Sylvia's Journal

I woke up from dreams about vacation spots and navigating them in a wheelchair, quite well I remember. There was also something about an ancient expresso machine that had Axel’s name on it and intercontinental flights; none of it makes sense anymore, now in broad daylight.

There is much to do this Saturday morning. I am flying at 9:30 with Bill to Laconia and still need to do my preparations for that flight and call the briefer about weather and other things I need to know along the route. Then I have to get everything ready to pick up my new E-bay acquisition, the Alden shell whose owner requires cash and a ride to the Cape. We have decided to continue, after picking up the boat, to see Alison who lives further up the Cape in Truro during weekends. Armed with his allergy medicine, Axel thought it would be a nice outing, a mini vacation of sorts and Alison extended the hoped-for invitation.

Yesterday was a very productive work-day-at-home. I got many items off my to-do list and feel less anxious about the very full and short week that starts on Monday. I also went to see Ruth again after a two months hiatus. The scary flight out of Kabul and other stresses led me to make an appointment with her. I biked over to Beverly Farms since Axel had the car to go to PT and besides, it was a glorious day. I left the house early and took a little break at West Beach in Beverly Farms. I sat on a bench looking out over the ocean, smelling the fishy seaweed that was drying in the sun and that transported me back to Holland, eating haring in the port of Scheveningen. A young woman and her mother were playing on the beach with a three year old (grand)child. The kid has no idea how lucky he is.

Ruth and I explored the tangled up post-crash relationships and how they mingle with work and produce a constant stream of stressful events. We didn’t get to the EMDR until the session was nearly over; just explaining everything took most of an hour. The brief EMDR session that followed produced some images about hands, apart, together, and a fear about losing my compassion. There is more work to do and we will pick it up again when I come back from Ethiopia and Holland.

Back home there was more work to do and more accomplishments that made it OK to sit out in the sun with Andrew, Axel, Gregor and later Jim as we all called it a (work)day. We had a mountain of interesting cheeses in front of us, a cooler full of smililarly interesting beers left over form our party last Sunday and I let go of all restraints. I had two beers (for the first time since July) and too much cheese. I paid a price for that when finally Andrew, Axel and I sat down for a meal and I was both too sleepy and too full to participate much. I managed to stay alert enough to watch Andrews slides from Madagascar from which he just returned. Familiar pictures of a place I once thought Axel and I would live for a while, five years ago. It is funny how life goes. If that had come to materialize I would not have taken up flying, and I would not be writing this blog right now.