Sylvia's Journal

A thousand chirpy birds in a bright blue sky woke me up this morning. The cove was half full with the surface of a looking glass reflecting the blue of the sky. The row boat beckoned. This required a bit of assembly. Axel had bought new handgrips and new oar ‘buttons,’ the red and green cuffs that hold the oars in the oar locks. By the time I made it onto the water the glassiness had given way to ripples and once out of the cove it was a bit too choppy for relaxed rowing and so I returned. Still it was fun to be able to go for a row like that early in the morning on this beautiful spring day. We do live in paradise!

Sita sent us an article this morning, all the way across the driveway, from Time magazine that features a story about Tony Blair’s new calling with him posing in front of Sita’s rendering of his journey. How proud can you be as parents?

Yesterday I went in early to Cambridge and found the office deserted, which it usually is at that early hour, but staying deserted the rest of the day since most of my colleagues are still in Washington. My elderly computer acted up so much that simply sending some follow up emails to people met in Washington took me nearly two hours. I tried to be patient and resisted the increasingly strong desire to throw a temper tantrum and fling the darn thing into the wall. A scheduled meeting prevented what would have been considered very unprofessional behavior. After the meeting my energy level went downhill so fast that I decided to give up on my plan to have a productive day. I sat in on a one hour information session on MSH’s benefits package which seemed a good use of time and, apparently, it did so to 9 other colleagues. Since there were 10 door prizes for attendance we all got a price. I won a leather CIGNA portfolio which I donated to my colleague Thomas who is going to be a business man after he graduates from business school in California, two years from now. At the benefits session I discovered that one of my new colleagues rows and became a member of the boatclub across the street. This is great news; we can now row together, in one or two boats.

This new discovery propelled me to the boat house for my first row of the season, months after my clubmates put their boats in the water. But then I could not remember the combination of the lock on the women’s dressing room and that was the end of that plan. It was time to go home and stop expecting great deeds; how much wiser it would be to simply enjoy the beautiful day; there was still plenty left of it.

We had a lovely dinner consisting of asparagus, salmon burgers and tabbouleh made from a Lebanese cookbook that witnessed our courtship in Beirut some 30 years ago. We dined sitting by the cove drinking Axel’s home made beer out of a blue bottle with a home made label that was part of his graphic design school assignment some years ago. Life is good!

When you walk out of the house a subtle but penetrating scent of lilacs envelops you. They are at their peak in three magnificent colors: white, pale violet and dark purple. The sight and scent make you want to stop the progress of seasons. This is a great time of the year at our house (something I say nearly every season).

We touched down in our tiny Canadian Regional Jet yesterday at 6:30 PM. Axel was waiting for me. We had some turbulence on the way back from Washington which made me break out in a sweat. I have never quite responded this way to turbulence. The little plane veered left then right and my body instantly relived the anxious moments on our climb out of Kabul six weeks ago. The body remembers, I remembered!

Yesterday morning I had breakfast with Mr. Abed, the founder and chief exectuive of one of the world’s biggest and most famous NGOs which is called BRAC. I had met him some 17 years ago at his headquarters, sitting on the topfloor of a highrise that was, at the time, unusual in the otherwise low city of Dhaka. Then we talked about sucession planning. I mentioned to him that seventeen laters he was still at the helm. Indeed he is, but he has strong leaders at each of BRAC’s enterprises: a university, a series of profit-making enterprises and the social programs. When you teach about leadership it is very exciting to meet someone in person who is/does everything you associate with leadership. Story telling is one of those abilities. I had heard the story about the introduction of oral rehydration therapy in Bangladesh before, but hearing it come directly from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, made for one of the better breakfast dates I have ever had. We explored how BRAC can include the teaching of leadership in its preparation of the next generation of public health leaders.We are both seeing a trip to Bangladesh in the future.

After breakfast I checked out of my room and went to see my friend Tisna and her husband in their building project, a brownstone near Dupont Circle that has been undergoing reconstructive surgery for several years now. They are no longer camping in their own house and the end is in sight but for me it seemed like a long way off. I suppose it all depends on what you are used to. We are also perpetually busy with our house but not that busy and we can actually sit and read most every night. Such homely relaxation is not in the stars for them quite yet. But when it is done it will be magnificent, in a wonderful urban setting.

When I arrived home we made ‘a tour of the estate’ as we call it. It has become somewhat of a ritual upon my homecoming: we pour ourselves a drink and slowly walk around the house, checking whether the seedlings are emerging, the progress of the lettuce, the length of the grass (Sita mowed yesterday and so everything looks pristine). I noticed that creatures have nibbled a particular plant. I may never come to flower and so I can’t remember what it is supposed to be which makes it less of a loss. The Columbines that reseeded themselves (with some help) are deep blue. I suggest them as a subject for a new line of note cards. On the seaside lawn the lily-of-the-valley are in full bloom and filling the air with their fragrance. Axel’s mother used to bundle and sell them on the flower market; the revenu went into their Bermuda fund, an annual vacation. I never quite understood how such a tiny humble flower could fund such a trip but, apparently, city people pay big money for small bouquets of these lovely flowers. I have never been to Bermuda and it is not a destination so we just let the flowers bloom to their hearts’ content and then they die to do it all over again next spring, to our continued delight.

Today is Memorial Day in the US, the equivalent of May 4 in Holland, celebrated with parades and speeches at cemeteries that are sprigged up for the occasion. The weather is nearly always perfect, as is today. It is one of those days that makes leaving home very hard but that is what I have to do. In the afternoon I will fly to Washington D.C. for the annual Global Health Conference. Most years I manage to miss this conference which always requires travel over the Memorial Day weekend. This time I got strong-armed onto program. With one of my young colleagues I will be doing a workshop that illustrates how we demystify leadership. I know that, once I am there, it will OK and may be even fun. But right now, looking out over a glassy Lobster Cove and a roto-tilled garden that is ready to plant, I am reluctant to leave home.

Yesterday was a day like this as well. In between Quaker Meeting and a cookout at Nancy and Ed’s, Axel’s cousins who live in West Gloucester, we managed to put in some yard work. I finished the window boxes; we bought the tomatoes and basil plants and emptied the compost bin. The compost had, against all expectations because of our negligence, produced some very rich soil out of a year of (organic) consumption debris. It was like an archeaologicial dig: there were the tea bags, the egg shells, the corn cobs and melon rind, mixed in with the occasional plastic bag, elastic bands, tie-ums, that spoke of a lazy composter or one who did not want to get her hands dirty. Yesterday we got our hands very dirty.

Sita called from the airport as she was heading out to Western Massachusetts for a concert, whisked away by Jim who went to pick her up. After a three day R&R at a most luxurious resort on the Red Sea Coast and flying business class home she had no (and made no) excuses about being tired. I was relieved to hear her voice, not being sure how the Mt. Sinai adventure had ended. She was proud to have made the 7 km long and 7000 ft up trip ‘Mount Moses’ albeit it with a multitude of other tourists. The trip could also me made by camel for those less fit. This made the experience of watching the sunrise a little different than they had expected; apparently it was a rather noisy and crowded gathering at the summit. We were glad to find out that there had been no sleeping with the bedouins.

I woke up this morning with the word ‘otherwise’ on my mind. I was reminded of the poem by Jane Kenyon with the same name. I am acutely aware this morning of the other reality that we escaped by a hair last July, the it-might-have-been-otherwise reality as I look at the sleeping Axel. My heart fills with tenderness and I touch him softly, my fingers walking down his spine. He stirred for a moment but kept sleeping. He has no idea of the tender place I am in.

I am no longer thinking daily of our miraculous survival but today I am. I am even revisiting the last minutes or seconds before the crash when everything went black; and once again my body is trying to create another outcome – a successful go around – as it did nearly every night last July and August. I wonder why this is all coming back now.

Maybe it is because summer is arriving and today looks just like the 14th of July: a stark blue sky that makes me look upward and think of flying. Or maybe it is because Ann Lasman showed up with her family yesterday as she did so often last summer, to take care of the garden. Or maybe it was Anzie reminding us that there will be a 14th of July party again at her house and this time she expects us to be there.

The gardening yesterday was hard on the body. I am as stiff as a plank this morning and in some pain; that too reminds me of last fall when I sometimes wondered whether we would ever be normal again. Might I have recovered too fast and here is finally the backlash? I am hovering between acceptance of my phsyical state (as if it is a premature old age) and wanting to fix the various problems that most everyone assures we are fixable. What is clear is that something has shifted and something needs to be done. Maybe it is finally time to join a yoga class again, as Abi has told me for months now.

Of course the pains may simply be a commentary on my rather busy day yesterday. I brought out most of the plants from the house which required some very heavy lifting as the pots grow bigger and heavier each year. Without the plants the sitting arrangements in the living and dining room made no sense anymore and thus I got into moving furniture around which then exposed parts of the room that needed to be vaccuumed. Axel calls these self-generating tasks. I also filled the window boxes with the plants we bought last weekend.

And then there was the asparagus bed planting. Although Ann’s husband and boys did much of the moving of dirt from one place to another, Ann and I contributed our share of shoveling. We now have 12 asparagus crowns that Ann assures us will provide us with an abundance of fresh asparagus a year from now and forever. It is hard to imagine. The crowns look like withered octopus tentacles, brown and brittle.

In the middle of the afternoon Tessa called in tears from London. It is as if the place is infected with a depression virus. I am beginning to suspect that fnishing her program there, one more year, is not going to happen. I told her that Jim and Sita are moving out this summer and that she and Steve are welcome to take their place if they can stand the cat shit smell that is clinging to the inside of the studio. The cats express their disapproval of Sita’s and Jim’s nights away (negligence they call it I am sure) by shitting all over the place.

I never heard from Sita anymore and can only hope that she is no longer with the bedouins on the top of Mount Sinai but in the plane to Frankfurt or already there and waiting for her connection to Boston. We are looking forward to having her back, even those it will be only a couple of weeks before she flies out to London again.

While I was sleeping Sita climbed Mount Sinai by the light of a very full moon and then camped out with bedouins – at least that was the plan. We have not heard from her since and hope everything turned out as magic as she imagined and that she made it back down safely.

Here things were less exciting; a full work day interrupted by an acupture session to get that Chi flowing again across and between parts of my body that are stiff, sore or both. I have also made an appointment to see Julia, my physical therapist, again. She is in high demand; I have to wait a couple of weeks, unfortunately. As a last resort I will call the orthopede but given how short these consultations are, how hard to get and how disappointing in terms of pain relief, I prefer not to.

Today we are entering Memorial Day weekend. Axel put in the geraniums at the family graves in between the gentle spring rains that have prepared the earth for all the plantings that will be happening this weekend here on the North Shore. The full moon has passed and we have received the go ahead from the universe for tomatoes, basil and other plants that do not like frost or cold nights. Later this morning we are finally going to put in the asparagus crowns that the Lasmans offered to us last fall. It will be a day of yardwork – a gorgeous sunny day, blue skies and the lilacs and beach plum (Jennee’s tree) in full bloom with shades of pink, white, violet and deep purple. It would also be a great day for flying but I think I’ll stay on the ground.

We are all up early this morning because Joe’s plane for San Diego departs early. Axel, the only non morning person among us, is driving which meant breakfast at 5:45 AM. He was jump-started with Harrar coffee from Ethiopia. It worked; they just left, on time. Joe’s visit was very different from his last one when we were in calamity mode. Although a wonderful and memorable visit at the time, we prefer to have it this way where we are all on same plain, at least physically.

Yesterday Tessa left and Joe returned, so we keep an occupancy rate of 3 in our house (not counting Jim across the driveway). I left the house in convoy with Tessa at 6 AM and when I walked out of MSH at the end of the afternoon she had arrived home in London. The homecoming was apparently not quite as joyful as she had expected: Steve was asleep, the house dirty, the plants crying for water and seedlings lying limply in their tender beds. Tessa has some educating to do it seems. Or maybe her father set high standards for male housekeeping: when I come home from a trip the house looks inviting and clean, everything put away and a cup of hot tea waiting. I felt sorry for Tessa as she had hastened home to be with Steve who needed her. That last part was proven to be true, although not quite the way she imagined. The sacrifices we make for love!

We had one more wonderful day with our colleagues from far away at MSH and then slowly people began to peel away to return to their respective countries. Everyone was in high spirits.

I picked Joe up at the Hyatt and interrogated him throughout our slow commute home about the practical applications of systems thinking to the realities in Africa. I am sorry to say we did not come up with a good plan but I got some ideas. For one, I need to take a refresher on the archetypal systems diagrams that may come in handy when looking at the kind of intractable problems we face out there as well as in here.

I made dinner grudgingly because Axel ran off with the car, having been without all day, to take care of some errands. I always dream of coming home to a dinner table set with the meal ready. That doesn’t happen as often as I would like. Working men with their home-bound wives in the 50s had a good deal going for them. I doubt they realized how good a deal it was until the idyll was smashed into a thousand pieces by the societal changes of the 60s and 70s and the first attempts at women’s liberation. I can see why many men were not enthralled with these changes. I like what they liked.

After dinner we went for a postprandial walk around the loop. We had to look up the word as we could not agree on its spelling. It is actually a medical term and has to do with blood sugar. It seemed a good idea to walk before tackling the strawberries with sweet whipped cream, more postprandial sugar.

I ended the walk with muscle spasms that required a hot pad intervention and finally propelled me to make appointments for more physical therapy and acupuncture, starting today.

After the strawberries we watched Roman Polanski’s movie Frantic. About half an hour into the film I could no longer handle the suspense and impending doom and, tired anyways, I went to bed. This morning I pestered Axel about how the movie ended. I wanted all the details. It was less scary that way, and, incidentally, it seemed like good frontal lobe exercise for Axel. I could tell from his frowned forehead and his hard thinking that he was engaged in serious brain gymnastics. Just what the doctor prescribed!

This is the fourth day I get up with the sun this week; tomorrow will be the final day and then it is Memorial Day weekend.

Today is a little sad because Tessa and Chicha are leaving, just before Sita is getting back home. Joe has also gone. He did play the beer game yesterday after I dropped him off at the Hyatt for his two day workshop on Systems Thinking. He told Axel they have gotten up to page 75 of the Fifth Discipline. What a dream: the Fifth Discipline book came out in 1991 and now, 17 years later this cow is still being milked. C’est genial, the French would say. If one of us could dream something like that up our ship(s) would surely come in. Alas! For now, nothing on the horizon.

Our worldwide meeting is unfolding as planned, and planned it was. All of my young(er) colleagues were mobilized to run with the meeting, not just the logistics of it, a big piece, but also design and facilitation. They are doing a wonderful job and the energy they bring to the job multiplied (and is still doing this) around them. I am becoming more and more conscious of the shift that our generation is making (or if not, has to make) in order to create space for these new saplings. I am getting a kick out of seeing the talent, creativity and energy.

When I was that age I was in Lebanon, trying to figure out how to be (and stay) married, have a family and a career all at the same time. I was clueless and floundering. The marriage unravelled, the family expansion was, under the circumstances, luckily postponed while the career was adrift in a swirl of non compatible options. The experience of failure propelled the urge to have a meaningful career to the top of the list and has much to do with where I am now. Even so, compared with the path my younger colleagues appear to be following, it was a very crooked path. In the end I found a way that allowed for a relatively peaceful coexistence between career, marriage and family. Much of the credit for this goes to Axel with his steady and wonderful presence that allowed me to travel and build up my ‘experience’ capital starting when Tessa was just an infant.