Sylvia's Journal

Axel returned from his therapy at MGH with a reaction, we think, to the flu shot they gave him in addition to the vestibular workout. He won’t have to come back for a few months. Now progress is up to him and depends on how well he sticks to the prescribed exercise regimen. The physical therapy sessions at Shaughnessy are also coming to an end. Free at last (or nearly).

Yesterday was 10+ fall day. At lunchtime the puppy and I went for a walk during which we practiced heeling some more. Chicha has a choker collar and I felt sorry when I could hear her raspy breathing as she was pulling on the leash, her instincts telling her to chase everything that moved. I must have said the word ‘heel’ about a 100 times when she was pulling, and rewarded her maybe 25 times with cookie crumbs when she was not. This ratio of four to one is not good enough. We still have a ways to go.

We interrupted the training session with a romp on Singing Beach; ah, such freedom! Watching her dash off made me very happy: a big empty beach, enough sticks and balls to keep Chicha busy and running and the most perfect blue sky. On the way home we practiced more leash walking. I failed to wash the sand and salt out of her fur and left her for a nap in Tessa and Steve’s living quarters. They found sand in their bed.

I spent a good chunk of last night reading Confucius because a book with great speeches fell open in front of my feet on the page that had an excerpt from his Analects ( #11). I take such occurrences seriously and decided to follow the lead.

The Analects are a collection of short aphoristic fragments about government, virtue, filial piety, morality, social relationships and even dress code, written in the form of exchanges between a master and his disciples. In this regard it is not that different from Socratic dialogues or New Testament verses describing Jesus and his disciples inquiring into the nature of life. I don’t care that it has not been proven that Confucius actually wrote the Analects.

I started to read and one thing led to another. Before I knew it I had read all 20 of them, some 60 pages, with increasing amazement. Here I was, sitting at my computer, reading conversations that took place between Chinese gentlemen some 2500 years ago.

Sometimes I could not follow the conversation as it shifted gears in incomprehensible ways; sometimes I chuckled about the way the Chinese was translated (‘to wife’ as a verb). There is some language in there that we can’t use anymore because of all the connotations (‘What is a superior man?’) and then there is some plain good advice (“daily examine myself on three points: whether, in transacting business for others I may have been not faithful; whether, in intercourse with friends, I may have been not sincere; and whether I may have not mastered and practiced the instructions of my teacher.”). The book is full of great quotes that are just as applicable now as they apparently were 2500 years ago. What was wise then, we still consider wise.

These analects have now also been put on the Board meeting pile; they will make a nice complement to the junk toys that came from the same place. How is it possible that these two Chinas are related?

When I worked in China over a year and a half ago on a consulting and leadership program, I mentioned that Lao Tzu (Lǎozǐ) and Confucius (Kǒng Fūzǐ or K’ung-fu-tzu) were often quoted in Western leadership books. My Chinese counterparts had not heard of either one, even when given the proper Chinese pronunciation after we Googled the names. I learned that ancient Chinese is not well mastered by ordinary people living in the 20th century and the old writings are not as accessible as I had expected. In fact, they may be more accessible to us, because of the countless translations floating around. I got a taste of how difficult it is to translate them by looking up several translations of the same text; it is as if they were two entirely different pieces.

I was glad I did not have to race on the Charles River yesterday, against the fierce winds, or stay up late to root for the Red Sox; it made Sunday a stress free day as Sundays are supposed to be. I got busy making more mustard, batch six I believe but I lost count. My office is filling up with jars.

During Sunday morning Quaker meeting I managed to stop the left brain chatter and get deeply into the silence, something I cannot always do but I am practicing. It was followed by communal singing. This is not a Quaker tradition but we have so many musicians in our small community that the urge is unstoppable. It made me want to play guitar badly.

After Meeting I started to prepare the goody bags for our OBTS board meeting. I inherited the idea of goody bags from my predecessor and enthusiastically continued it. I know exactly where all the dollar stores are. Twice a year I knowingly support our trade deficit with China, buying useless junk with a short shelf life. But it provides cheap fun for a brief moment, when we start our fall board meeting next Friday in Charleston, South Carolina. I compensate the cheap junk with quotes from wise men and women, some dead, some alive and some poetry. That took me the rest of Sunday, as I searched for quotes and poems that might enhance our board process. It is a little tedious because there are so many of us.

Chicha and I played Frisbee. I am improving my throw and she her catch. There is now a path across the lawn that is slowly being hollowed out as she sets up for the catch, always following exactly the same route and the same distance. We also went for a walk, with Tessa once again the trainer and me the one holding the bag with the cookie rewards. We are making very slow progress but Tessa is firm and steady. She’ll make a good mom one day.

This morning I was the last one to enter the kitchen. Everyone was up. I am not used to this crowd during my early morning hours. It has always been my private time, to putter around and no one there to change the agenda. Tessa and Steve have decided to commute by car, having made the calculation (it is half the price of two sets of train, metro and bus tickets) and Axel is off to another vestibular therapy session at MGH. So now I am home alone and queen of the house again, starting my day with a phone call to Afghanistan.

Yesterday was another long workday that started with my ride in at 6 AM and ended with my departure from MSH at 6 PM. Halfway home I stopped at Trader Joe’s and got myself a meal (Middle East Feast) that I ate while driving. Drips and drabs on the passenger seat shows what was in the meal (hummus and tabouleh and tahini sauce).

The long commute is made easy, even in bad weather, by the book I am listening to (Atul Gawande, Better). I am going through total immersion in healthcare between Groopman’s and Gawande’s books and I am glad I am not very sick. The stories are moving and scary. I am glad that all of us got out of the hospital without getting an infection. I am also a little anxious about how the ankle story will unfold after I see the ultra-specialized ankle doctors later in November at MGH and Faulkner Hospitals for opinion number 4 and 5.

Aside from our quarterly worldwide check in meeting with all our colleagues who work for and with us thousands of miles away, I spent the rest of the day continuing to sort out the status of the various teams that participated in the virtual program on contraceptive security and haven’t gotten their homework in. It is tedious beyond belief because it requires a type of mental functioning from me that does not come naturally: checking through lots of details contained in many different files written by several different people; all this without knowing all that much about the work environment and focus of people that do pharmaceutical supply management; and then there are the nag emails, please send your work or else; all this in French.

I was reminded of mental functioning and understood my difficulty with this particular piece of work after I taught a one hour private class on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator to a colleague and his wife, after hours. It is an instrument that I love using because it helps people look at what they call ‘personality clashes’ in a more productive and positive way. It is especially gratifying when the concepts are new but resonate with people’s personal experience. The instrument and the theory from which it derives, provide a very specific language to describe the conflict (a different way of taking in and processing information) and remove its charged emotional load. They can also see that each type comes with advantages for their team and the work that needs to be done. They also understand better why they are irritated by some people’s styles (and, less easy to acknowledge, why they themselves irritate others). It is especially fun to do this with a couple that has been married for a very long time. I was introduced to the MBTI some 20 years ago and it had a direct and profound impact on my work life and work relationships. One particular tense relationship turned into a deep friendship simply because we stopped trying to change each other.

It is rare that I actually get to openly work as a psychologist in my work; many people don’t even know that I am. But it was the right profession for me and has served me well all those years. The choice to become a psychologist dates back to 1961 when I became friends with Edith (whose’ name just popped up in my mailbox after a 40 year separation). Her parents were both psychologists and practiced at home, dad as an organizational (industrial) psychologist upstairs in the left side of the house and mom as a child psychologist upstairs in the right side. Her workspace looked like a toy store, full of dolls and doll houses, puzzles and balls. As a 10 year old girl I decided that if that was called work, I’d like such a profession and have a work room like that. I never wavered after that and did become a child psychologist. But then I met a man and the road went to a place where I did not speak the language of the children and parents, and my work life diverged from the one I had imagined. Eventually I came back to psychology, but of the organizational kind. It has turned out to be rather similar to child and family psychology. I have found that, in our organizations, we tend to recreate the family systems that we grew up with.

Every evening for the last three days I have extended my bedtime by at least half an hour. The cumulative effect of doing this is beginning to show: I could not get my eyes fully open until well into the first paragraph of my writing. It is hard to write a blog with your eyes closed, although these first few lines show that it can be done (with some corrections later). Luckily I was alert enough last night to activate the timed-coffeemaker. It is amazing what only a few sips of coffee can do.

After a workday that was much longer than the prescribed hours and that was full of task-generating meetings I hurried home in slow traffic to catch a yoga class that started at 6:30PM. It was an act full of contradictions and when I arrived home I wondered whether by “rushing off to yoga” I was missing the point. I was on the verge of canceling the plan but Axel encouraged me and calmly told me I had plenty of time to change, get my (his) mat and drive back to Hamilton.

He was right. I picked up my friend Peggy, who had landed on our beach last Sunday and had made the suggestion of taking a class together. We were the only ones and had a semi-private class of gentle stretching. It was my first yoga class since the accident and I found myself in the category of people who need lots of blankets and blocks to prop up stiff or painful limbs, as I always imagined elderly yoga to be. But it felt good and I nearly fell asleep in the final resting pose.

Back home Axel fed me the cold leftovers of a ratatouille made from what may well be the last batches of local vegetables. It is one of his best dishes and I actually love it cold.

And then there was the debate, eating up the last piece of the already short evening. My peaceful post-yoga state came to a brusque end watching the two hopefuls sparring for our minds and hearts. As the debate progressed I became increasingly irritated to be addressed as a member of this amorphous group of ‘the American people’ who seem only to care about themselves and money. I am in that group together with Joe six-pack and now also Joe the plumber. The candidates know these guys, and supposedly, by extension or association, they claim to know me. They are courting the two Joes in ways that would be hilarious if there wasn’t so much at stake. All the while Sarah is busy courting Josephine and other hockey moms in the red states that might go blue.

Watching a debate by yourself is no fun. About 45 minutes into the debate Axel left to pick up Sita from the train station; she had come in from New York, to be joined later in the night by Jim who was making music somewhere in the area. I won’t see either of them as our alarm clocks are not in sync.

I woke up with a Halloween ditty that my subconscious had fashioned during my sleep. It went something like this: Long flowing robes/ a dash of purple, orange on her cheeks/everyone was looking/she got the dates wrong/not yet Halloween.

Halloween used to be my favorite holiday that I adopted with great gusto when I arrived in this country. For 15 years, without exception, I used to make an elaborate Halloween display at MSH. But last October I had not fully recovered nor returned to work and my co-conspirator Ann was no longer working at MSH. The tradition was broken. This year I will be en route to Tanzania if all goes according to plan. And so I am in the process of working on my (other) fall tradition and that is the making of small jars of Christmas mustard, leaving Halloween languishing on the side.

After the sweeping vistas over Essex County from 2000 feet up on Monday afternoon, work on Tuesday was at the 5 inch level. I poured over action plans about contraceptive commodities logistics (yup), in French; all this in order to give constructive feedback to teams that have already celebrated the end of a 13 week course. I am temporarily filling in for two absent facilitators. It is tedious and tricky work as I am providing new feedback on plans that others have followed for awhile now. It took me most of yesterday to get my head around the action plan logic of two of the 9 teams and send them my commentary. I have no idea what effect my email will have in Rwanda and Madagascar, which is where the two teams live.

At 5 PM I was happy to turn my computer off. I drove to North Station to pick up Axel who had taken the train in and then back into Cambridge where we attended the opening of an exhibit at the MIT Museum on the development of the Side Scan Sonar. I had no idea what that was, except that it was more or less invented by a distant relative of Axel’s (the person who married the person who used to be married to his cousin); his name is Marty and we are actually much closer to him and his wife than the relationship suggests. He opened the exhibit by telling stories about a heady time at MIT (60s and 70s) when much was being invented, professors and students could do things that would now be frowned upon, and when transistors were the cool thing. It was a time when bulky machines did things that now our cell phones can do. There were stories about famous professors, startup companies that split and produced new startups, hunting for shipwrecks, treasures and even the monster of Loch Ness; when you have a Side Scan Sonar, I learned, you can do those things and actually find stuff on the bottom of oceans and lakes. On the bottom of Loch Ness, instead of finding the monster, they found a more or less intact world war plane that is now sitting in some museum. They also found the Titanic and many other famous and not so famous shipwrecks, in seas near and far.

Marty ended his stories with an impassioned plea to young people to become scientist and explore the oceans. I think that if I had been a student I would have been hooked right then and there, vowing to get the kind of grades that would get me into MIT, especially as a girl. I noticed that the only two women in Marty’s story where his mother (who helped finance some of the projects) and his office manager (who ran the business), all the really creative and inventive work was done by guys.

And so that is how we discovered also the MIT museum. Aside from Marty’s side-scan sonar story you can see cancer research (women-led) via zebra fish and models of low carbon footprint city cars. I want one of these. Their bodies slide up so they can press together in stacks that refuel when not in use (like one’s electric toothbrush) and even give electricity back to the grid. I am so impressed when I see all those inventions; this is a kind of creativity that is beyond me (as all of Marty’s work was – imagine making and using a fax machine before they even exist!).

We completed our (school) night out on the town with a hastily consumed meal in a noisy bar on Mass Avenue and then headed back home, sliding into bed half an hour after bedtime. As I drifted into sleep the images came back from the crash, as they sometimes do when I am very tired; this time with a question, what if we had crashed and no one had been around to pull us out? I got no answer (but could guess) and then woke up with this Halloween ditty. The mind is a mysterious thing.

The squirrel house is clean again, as clean as it can get, being open to nature in too many ways. I had to chase one little mouse that was still living there and I am sure will move back in again as soon as the dust settles. I am quite proud of my work, with everything having a place to sit, hang or stand. I threw out old and very greasy copper oil cans, handmade tin cans, also greasy and other stuff that Axel wanted to save (“it’s old and maybe worth something!”). That may have been true but it would also become a project to make it suitable for sale; we have enough projects already. With that he agreed, and we tossed everything in the garbage can.

While I was busy with the shed, Axel was downstairs in the basement trying to get the mold under control so he can set up his work area for cutting and assembling his graphic design school assignments without his lungs seizing up. On that beautiful 10+ day he walked around in yellow slickers with a facemask as if he was part of a chemical spill cleanup crew. He also had to throw things out that we had held onto for much too long. We will have the largest garbage pile of the neighborhood tomorrow.

The next chore was getting the plants ready for going inside, which requires the cleaning of pots and the removal of bugs, spider sacks and dead leaves. It also requires creating space for them inside, which triggers off a whole other set of tasks. Winterizing is one long series of self-generating tasks and we dread it each year. Last year we had much of it done for us because we were still somewhat handicapped, but now we have no excuse.

In the middle of all this we were interrupted by Chicha’s loud barking to announce the arrival of 4 kayaks with friends inside them who had landed on our beach for a visit. It is nice to be visited from the ocean side of our house rather than from the driveway and it doesn’t happen very often. They were doing the right thing being on the water. We sat on the beach for awhile, with four people tossing sticks for Chicha to fetch. She was in seventh heaven with all that attention.

The last chore of the day was planting the tulip bulbs at the family grave. The planting of the grave is a bi-annual ritual that involves a toast of vodka to the ancestors; Axel thanks them for all they have done for him and I thank them for having produced Axel. We pour some of the vodka over Penny and Herman’s grave as we know they would have liked that. We don’t pour any alcohol over the grandparents gravestone as grammie would definitely not have been pleased.

We stopped at Diane’s house on the way back with something soothing for the throat. Diane was one of our most dedicated caretakers last summer and fall, with her soups and organizational skills. She had returned from the hospital where, in her own words, she had her throat slit for some operation that we hoped to get more details on. But we did not find her home.

Back home we tried to ignore the clutter and the diminished space as a result of the plant invasion and set to cooking our meal which from now on will always have to include Swiss chard as we have so much of it. The internet helps. Last night was a warm chard/raison/walnut salad. Today will be a subcontinent meal fashioned around dhal and a (chard) sag.

But before that, Nuha and I plan to fly over Essex county where I will show her one of the most beautiful landscapes I know, a far cry from sandy Saudi Arabia.

I used not to like the Topsfield Fair when our kids were small because it meant an entire afternoon (or morning) of the ‘gimme-this-gimme-that’s. As they got older they thought the flower, fruit and vegetable displays were boring and wanted to go straight to the rides. When they were teenagers they went on their own and we did not go at all. Now I like it again as I get to see where our chicken breasts, turkey cold cuts and pork chops come from.

We enjoyed the falcon and border collie show, seeing the 3000 pound oxen turn around in a tight space in response to a ho, he, and ha from their owner. Not a small man he was dwarfed by the giant beasts with their gentle eyes. We rested our tired bodies on the tribune at the 4H goat show and watched in amazement how young teens displayed their goats and much knowledge about them, tucking one ribbon after another in their back pockets. Their families were sitting by the side, holding on to an array of other prize goats and ribbons while taking notes in small booklets. This is the farm life that few kids get to experience much these days, at least in these parts, and it is doubtful that ‘experience’ is the right word for an afternoon at the fair with thousands of other people.

Back home I started to tackle our long list of winter chores. I started by making room for stuff. This required shoveling about 10 pounds of squirrel debris out of our little shed to get it ready for the winter storage of bikes and garden implements. It is the place where the squirrels take their nuts to, crack them and leave the shells. It is also where the mothers make nests and have babies, using dried grasses for bedding. I found abandoned nests everywhere plus a few more openings gnawed through the wood to facilitate a more convenient entry and egress than through the front door. It is really the squirrels’ house and I am like the maid who comes cleaning every few years.

In the evening we went to see our friends Ken and Carol in Ipswich whose son Dan returned from Hawaii where he has made his home. I met a compatriot of mine who is a doctor at MGH and confirmed to me that I am indeed seeing the right ankle doctor in 5 weeks; she observed instantly what was wrong with my right ankle, something my highly trained orthopod here never bothered to mention to me, despite my many visits and his high bills to blue cross.

As the right wrist is healing the next body part requires attention; there seems to be a hierarchy and only one body part can act out at a time. The left knee, spared in the accident but longtime arthritic, has decided it is her (his?) turn to be hurtful and wants to jump the line, ahead of the right ankle. Some 3 years ago I had an arthroscopy and the knee doctor told me partial knee replacement was next. I got another opinion and a cortisone shot that has held till now. I wonder how really old people figure out the sequencing of body part repair. Maybe this is why you retire, to make repair a full time job. But with the dip of the stock market I lost about one third of my pension savings. So now I will have to work until I am 85 or so.