Sylvia's Journal

I woke up in a sweat with worries triggered by legalese words only lawyers can understand without translation. There is some movement on the insurance/legal front that fills me with anxiety, dread and foreboding; mostly because I am intimidated by words and phrases I do not understand. Paul has stepped up to the plate and is representing us. We trust he will help us make the right offers and choices as we head into this unknown land of laws, legal rights and settlements.

Against the background of all this work continued yesterday for one hell of a long day juggling the continuing computer transfer (I am getting there) and preparing for the back-to-back trips to Ghana and Haiti. Tessa’s birthday party tonight produces some tumult on another part of the stage but the management of that is entirely in her and Steve’s hand. It is bringing another crowd into the house. The bed, still warm from Joe, will be occupied by Roy who is right now sleeping on a bed-that-comes-out-of-a-box in my office. Roy was one of the people who built the tiny ramp out of shingles that allowed me to wheel myself in and out of my sickroom/office on my own, last July and August.

With our offices turned into bedrooms, Axel and I have moved to the kitchen counter where we sit side by side behind our computers. At some level all this is a good distraction. I was imagining what it would be like if Axel and I would be alone in the house and what we would talk about. Life throws things at us for a reason, I do believe, and the current situation is probably exactly what we need.

During my too-long commute home, at exactly the wrong time, when everyone else leaves Boston, I crawled along route 1 North at about 20 MPH. We all converged onto the St. Johns’ house in Essex in our separate cars to celebrate the beginning of Katy Blair’s vacation now that the schools have closed. We admired the boat that Andrew is rebuilding and which is nearly ready for its sail north to Maine. Katy Blair put together a mail made from the leftovers of two households which came out spectacular.

Joe joined us during the cocktail hour, returning from a trip to Marlboro that produced more business for him and an instant proposal developed in a Dunkin Donuts along the way. His trip to the East Coast has been highly successful, both from a social and a business point of view. He is leaving later today on the Red Eye back to His Sweetness Rita in San Diego. It was some ten years ago that Joe proposed to Rita out at the Point, on land that is not ours, from where they were chased as trespassers. This inauspicious beginning did only strengthen the marriage it appears.

Another wedding is on the books for today. After several days of rain, today the weather will be perfect for the wedding of Chris and Kairos. I used to work with Chris and we travelled together to Japan, her maternal country. She took Axel and me on a most memorable tour of the Tokyo fish market before dawn one morning. We tasted fresh tuna caught less than 20 hours ago off the New England Coast and ended our visit with a sushi breakfast that required an hour’s wait in the drizzle and cost about $40 per person. For a once-in-a-lifetime-experience it was worth every minute and every penny. Kairos is an architect from Chinese extraction. Axel bought them a red ‘Bucky Bowl’ which comes as a flat package, and, once bent in shape, looks like an inverted geodesic dome. Red of course brings luck in their ancestral part of the world. Chris and Kairos were part of the community that surrounded us last summer and fall and I remember fondly a four course Japanese lunch that Chris brought me after which I took a nap and she vacuumed the house – something she actually loves to do she confessed, some weeks before Axel got home from the hospital.

Amidst the chaos, the clutter and the coming and goings of our own and our daughters’ friends, I count myself very lucky. We are alive, the sun is shining and I don’t mind at all working from the kitchen counter. This day is about love and great friendships.