Sylvia's Journal

A fox that cleaned out its litter, washed the pillows that lined his burrow in a nearby stream and then let them dry in the sun; this was one character in my very elaborate dream. I would have shown a picture if I had gotten my own camera in time; but instead I had taken Axel’s empty camera pouch. I walked out of what had become a building rather than open air to get my own camera, leaving Tessa behind with the promise of being back soon.

In the meantime a series of shiny cars and secret service folks arrived. They closed the building and asked everyone to stand back. I abandoned the camera idea and rushed back but guards blocked the entrance. I pleaded to be let in because my daughter was inside. Eventually they agreed and I got back in.

Upstairs I joined the dinner party of a visiting senator from Omaha who was in a wheelchair and surrounded by handlers. He had visited a war zone, Beirut or Kabul, some war-torn place. Dinner was served as soon as everyone was seated, in front of a blazing fire. I sat next to his bodyguard who had two business cards, one for work and one for private. I think he gave me his private one.

Tessa would have sat next to the senator if she hadn’t been asked to relocate just minutes before the good man arrived. Dinner was short and swift. There was no debriefing about what the senator had seen. Even in my dreams I have my facilitator hat on, so I noticed that.

Then I woke up, very sore from hours of raking the debris in our wild backyard, to make it pretty for our annual party today that is held on or close to Greek or Christian Easter – and always in celebration and contemplation of spring, new beginnings, and significant events in our lives.

Yesterday morning I went to the flight center for a short outing in the air, joining Bill who had just passed his bi-annual flight review. This is a FAA requirement for pilots of any type which I will have to do next January to make sure I don’t forget how to do the maneuvers that I was drilled on so much during flight training. These are maneuvers that Bill and I don’t usually do on our long cross country flights, so a review every two years is not a bad idea. After all, you learn them for a reason.

Since Bill had already flown a full hour, I got to pilot both ways and he got to enjoy the ride up and down the New Hampshire and Maine coast. It was glorious to see the landscape below us waking up from a long winter, still mostly colorless but with patches here and there of grass coming to life.

I flew into Portland to practice entering and leaving class C airspace. This class of airspace has a much more rigorous communication protocol than the class D and E airspaces we usually fly in and out of. The rigor has to do with the nature and volume of commercial air traffic: planes that fly on a schedule, jets that produce vortices that really mess up the air behind them, high speeds and a layout of intersecting runways. The combination is potentially lethal thus requiring the alert eyes of air traffic controllers and the strict compliance of pilots. I made one mistake when I forgot to ask for permission, after having cleared the active runway, to taxi to a building for a pit stop. This earned me a stern reprimand from the tower. I don’t think I will make that mistake again.

Back home we called all hands (Steve’s, Tessa’s and our own) on deck to rake – it’s a big job. Chicha required an occasional Frisbee or ball throw and then managed to dive into the piles of leaves, scattering them again. Reward for our hard labor was dinner in a new local restaurant where we found many other local folks checking out the place as well.