Sylvia's Journal

Susan and I settled into our dorm rooms for the next week. It seems we are the only ones in Coleman Hall, an immense two-winged and three-storied building. Most everyone else from our group is in the executive conference center on the other side of the campus or another dorm down the hill. We are doing this on the cheap. After we settled in it was time to do some hunting, the kind of hunting that famous chain hotels never want you to do: for the women’s bathroom, (we couldn’t find any, only men’s), electrical outlets (there are few), a way to get what sounded like a fire alarm (but was not) turned off and sheets (only Susan’s got them). If you get to be a student here all this would be entirely normal.

I am prepared for this sort of bare-bones living arrangement. I have assembled a survival kit over the years based on going to OBTC for nearly 20 years, that include inflatable clothes hangers and four small clips that keeps the sheets from sliding off the plastic mattrass. As it turned out I did not need them; my linen packet from Peoples Linen Rental contained a fitted sheet. Nevertheless, it is comforting to know that I have a car outside and can escape anytime I want, like a safety blanket left by the edge of my bed. Susan does not have that option since her home is in Alaska.

Yesterday was entirely framed by my going away to Wellesley for the week; the size of my luggage was the only thing that gave away that I was not going far. Everything else was just as if I was going on an overseas trip: taking care of to-do’s that cannot wait; the presents for people I will be meeting and preparing for both Board work and my session on Friday.

It was a hot, hazy and humid day. We have lunged from spring into August weather and both plants and human were wilting. I rooted around in the asparagus bed looking for signs of life from the aspargus crowns we planted three weeks ago. I found only two baby asparagus tips coming up; a sad result considering that we planted 12 crowns. It seems that some creature is as interested in the asparagus as we are. It left a trail of small holes and bits and pieces of severed asparagus roots.

Late in the afternoon when the weather began to turn and become more pleasant Amy and Larry arrived from a Harvard reunion. We couldn’t help but talk about retirement. It is suddenly happening all around us; what a concept! For us the word is not even visible on the far edges of the horizon.

It was hard to extract myself from Lobster Cove and the lobster caesar salad that Axel was preparing for dinner. Driving inland into downtown Manchester and then to the highways the temperature always goes up a few notches. The airco in the car is broken and I had forgotten what it was like to drive ‘au naturel.’ When we lived in Senegal we never had airco; not in our car, not in our house, and not in the office. Only the people who worked for USAID or foreign embassies lived, drove and worked in cool places. We considered it normal to have clothes sticking to our skin and papers blown around by fans or open windows.

There is this thing about normal. When everything becomes normal again you realize that you don’t like some normals. Like the multi-tasking and juggling that is normal at my work; or the old car without a normal functioning airco; or the summer racing by much too fast as it normally does. Last August we were both very anxious to get back to normal, as if it was some sort of steady state. Having arrived on this side of normal we discover it comes in many variations, with some we could live without.

I picked up Ken, one of our newly elected board members, who flew in from Kentucky at Logan airport; our colleagues from Ohio did not make it in due to a canceled flight (normal?). They missed our first activity which is our traditional Sunday dinner. Everyone else was there, flown in from Alaska, New Zealand, Iowa, Southern California, South Carolina, or by car from Western and Eastern Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. It is an entirely social affair, clearing the decks for two days of hard work starting tomorrow morning. It was wonderful to see everyone again after nearly 8 months. The last time we were together, in October, I was walking with a cane, limping slowly at the end of the line, requiring all my attention and energy to keep up. Now I am normal again, clothes sticking to my skin and papers flying out of the car window and all.