Sylvia's Journal

I am really bad living on my own – my meals are unbalanced and I work too much. At some point last night my body protested so loud about sitting in front of the computer – through aches and pains – that I got the hint and looked at the clock – 9:30 PM! I had been working on my writing assignment since 3 PM and not noticed the time. I truly was ‘in the flow.’ The good part of this flow thing is that I am nearly done with my chapter (some 40+ pages long). I expect to send it out for review tonight and can then scratch that big job off my very long to do list, shifting my attention to what’s next (Ghana).

It was good that I went walking with Chicha at noon time, so at least I had moved my limbs a little during the day. We went to Singing Beach. It was a glorious winter day, even though it was technically spring. Chicha ignored all the attentions and advances from other dogs, her eyes tight on the yellow tennis ball in my hand (which she had found for me), retrieving it like a rocket. Neighbor Ted researched Blue Heelers and said Chicha can’t help herself – retrieving is in her genes; the additional Border Collie genes only make it worse.

If Axel had been around he would never have me left in my office so long. He would have shamed me into proper meals and corrected my posture, each time he walked by. I hate it when he does that but I missed it yesterday. Instead of a proper meal I had (homemade) bread and honey for breakfast with Ethiopian coffee, then bread and summer sausage from Canada for lunch, and for dinner a piece of week old brisket and a beer (consumed at my desk).

I extracted myself from my very messy office (when I write I pull out papers and books willy-nilly and leave them right where they fall) and finished about a pint of ice cream and the remaining whipped cream before going to bed. I like to clean out the refrigerator especially if there is no one to provide a commentary.

Before going to bed I watched public broadcasters ask for money on the screen and interrupt with a movie on Chi-Qong – which you get if you contribute 80 dollars or more. Having so abused my body I felt compelled to follow the instructor, especially after he promised that the exercise would undo all the bad things I had done to it during the day. In anticipation of the promised mental clarity, energy and a peaceful feeling I got out of bed and floated my arms up and down, bend my knees, twisted my hips and spine and breathed deeply and rhythmically in and out of the belly. In the process I discovered that my shoulder joint is far from being fixed by the last cortisone shot and that any of the very simple upper arm and shoulder movements are out of bounds for now. No yoga either. Still, I fell asleep in seconds after I hit the pillow and had nice dreams that I cannot remember, so the peaceful part worked.

The mental clarity and energy will kick in now, I hope, as there is much to do before a taxi will drive up to my house in about 12 hours to take me to the airport. There is a morning of flying with Bill and then the packing and charging all my electronics. I am travelling light with my Kindle, no books – everything fits in a small shoulder bag. The small suitcase that I had planned to carry on will be checked – lifting even a small case in an overhead bin is not in the stars for now.

There are rowers on the river again and sailboats in the Basin; these are the impatient ones, confident that they will not flip over in the still very cold waters of the Charles. Yesterday’s balmy weather also brought out the joggers in shorts and tanks tops and a young woman walking with her lover along the bank of the Charles River. When the wind blew her miniskirt up, much like Marilyn on the subway grate, there was not much underneath by way of clothing. Spring is coming to Boston.

Spring is also coming to the North Shore. Now that we have daylight savings time I arrive home with a couple of hours left of light making work in the yard and garden possible. I spent some time uncovering the tender shoots that will become crocuses, blue bells, daffodils, tulips and bleeding hearts in due time, liberating them from underneath the heavy and wet pile of leaves that kept them white and leggy. This also revealed the tracks of countles small rodents that have been burrowing close to our house’s foundation, or maybe even inside it; to stay warm I suppose.

I am checking the asparagus bed nearly daily in the hope of some sign of life but nothing is showing yet. The garden is dead, at least at first sight. I know that weeds are alive and well and making their way to the surface. The parsley, and other winter crops that we forgot to harvest look miserable.

Sometime in January, when we get restless, we have all these good intentions to order seeds, growing flowers and vegetables from scratch. But it remains a plan, a set of intentions, and then, suddenly, spring has arrived. And we say ‘oops’ and resolve to do better next year.

Spring also means raking leaves and other debris from the lawn, an enormous task that is best done piecemeal. I did the lawn right in front of the door and uncovered many sticks, dead toys and turts that belonged to Chicha. It looks nice now.

Dreams of loss, not as in ‘gone’ but as in ‘looking for, missing.’ All through my dreams I was searching for Axel. I am not usually the one who is left behind, spending the first night of our separation in a plane full of people, not alone like last night, lost in the big king size bed.

I found no email or phone message indicating he arrived. Still he must have, as there was nothing in the newspaper about a Delta flight not arriving at its destination. I did find in my mailbox a message from a friend who forwarded a letter written by someone who was on the USAIR flight that landed in the Hudson. It was an ‘ode to pilots’ of sorts, grey haired pilots in particular. I agree, although it is the experience that matters, not the grey hair – the two don’t always go together, especially when it comes to piloting, as I know all too well.

Tessa and Steve returned from Ontario loaded with Canadian goodies: pipperettes (dried bison and elk sausages), two enormous summer sausages the size of small dachshunds, produced by his hunting relatives, two liters of maple syrup (the real thing), honey, cinnamon butter and more. None of these are on Axel’s weightwatcher’s list of suggested foods, but then he is not here and cannot be tempted. I promptly added to the pantry of fatty foods by making chocolate mousse for tonight, trying one helping to make sure it came out right.

Yesterday started with a phone call from my brother that his first wife had finally decided to leave this world after a long illness that kept her struggling to participate in life the way most of us do. She had come to the end and had finally given up, this time for real, rather than the many previous cries for help. I had talked with her, wishing her a happy birthday, just 10 days ago. As usual, the phone call left me sad and wondering whether things might ever change for her. She must have concluded that they would not, never. There was some relief – I think there is some primordial kind of guilt when you are happy in the vicinity of someone who can never have what you take for granted (peace of mind). But of course there is also much sadness. My nephew did after all lose his mom even though she had not been able to mother him for a long time.

Today Axel will be flying in style to Costa Rica for a 10 day vacation with our snowbird friends Anne and Chuck. How he managed to get an upgrade to business class on (a) an award ticket that was (b) arranged at the last minute, and (c) not being a frequent flyer himself is a mystery to me. Part of me wants to cry out ‘not fair,’ but of course I am also very pleased for him. For me such upgrades are rare even though I fly at least once a month on tickets that cost thousands of dollars, bought a little earlier than the night before and have at least half a million miles to my name plus gold and platinum standing on the same airline and its major partner. Axel is just a very classy man, and, more importantly, people can pronounce his last name.

Steve and Tessa and the dog are returning home later today from their brief (and surprise) family visit to Ontario. After I leave on Saturday for Ghana, they will have the house for themselves for a short week. I hope they will rake the yard and free it from all the puppy-generated debris. Now, with most of the snow gone, the sticks, dog toys and turts are revealing themselves.

I rode my bike to see the physical therapist yesterday in between an avalanche of ad hoc requests and reviews of other people’s work that advanced our common cause but not my own personal work plan for the day (which was about finishing the chapter I have been trying to write for a month now).

My usual PT was on vacation in Florida so I had a stand-in; a sweet young woman, who’s not quite done with PT school yet. She’s so careful in her touch that it felt all a bit tentative and it’s hard to gauge whether her manipulations made a difference. Much of the work consists of getting my body to do its own healing and none of that is instant. The signs of the contusion have mostly gone leaving only a deep purple spot around my elbow where gravity pooled the subcutaneous blood. The dull pain of the rotator cuff tendinitis has merged with the dull pain of whatever it is that I ripped in my upper arm.

The biggest accomplishment is that I cleared all the paper and other stuff from my two desks so I can use them again. The second biggest accomplishment is that I reached the bottom of my electronic mail box. Small victories for a long day.

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.

The vivid dreams have slipped away because I did not go straight to my keyboard. I can’t even remember the feelings that accompanied them; nothing’s left. The act of cooking breakfast broke the tender threads that hang between sleeping and waking.

We had our breakfast by the window watching the bright red cardinal and the shimmering metallic blue starlings eating their breakfast under the tree. We listened to Jorma Kaukonen – from Jefferson Airplane fame – being interviewed on NPR talking about going back to his roots and playing guitar for us. Now that I am struggling with chords on the ukulele I have a new appreciation for what it takes to play as fluid as he does. I went to his website and read some pages from his diary, started on January 2009. It is one of the best things about living now, that you can peek into someone’s life just like that. He may be rich and famous but he comments on the weather and his travel, enjoys the company of his kids, friends and co-workers and misses his dead parents just like me.

Yesterday was cold and crisp and we ventured out only once, late afternoon, for a long walk when being home all day (and mostly sitting in front of computers) had gotten to us. I spent most of the morning trying to sort out whether I would or would not be going to Ghana next weekend. I had just arrived at the conclusion that I should cancel the trip when my colleagues got me on the phone and talked me out of that decision. So I guess I am going after all. My dream would be, one day to know three weeks ahead that I am going someplace and have visa, passport and ticket in hand. In my memory that happened more often in the past. Maybe our ultrafast communications have made last minute decision making possible in ways it was never before with all the positive and negative consequences. I remember in the early nineties that we had to set up a phone conversation about 6 weeks ahead of time (via letter or telex) with a peace corps volunteer who had to travel 100 kilometers to the nearest phone, somewhere deep in Guinea Conakry. This seems like ancient history now.

Today we are going south on an outing, visiting several places that are close to small airports. The thought occurred to me that this would have been a perfect occasion to go by air: blue skies, no wind, short hops by air (versus hours on the road by car) and several airports that I am familiar with. In fact, our hotel tonight is just down one of the runways of New Bedford Municipal Airport. Alas, this is not in the stars, and won’t be for awhile. Most importantly because Axel has not flown with me yet and we are not quite sure whether we are ready for this (or consulted our daughters). The other reason is that currently I don‘t own a plane share, and thus would have to rent a plane at 100 dollars an hour (excluding fuel) which would make the trip more costly than buying commercial airline tickets and rent cars or maybe even fly to London for the weekend.

Our first stop this afternoon will be the Picasso exhibit at Yale; then to New Bedford where we will spend the night. Tomorrow we will see uncle Charles, now in his 100th year. Axel called him last night to find out if he is available, worrying that calling at 8:30 PM might be too late. Nothing was closer to the truth. He stays up past midnight. “What do you do that keeps you up so late?,” asked Axel. Apparently he cleans his small trailer, repairs stuff that is broken, putters around in the small space, stuff like that. He did not even mention watching TV.

After lunch with Charles we will drive to a funeral home on the Cape to be with my grief stricken friend and colleague Mary who lost her son last week. She is the third person to be hit by such a tragedy in less than 2 months.