Sylvia's Journal

Today Bill and I had hoped to fly to Rockland in Maine, the trip planned for last week but aborted because of fog. Once again the coast is not clear. In fact, nothing is clear this morning in a radius of more than 100 miles around Boston. So we will wait till noontime and see where the fog will burn off; that’s where we will go. Alternatively, we may end up in the practice area and practice manoeuvers and using the Garmin.

Axel just took off to partake in the political process as a delegate to the Massachusetts Democratic Party State convention that takes place in Lowell today. He was picked up by two other members of the Manchester Democratic Town Committee, one displaying her Obama button; the other was for Hillary but I don’t know where she stands now. Does anyone know?

Yesterday was the third day of rain, a slow steady rain that soaks everything deep down to the roots. It is perfect for our flowers, fruits and vegetables. A quick tour of the garden shows the carrots, onions, beans, beets, chart, potatoes, lettuce, and spinach are growing nicely, as are the raspberries, tomatoes and basil. The only thing we cannot determine are the asparagus; the entire bed is filled with tiny weeds and, new to this crop, we have no idea whether somewhere in there are asparagus greens.

After my early morning visit to the dentist on Friday morning, I drove into Cambridge where the traffic was a mess because of countless graduation and other celebratory events. Harvard graduated on Thursday and MIT on Friday. These graduations bring thousands people into the city and create gridlock everywhere.

I suffered the traffic hassles only because I wanted to have a meeting with my ex-colleague Barbara who now works at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. She is responsible for building up the Institute’s capacity to work in developing countries. As it turns out IHI’s work of improving the quality of healthcare is quite complementary to our leadership development program and so we are exploring how we can enhance each other’s work. The manager of the Gates-funded Fives Alive! project in Ghana was visiting the US and this seemed too good a chance to miss. I am now connecting her team with our leadership team in Ghana so that they can continue the exploration on the ground and get more concrete about how this new relationship might be consummated.

At noon I was done with the meeting. I called my new colleague Lisa who is also a sculler and, after some protests (“it is such a yuckky day”), I was able to get her out of the building and onto the water. We had a wonderful row, having the Charles River more or less to ourselves. This was Lisa’s first row of the season and my second. We hope to be rowing in a double soon. With this row I upped my rowing mileage to 7 miles in total which brings the cost of my boatclub membership to $80 per mile. The more I row, the cheaper the mile!

I drove back to Beverly in the afternoon for my weekly acupuncture session. The acupuncturist is trying different things each time. Some of the symptoms that brought me to him are less acute now but nothing has gone away. He’s trying hard to get the nerves in my foot back to normal but we are beginning to suspect that the damage is permanent and more Chi flowing down there is not going to do the trick. The other pains are from knots and tightness in muscles and tendons; he used suction cups that increase the blood flow through the affected areas, in the hope of loosening things up. I may need to try something else. A trip to the physical therapist in a week or so may suggest other avenues.

I picked our lodger Andrew up from a Beverly basement where he was messing around with bikes, which is what he does for a living. Aside from preparing for his year in Kenya, he is also preparing for some bike fest in Jamaica Plain tomorrow. We will be saying goodbye to him today. I will see him next in Kenya if things stay quiet. This is not quite the case right now as we read on the internet, sitting side by side at the dining room table in front of our computers. Food riots in Nairobi are bringing people angry into the streets. There is much activity bubbling under the surface. It will require very good statesmanship from those in power to keep the place from erupting again; we are a bit pessimistic since it is the kind of statemanship that was not evident in the riots earlier this year.

We had dinner with the St. Johns and caught up on families and kids. The conversation drifted, as it does so often, to the crash, the early days and the Herculean efforts of our children to keep things organized amidst swirling emotions. This brought us to the brain injury conversation, of which we are having many these days. As it begins to sink in what the implications are (and each conversation contributes a little) more emotions come to the surface. Axel and I are both affected by this, albeit it in different ways. There is much sadness, anger, hurt and disappointment but also more and more clarity about the boundaries of what is possible. These are difficult conversations and not everyone understands what we are going through, except those who deal professionally with kids and adults who suffer the consequences of head injuries.