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.

Yesterday was entirely dominated by my first experience of jury duty, billed as both a right and a privilege.

I was registered as juror number 37. I wanted to get number 8 and re-enact Henry Fonda’s brilliant performance in Twelve Angry Men in which he shows great emotional intelligence and brilliant logical reasoning, knitted together with charm, maturity and wisdom. I would have loved to have the chance to say quietly, ‘let’s just talk.’

But before I became juror nr 37 I had to sit through a half hour orientation conducted by a jury officer who had honed his talk to be understandable and intelligible to the lowest common denominator of The American People. It was agony to sit through his endless repetitions, answering questions no one asked, or rather, he asked on our behalf and then answered. The question of why we had to wait in a church basement when we were here on duty for the government, probably anticipating church-state separation protest, was actually not on anyone’s mind but he answered it nevertheless, two times actually. The first time in a ‘comical’ way as he admitted (“it is easier to pray to God that you will not be called”) and then a second ‘no kidding’ answer that the church had kindly offered to put us up during our, potentially entire day’s wait in a place that was, in my mind only slightly more comfortable than the hard wooden benches in the courthouse.

We had all been told, weeks before our date, on various pieces of paper that came in the mail, in huge white letters on a black background to bring our confidential questionnaire and call a number the day before to see if we would be dismissed. Nevertheless several people showed up whose number had been dismissed (if they had called the day before they would have known and not needed to show up) and about one third of the people present had not (NOT) brought the questionnaire. I am not sure what this says about The American People: they either don’t know how to read, can’t be bothered to read or simply are so stressed out by jury duty that their normal brain functions are temporarily disabled. I can’t think of another reason. But it does make you wonder about the quality of the deliberations that we are all supposed to engage in if we are selected. I thought of Henry Fonda again; the stuff he had to put up with! I wondered about all the emotional baggage and psychodynamic stuff that this group of people carried into the church basement and into the jury pool. One woman was reading a book with the title ‘How to live successfully with screwed up people.’ Another was reading ‘Trial by Fury’ (I am not making this up!). I knew then that I was in for a treat.

We were informed about breaks with special mention that taking insulin at any time was OK. Apparently there have been some scares and emergencies caused by the many signs that say ‘no eating and no drinking’ in the courthouse. Diabetes is pretty much a national disease in this country and so insulin is now part of the orientation. There were a few very obese people in the pool and the information must have been a relief to some of them.

Our holding pen was the basement of the Tabernacle Church. It looked like all other church basements with long folding tables and hard metal folding chairs. The walls were decorated with handmade quilts of happy hands and proclamations that we are all children of God. There was nothing by way of entertainment and I felt sorry for the people who did not bring anything to read or do as I had an inkling that the day was going to be very long. I had come prepared and considered the situation no different from travelling overseas with endless waits: in airports until it was time to take off and in planes until it was time to land. Except this wait might have a surprise at the end (a case), like a toy in a cereal box which you cannot have until the box is empty. The excitement comes from the anticipation, not usually the toy itself.

And so the real wait began at 9 o’clock. I used the time to clean out my email box. I received an email from my Iraqi doctor friend Samer who forwarded me something that requires multiple clicks on forwarded attachments to get a slideshow about conducting CPR on yourself while driving in a car alone far away from a hospital in case of a heart attack. The trick is to cough repeatedly. IT COULD SAFE YOUR LIFE screams the PowerPoint with much flashing of arrows and stars. It is rather touching to think that an Iraqi doctor believes I need to have this information, living in a place with more hospitals per square mile than any other place in the world. I am touched but delete it anyways. I am on his ‘forward’ list and get much internet flotsam and jetsam through him often in Arabic and often with pictures that make fun of Iraq’s ex-president the same way we make fun of our current one. I do not respond to his emails anymore (I used to) as I don’t want to encourage a more active correspondence of this kind.

My email cleanup project was interrupted by the same officer who did our orientation. He apologized profusely for moving into what he called ‘one-way communication.’ I realized quickly that this was code for “do as I tell you!” He made a case for his authoritarian behavior which he wears like an ill-fitting suit by telling us stories about having to hunt for jurors in cafes up and down Federal Street. It was clear that he considered us his flock of sheep and I suspected he is held accountable for us being there when we are called. I am sure that the wrath of lawyers and judges is something he wants to avoid at all cost since he is the little guy in the chain here. The rules he imposed on us are undoubtedly based on years of experience with what Axel’s father used to call ‘The Great American Public,’ and I don’t envy him, having to go through this day after day.

We were told to watch a video which has various characters, carefully gender balanced but not racially balanced, about what is awaiting us if we get to be selected. First lots of thank yous for fulfilling our sacred duty, then some explanations of terms and the kinds of trials we might be part of and finally the dos and don’ts of juror deliberations. I learned that what the foreman of twelve Angry Men did (a straw vote at the start of the deliberations) is not a good thing. Advances in social psychology since then must have shown that, once stated, a person’s opinion may not change that easily anymore out of fear of looking dumb or impulsive. I am not sure if this is true but if it is, the system is capable of learning; miracles happen alongside with shit!

After the obligatory watching of the video we were released for a coffee break with directions to Dunkin Donuts down the street and a plea to be back at 10:30 (or else!). At 11:15 a new jury officer comes to get us. Like ducklings we file out of the church basement, across the street and into the District Court building where we were told that there were only two cases requiring 12 people (out of the 30 or so of our pool). We were seated in a windlowless courtroom that was designed to impress and/or intimidate with cold stone walls and clear signs of who is in charge (The Government of the United States of America!).

The first jury selection process was for a drunken driving case. It took about one hour. Everything was done in an atmosphere of hushed awe with various suits whispering while standing at what is called the side bar, if I got that right. One by one jurors were called ‘to step up to the side bar.’ Here they were questioned by the judge and attorneys and one more person in a suit who called our numbers. To my great surprise jury number one was the first to be called. I had expected something more random. The jury box, one level down from our ‘pool’ benches at the back, has only 7 seats. They were filled before we got to number 10. With my number 37 I thought I’d be scot-free and on my way home in no time but I was wrong. People already seated in the jury box were returned to the pool for reasons only known to the four whispering suits at the side bar.

One of our group knew the defendant and another the policeman witness. They were dismissed for this case and returned to the pool, three rows of benches in the back. One woman was sent home in tears, after she was given some kleenex. May be she had lost her husband in a drunken driving accident. She was excused for the day. The rest of us watched intently for clues about why people did or did not get selected. I saw people nod and shake their heads and wondered what questions they were asked; questions best asked in private about alcohol use and opinions about alcohol maybe? I wondered whether Quakers are generally known as teetotalers and if should I mention the plane crash and our reduced alcohol consumption since last July? As more numbers were called up we entered the twenties, then thirties of the juror numbers. One or the other of the whispering attorneys continued to dismiss prospective jurors back into the pool. They are allowed to do that, some for reason and some for no reason at all. There were words for that in the video but I had already forgotten those.

The selection process remained very mysterious to me. It felt a bit like musical chairs except the rules of the game were not clear. Suddenly my number was up (is this where the expression comes from?). I was not even questioned and ordered straight into chair #2 in the jury box and I wondered ‘why me?’ But before I had a chance to answer that question I was released back into the pool again, like an undersized lobster (don’t take this personally the lady on the video had said earlier). Finally the attorneys and judges agreed on a new occupant for chair 2 and with that the slection process was completed. I had escaped by a hair (I seem to do that a lot these days!). The remaining twenty two of us were sent back to the church basement. It was close to lunchtime but the second case was not ready for jury selection yet.

After that some bonding began to happen; the two Asian looking women sat together and people started to talk. We were no longer strangers, and bound by a same wish (to be dismissed altogether). I was relieved that I didn’t have to hear the testimonies in the drunken driving case. I watched the defendant and wondered what it would be like to sit so exposed to total strangers and what tragedy was hiding behind the facts that would be presented later? After our final dismissal, later in the day we learned that the DUI case is continuing today!

We were let out for lunch into the most horrid weather, which led me back into the basement as soon as I had finished my sandwich. I did not want to risk coming back too late and sent home without any credit. We had to wait for another hour and a half on our hard church seats, yawning in chorus out of sheer boredom making us look like a bunch of unlikely candidates for serious decision making about someone else’s life.

At 3:30 PM a female jury officer explained that case two was being settled and did not require a jury. This announcement was greeted with a big cheer from everyone. She promised us certificates as if we had just completed a course and told us that we would be exempted from jury duty for the next three years. Within minutes the basement was empty and we were all strangers again.

Not a good start of the day: first coming out of a very intense but irretrievable world of dreams by way of my too singsongy Chinese alarm and then not making any progress on getting people on the phone in Africa. Actually I did get people on the phone, either non English speakers who kept saying hello, with me saying the same on the other side, never getting beyond that; or taped voices telling me that the voicemail box is full; not just the voice mailbox of my target but even those of the assistant and the assistant’s assistant. I did get through to one person on the list, so there is some progress. A final call to my sister who turned 64 today completes the ‘to-call’ list. She is, not surprisingly receiving iTunes attachments of ‘When I’m 64.

Today is jury duty day and I need to report to Salem’s courthouse promptly at 8. I am bringing my computer and a very heavy library tome to wile away the hours in case the day is all about waiting.

Yesterday Axel and I crossed paths in the driveway as I got out of the car and he into it to drive back to Boston to his first class (a summer course) at MassArt again. We weren’t sure if he was ready and now with all the brain stuff emerging I was even less sure that this was a good decision. Although Axel did drive all the way into school he returned before entering, having come to the same conclusion that the stress of a demanding course is not what he needs right now with all the intensive therapies going on. I am very relieved.

We attended the yearly business meeting of the Manchester Historical Society. The average age at these meetings is a much higher than 64 and my presence brings the average down a few notches. I used to hate going to these sorts of meetings because I could never remember who was who and I was always only known as Axel’s wife. But after 15 years in this town I am beginning to know some of the old folks on my own (although I am still introduced as Axel’s wife). I had a delightful conversation with a woman who looked like she was 64 but actually is 80; there are many women like that, more women than men actually; all with the richest (her)stories. I am beginning to understand why Axel likes to go to these events. Of course for him it is different as he is so active in town politics and his family has lived here for about 100 years that he is well known and loved by all.

The yearly event follows a fixed formula: half an hour of socializing around tables filled with elegant finger foods, a business meeting where we go through all the motions of a business meeting but do it in about 10 minutes, a flurry of Roberts’ Rules of Order incantations and then it is time for the guest speaker. We were treated to a slideshow of architectural styles in Manchester which featured, among others, Axel’s childhood home. We now know it is Swiss Scroll style. It was a delightful parade through housing fashions from 1650 to the present.

Five minutes before the alarm goes I wake up. It is a built in safeguard to start the day with birds chirping rather than the whiny Chinese alarm tone. I have my morning routine pat now: a shower, emptying the dishwasher while making breakfast and at my desk at 5 AM.

Getting up so early is especially useful when I need to call Africa. I started with calling those who are the furthest away, in Tanzania, where the work day is nearly over. No luck; then progressively closer to home, ending with Ghana, only four hours away. Also no luck. The intended conversations are then turned into emails, sent off with a small prayer that people are checking their in boxes, and tomorrow we will try again. This is how it goes.

Yesterday was for many of us at work a race against the time. Not because anything special was happening but because the end of the day kept pushing closer through the enormous number of requests, jobs, assignments and chores. Many of them are relatively small things but together the sheer volume is at times overwhelming; there is also a relentlesness to the pace of work; assignments come in over the transom as if there is no tomorrow. There are trips on the horizon that function as hard stops for many of us. At some point they seemed far away and suddenly they are there; there are also new trips added and the juggling begins when a few dates start to slip. It looks now as if I will be going to Ghana on my way to Haiti at the end of this months. The ‘on the way’ part comes from JFK from where flights to both Ghana and Haiti originate.

Axel drove in to Boston with me yesterday for his early morning appointment at Spaulding Rehab. The brain injury work is beginning to reveal things that have puzzled us for a long time. It is as if Axel’s skull is pried open and we are getting a peek inside. We are discovering that the car accident that Axel was in 21 years ago had more severe consequences than we had thought; and not only on his spine. I have often wondered about Axel’s difficulty in staying focused and work systematically on getting things done and when that started; he wasn’t like that when we met in Beirut and when we lived in New York or even Georgetown. The plane crash has exacerbated what may have been an injury from that earlier time and so we are finding ourselves in this place of delayed grieving about a loss we didn’t even knew we had suffered; all of us because it is not just Axel who is affected.

Yesterday’s session at Spaulding had affected him deeply as the nature of the injuries is becoming increasingly clear, explaining much of the agony and frustration Axel is experiencing in getting back on the track he was on before July. We are reading articles about brain trauma and head injuries that seem to pop up in unlikely places such as Harvard Business Review (May issue), Wired magazine and then of course the internet in addition to the articles his therapists are providing him. Memories of my first real earning job as a neuropsychology test assistent in the early 70s came flooding in. I was a psychology student in Leiden at the time and considering a career in neuropsychology. A highly coveted internship in a family therapy practice diverted me from that course before I was whisked off to Geneva/Beirut/Yemen as a new bride changing the course of my life in ways I could not have dreamt up.

On a positive note, we are encouraged by what is known about the plasticity of the brain and grateful for the professional help. Jim has been instructed to initiate Axel into the mystery (and joys) of Sudoku. It’s not Axel’s sort of activity but the specialists are encouraging him and Jim and I think we might be able to get him hooked. For Axel the new insights have caused many emotions and lots of sadness. He writes, “I am beginning to understand what has happened in those 20 years and I’m starting to see what the treatment will entail. I am very sad about getting such a late start on it – I think of all the tension that not getting things done has caused and the huge effort that it has cost to do what I did get done – but I feel like some dam has broken letting all this out.” We are all standing by his side as he works through this.

We have a full house again. Andrew moved in for a week. Andrew is a young man on his way to Kenya where he will run a project that helps other, and less fortunate, young men in Kibera (Nairobi) and in Navaisha build and alter bikes for use in santitation and waste disposal. He is doing that for a small (tiny) organization called WorldBike. I have been asked to be on the Board of this organization. WorldBike has been hired by UN Human Settlements Program in Kenya. The operation is a bit of a family venture and also runs on a shoe string budget, so project managers are put up by friends and family when the budget has no line for a hotel.

My Quaker friend Kristna is the Executive Director of the organization. She dropped Andrew off and stayed for a Mexican dinner which we ate sitting by the cove on what felt like a late July evening; the mosquitoes thought it was still winter and it was only just before the sun went down behind the Putnam woods they discovered we were out there. Sita and Jim joined us and there was much to talk about: Kenya, Africa, Social entrepreneurship and amazing NGOs, like Kickstart, BRAC and so many others that grew out of nothing more than an idea and a huge reservoir of dedication, patience and perseverance. I think I saw a sparkle in Andrew’s eye. Who knows, we might be sitting in the company of another such brilliant young leader who will leave his mark on thousands of people.

Although yesterday was a Monday I drove into Cambridge because of meeting that could not be arranged any other time. This was an after action review meeting of our recently completed virtual leadership program with deans and their faculty teams from medical, nursing and public health professionals from Egypt, Yemen, Mexico, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa. After the meeting I sat with my colleague Jon who is officially retired but unofficially not and divides his time between Dhaka, Capetown and the Bahamas. We share a love for rowing and sailing as well as public health. We explored ways to get involved in the public health program that was started at BRAC University some four years ago.

And then there was an unprogrammed afternoon and I decided it was time for a row on the Charles River. It was the first such a row since July 14th 2007. I like rowing in the middle of the day because there is no one else on the river and only very few motor boats. The river is very crowded when the sun gets up, just about this time when I am writing in my blog each morning, and after school when all the clubs have their boats out training for the next scheduled event. In this cold climate all the races are squished together into a very short period of time, when water temperatures will not kill you in minutes.

Although a bit windy I managed to do my old routine: a 3.5 mile stretch from the boathouse to the Elliott Bridge and back. It was as if I never interrupted rowing. I had been worried about my right ankle and my glute(us maximus) which has been giving me so much trouble lately; but all the body parts aligned for the movement of rowing without a hitch or even hint of pain. However, by the time I arrived back at the boathouse I was very tired and realized that it had taken me a bit longer to row the distance than before the accident: a 10% difference; all in all not bad given that I have not done any aerobic exercise for more than 10 months.

Rowing on the Charles is always a treat because there is so much to see along the banks. For one there is the wildlife: I counted about 10 Black-crowned Night-herons. These birds are odd looking creatures. I learned that young Black-crowned Night-Herons often disgorge their stomach contents when disturbed. The adults would make good partners to cuckoos as they do not distinguish between their own young and those from other nests, and will brood chicks not their own. There were also snapping turtles, sunning themselves on logs. And of course then there are the humans. Unlike the herons they come in all shades and forms. There are the Japanese tourists who always take pictures of everything, which includes me. There is the office-worker lunch crowd; there are the young lovers, picking spots not easy to see from the road but very visible from the water. There are the countless joggers, attached to iPods, running along mechanically whose speed is averaged out by the shuffling elderly with their walkers and minders.

After a row my head is always red like a lobster; I prefer to go home. I had some silly idea that I would do some more work back home but found Axel steaming from his nostrils after another hissy-fit about the general clutter in our house. Luckily Sita had come to the rescue but only after she heard loud swearing coming from the house. Axel had been preparing Andrew’s sleeping quarters and had run into the storage limitation of our house and some neglectful behavior of previous occupants of that room.

I decided to let him cool off upstairs and prepare dinner myself. This allowed me to finish the delightful British comedy/detective book-on-tape ‘The trouble with Harriet’ which would otherwise have me sit in the car on the driveway. Much of the dinner was already cooked by trader Joe anyways so it was not much of a chore.

After dinner we watched the last episode of Prime Suspect and finally disovered who dunnit and we cheered along with all the macho guys in Chief Inspector Tennyson’s office who, after much grumbling and sabotage finally admitted that a woman could do the job. And then it was bedtime again.

Flying has been much on my mind since I first woke up at 2 AM and then slept fitfully until I could no longer sleep, anxous to finish the last details on my cross-county trip planning. There is much stuff about flying going through my mind, some re-living of trips made and some prayers of thankfulness. Today looks like a good day for a long trip: blue sky and no wind. Whether it will be like that in Rockland County in Maine is not clear yet.

Yesterday’s bad weather rolled in slowly after noon. It was a chores kind of day. Before heading out west to make music and see their friends Sita and Jim cleaned the downstairs and then took the porch windows off and brought them into the cellar. The windows are old and very heavy and it is such a treat to have someone else do the heavy lifting and hauling.

A large amount of dirt, 4 cubic yard, was dumped on our lawn at the same place where we dumped this amount last year and what became a spectacular weed forest after being neglected for most of the summer. This year’s load will go partially into the half full asparagus bed and provide the rest of the flower beds with some badly needed healthy topsoil. Everything looks a bit anemic.

Putting the porch windows in the cellar reminded me what a mess the place was. Sita and Jim’s stuff was put on top of what was already there and after the crash the cellar had become a workshop of sorts for projects to help us adjust to living in our temporary handicapped state. The cellar had been beckoning as a project for some time now and yesterday we bit the bullet (and lots of dust) and we went to work sorting stuff, throwing much out and organizing all the thousands of little and big things that clutter the place. I lost track of how many times I asked Axel “what’s this for?” or “what’s this called?” There is so much I don’t know about how things are made or what they are made of. I labelled boxes and tins and small drawers so we can actually know what is inside each without having to open everything up. I found proper names for most doohinkies except a few which got their own drawer with ‘dookinkies’ on the label.

Such intense work amidst much dust and mildew and for so many hours left us rather diminished by the end of the day. Axel was in considerable pain and walked like he used to last October. Such a regression is painful to watch but impossible to avoid after several hours of physical labor. It requires a half hour of painful exercises before he can go to bed and hope to wake up in less pain. We have to remember that it has only been 10 months and that such setbacks are to be expected.