Sylvia's Journal

Yesterday’s near spring weather, the blue skies and the balmy temperatures have gone and we are back to winter. All the exposed mud is covered again by snow, which is prettier but it does feel like a setback.

My huge blue, purple, bright red and violet bruise on my arm remains. I decided not to bother my local doctor on weekend duty; instead I solicited two opinions from my brother and his wife, by phone, and combine it with a catching up phone call that was due anyways. Both said something that is a variation on a familiar family mantra. My mother, also a doctor, best expressed the mantra by saying “It will be over before you turn into a boy.” It is a nice way of saying that you are making too much of something.

Despite the injury I had much exercise yesterday, the kind that does not involve the biceps: biking and walking. The biking was to Quaker Meeting where I practiced silencing my busy mind (and was only partially successful) and was reminded about Lent which requires, in the orthodox traditions, giving up something of value. Nancy spoke about this and suggested that for many of us the thing to give up may well be ‘being too busy and trying to do it all.’ I could relate to that and took it as an exhortation and ended up not doing as much on Sunday as I had originally intended.

I did bake a cake with about one pound of butter in it which I will not disclose any further. Coming back from Quaker Meeting I felt too wholesome to make a cake from a box. In hindsight I should have because the cake I made may not be as fluffy as the cake boxes advertise. But the frosting was to die for (it would, with more than half a pound of butter). Tessa had the leftover frosting on a slice of bread; something that Dutch kids have for breakfast when not having jimmies on their bread (or sometimes both). The birthday cake was for Nuha who turned 27 but we got our signals crossed and so we did not see her and offer her the cake as we had hoped. This is postponed until today when she will come up, and we will treat her to a belated birthday dinner.

After the baking Axel and I went for a very long walk at the Ipswich Audubon reserve which brought back thousands of memories to our time as young parents. The park was a regular weekend outing when Sita was very little and later, when Tessa had joined us. They went to vacation nature school, we learned about sugaring, animal tracks, mushrooms, fed the chickadees from our hands and made up stories about who lived in the rockery. All that came flooding back as we sat watching the activities of beavers by a quiet, semi-frozen pond. It made us feel a little old but the memories were sweet. We also resolved to go kayaking through the reserve as soon as we are physically fit enough for this, later this year.

I wonder whether the large bruise is responsible for my tiredness. I took a long bath yesterday and went to bed before 9PM, to wke up from a dream in which I had a cat sitting on my head, at about 7 AM. That’s when I discovered everything was white again, except my upper arm.