Sylvia's Journal

I unraveled most of the sweater I had knitted over the weekend during the hours we spent in the car driving from Manchester to New Haven to see Picasso, then to Fall River to sleep, then to Wareham to see Uncle Charles, then to Mashpee to comfort Mary and finally back home. Axel looked at me with sympathy while I unraveled what was supposed to be a sleeve, thinking I would be devastated. He doesn’t understand that it is the knitting rather than the end result that matters. I don’t need another sweater but I do need to get it right. He also doesn’t understand why people like jigsaw puzzles. Same thing.

I set some other things right this morning as I dug through several inches of papers, bills, books, flyers and scribbled notes on my two desks (having two desks doubles the amount you have to dig through). If you wait long enough much paper becomes irrelevant and can be thrown out. But for some things, not paying attention will cost you, like the unpaid bills that carry stiff finance penalties.

Another thing I tried to get right was my trip to Ghana this coming Saturday. Once again I made little progress. None of the people I tried to contact and who are critical to making my trip a success (or even worth the effort) are responding to calls or emails. There are many reasons why people in Ghana may be out of reach: their yahoo mailboxes are full (government officials, even at the highest levels have yahoo rather than company mail addresses), the telephone circuit is overloaded, batteries are empty, phones are turned off, they are travelling in or through a low signal zone, or the phone is lost or stolen. Considering all this it is actually amazing that I have made contact at all in the past. I did get a hold of our lead facilitator William which comforted me. Things may turn out OK in the end.

Yesterday we had an early bird lunch with Uncle Charles in a place that caters to the after church crowd and families taking their elderly relatives out for lunch, just like us. Charles lives on his own and when asked who keeps his house clean he answers, with a twinkle in his eye, “a nice feller by the name of Charlie Wilson.” That would be him. We arrived at his trailer park home while he was in his tiny dressing room, wrestling with his buttons. Several of his fingers don’t work that well, nor does one of his eyes (“it worked just fine before the doctor operated on it,” he claims). He needed some help with the zipper of his sweater but other than that he is doing fine. He voluntarily handed in his driver’s license when he was 95, recognizing that he should not be on the road anymore. Since then is driven places by a man (a young feller, in his fifties) named Bill who has gone a bit sour lately it appears, taking some of the fun out of these drives.

Charles’ long term memory is impeccable. We mentioned a picture of his family, with him being the baby in his mother’s arms. “That would be 1909,” he said without missing a beat. He is correct about the date. The handsome red-haired Scottish dad, standing in the back, skipped out not long after the photo was taken and was never heard of again, leaving Axel’s grand-mama to fend for herself with 6 kids under 10.

I could have stayed for hours in that dining room just observing people and making up stories. There was the very obese couple, who, to our astonishment, ordered (and then lived through)a meal full of fatty foods. And there was the family with teenage kids taking grandma out for a treat. That the teenagers wanted to be somewhere else was written on their scornful faces. It was clearly dad’s mom as he was constantly fussing over the tiny, bent over and fragile creature in the wheelchair. His wife, in her triple role as wife, daughter in law and mother, was seated what I presumed to be the bane of her current existence: the pouting teenagers and her demanding mother-in-law. She tried, I could tell. Ahh, families!

Family is also what propped up Mary and her daughter-in-law at the funeral home; family and friends. A few of us from MSH showed up and gave her hugs for comfort, wondering how can one possibly comfort someone who have lost their son (or husband) just at a time when life should be getting easier, not harder. “Oh how I wished he could hear what people are saying about him,” sighed Mary and I was reminded of the film ‘What a wonderful life. ‘ Axel and I have been in the unusual, and very fortunate position, to have heard what people might have said if we had perished in the crash. We lived to hear all those wonderful words and testimonies; we believe it is what healed us so quickly. Mary’s son never did.