Sylvia's Journal

Yesterday was my first day back at work in over three weeks. Everyone was busy as usual and I was productive for a good part of the day. But around lunchtime I had to get out into the snowstorm, to wake myself up. The jetlag has manifested itself as a sinus infection that makes the right side of my face tender to the touch and my eyes bloodshot in addition to lots of yawning. Someone asked why I was even at work and I did not have an answer.

Yesterday was a day filled with sadness – some of it highlighting the plight of our sisters worldwide. First there was the anniversary of the plane crash that ended the lives of our three young colleagues Carmen, Cristi and Amy in the snowy mountains of Afghanistan on February 3, 2005. They are still very much missed and we are reminded of them frequently through the pictures on the walls of our office – pictures of and by them, taken in the days before they died.

Another young colleague was induced to deliver her stillborn baby at 24 weeks and became a mother and not a mother at the same moment. It broke my heart – this baby was so much wanted.

And finally, to complete this trio of women’s grief and bad luck, my hairdresser Bonnie poured her heart out about a husband turned mean and callous for the love of a younger woman – behavior so bad and verbally so abusive that I wished I could knock him around the room and give him a piece of my mind. It was little comfort to her that I had an experience somewhat like that (not as callous and mean and there were no children involved) when I had been replaced, early on in my first marriage, by a young blond Swedish interloper some 30 years ago. I told her I now look back on that as one of the best things that ever happened to me as it led me to my own Swede (Axel). But at first it was indeed a dark experience with so much crying that there was no water left in me – Bonnie is in that place right now. What makes the situation particularly sad is that, edged on by his dad, the teenage son is joining the chorus of abuse without realizing what this does to his and his mom’s psyche. Not surprisingly he is derailing at school; a stepsister/daughter, already derailed, unfit to care for her two little boys, is perpetuating a generational drama that keeps re-inventing itself.

I lifted myself out of this morass of anger and sadness by practicing E7 on my ukulele which Sita said was nice (it is) and accompanying myself as I sung Amazing Grace, hoping that everything will turn out OK for the grieving moms around me.