language and sometimes because I am a little dense or could not imagine that jokes could be made about such things. For example I did not get the KKK jokes from the black comedian and this was, how embarrassing, publicly acknowledged. Katy-Blair offered my Dutchness as an excuse which then led to more jokes. It was a tiny place and I was sitting at 2 feet from the host so every facial expression is picked up and potential material for more jokes. At least I was not asked to get on stage, that would be have been the ultimate embarrassment.

Back home we tumbled into bed, tired from the long day. And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, I relived the last few seconds before the crash; the plane veering off to the right and out of control, the trees rushing up to meet us and the sense that this was it, game over!

It took awhile to shed the image and let it go, partially because I wanted to understand why it suddenly appeared. It is true that on the 14^th of the month the crash does tend to come back to the center of my attention, depite the work and other distractions. Also, Axel and I talked about his EMDR sessions with Ruth. They don’t talk all that much about the crash but yesterday they did.

What was left after the crash image disappeared was the realization, and surprise, that I think nothing of getting on a plane again.