The day before departure is always a funky day. There is the desire to whittle down my to-do list so that I can leave with a near empty slate, knowing it will be full again when I get back. And then there is always that ambivalence: the part of me that wants to travel pushing and pulling the part that wants to stay home. And finally, in this particular case, there is the possibility that my passport will not arrive in time. I try to keep a zen stance about it all. Whatever happens is what is meant to happen and any outcome is good if I am willing to change my position. Because of the mess up with my visa application I ended up with the gift of today which was a really good thing, even though it gets me to arrive in Ghana a little later than I would have liked to.
It was a long and hot day with a thunderstorm brewing that never arrived. We are lucky to have the biggest self cleaning swimming pool in the world in our backyard. I went out for a long swim at the end of the day when my clothes were sticking to my skin. The swim, a reward in itself , was rewarded with a gin tonic consumed in my swing hammock while Axel and Sita prepared dinner. The suitcase is nearly packed and except for a few things (that passport among others) I am ready to go.
After dinner we had our long postponed family meeting, ordered by various therapists. The intent was to get everyone to understand that Axel’s brain needs to heal and he needs all the attention he can 
give to the exercises and therapies that are focusing on this one task. As part of his homework Axel and Joe had worked on getting all his worries and to-do lists that he carries in his head on yellow stickies and arranged according to high or low urgency and high or low importance. Sita and Tessa took over the sorting to keep Axel from putting everything into the high importance and high urgency quadrant.
We wanted to shift away from parents giving their kids chores to do and move back to the shared responsibility that was so present 11 months ago but had slipped away. Now that Sita and Jim are moving out, and Tessa and Steve moving in, the household help that is to relieve Axel will have to come from those currently not gainfully employed and eventually shared by the three of us until Axel 
can manage to deal with more than 5 tasks at a time again. The doctors say this capacity will return but for now this executive function of his is not fully recovered. Regaining Axel’s full health and full capacity deserves our full attention as a family and so everyone, including Jim and Steve rallied around him. The meeting was recorded and scribed, of course, mostly because Sita cannot help herself
Sylvia's Journal 
Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life.
— Herbert Otto
During my recent two week safari in Manchester by the Sea – with Sylvia to MSH in pursuit of the wild conceptual framework – and with Axel hunting big game neurons – I bagged a couple brainwaves that bring my own life into crisper focus.
First, great clarity and peace come from looking at the results each of us has created over the last 11 months and taking those results at face value. They are the very best we could do given what we had to work with during that time. If we believe that each of us is giving our all to make life wonderful for ourselves and others, how could we think otherwise? Of course, it’s the best we could muster. And what is it that we actually accomplished? Is it different than July 3rd of 2007? How specifically? What are the nuances?
Second, the “what we had to work with” was what it was – wishing it was something else is simply frustrating for me and everyone around me. The preponderance of evidence shows the reality of what I actually could do. The road to hell is paved with unmet expectations – my own and those of others I have adopted.
Third, it is worth remembering that the “what we had to work with” can only be known in the rear view mirror. It is, of course, very dynamic moment to moment. So, the real hunt becomes discovering what I have to work with today – right now. If I push myself (like a person who really wants to make my life and the lives of those around me as wonderful as can be) sometimes I find that there is more to work with today than there was yesterday. Sometimes, there is less – for now.
Embracing “for now” is paradoxical. It is sort of like breathing. I exhale with the sigh of accepting what limits I must, and then inhale with that gulp of spirit that every kid takes in the second before leaping from a high rock into the deep end of Lobster Cove. I have one foot firmly on the granite of evidential reality and the other in the salty air of my potential.
I celebrate Axel, Sylvia, Sita, Tessa, Jim, and Steve for their willingness to see the reality that their whole household is still healing. It’s easier to imagine that it’s July 3rd, 2007.
How wonderful it was to spend a couple weeks tiptoeing around the cove, and to now see that you all have taken the leap. The family that prioritizes together stickies together!
From San Diego, on your new July anniversary, I will raise a glass to resilience, friendship, and living “for now”.
As ever, Joe