Sylvia's Journal

Today is the day that my youngest brother Reinout jumps out of a plane over the island of Texel in Holland; a birthday present from the people who came to his party last week, to celebrate the half century mark of his life. It would not be my choice of celebration, falling out of the sky like that; imagine that, for fun!

I woke up to a glorious spring morning, as glorious as they get on Lobster Cove; the neighbor’s lilacs are out in deep purple color, Jennee’s tree, the beach plum, is full of pink blush dots and the bright yellow dandelions dot the juicy green grass everywhere.

I slept in today, till 7; such a luxury. I woke up from a concatenation of frantic dreams that stood in sharp contrast to my very unproductive day at work yesterday. I knew that my chances at a productive day were shot when I went into my second meeting in the morning and had not even looked at my to-do list. Rather than fighting it, I stopped swimming and let myself be taken by the current for the rest of the day. I selected pictures from my photo collections from the last 10 years for next week’s worldwide meeting slide show (this was actually a request so it could count as productive). It was a trip down memory lane and produced a series of ‘how are you?’ emails that may or may not trigger responses. One went to a Chinese consultant I worked with who is from Chengdu. I have been wondering whether he is OK after that horrendous earthquake. Another went to Mynamar, also full of questions.

The dreams were about a large hospital, somewhere in Africa or in a US inner city: full of frantic people, noisy, chaotic and utterly confusing; people were in pain and I did not know what to do. Fatou was there and knew her way around; I kept losing her from sight. My friend Xandra donned a nurse outfit and took care of a panick-stricken little boy. I hovered around and felt useless, not knowing what to do. And then Axel and I were outside and it was spring while the mountains were full of snow and skiers, but our paths were green and firm with raspberry bushes loaded with fruits. And everywhere around us people were moving fast, rushing up or down the mountains, too fast!

It is occurring to me that these dreams might be telling me that I need a real vacation and real downtime, not a few days here and there or a regular weekend. With no overseas trips on the horizon, this may actually be in the stars.