Sylvia's Journal

I went to the office in the afternoon and am already beginning to feel like a stranger. Life there has continued just fine without me and it is a humbling reminder that none of us are indispensable. I reviewed the tasks that are on my plate with a colleague to see who could take them over. This is never easy because people are already very busy. Still, others happily take over tasks that interest them; none of the things I am handing over are dull or boring.

I spent a couple of hours with colleagues to hand over my teaching load for the summer institute course that we do with Boston University. It is with great regret I do this because I love teaching this class. I have developed wonderful friendships with students as a result. We stay in touch through email and facebook and I follow them as they move along their career path, some in far places, others nearby.

Going away is a good time to bring to closure anything that has been dragging along. This I am doing as well. The remaining time before push off to Kabul has been pretty much booked now, including a few more trips to complete the handovers: Ethiopia next week and Ghana at the end of August.

Last night I sat down at my computer to update my calendar in Outlook. I put in my next trips. When I came to the end of August I put in ‘depart for Kabul.’ It asked for an end date. That is when it hit me – with one date I essentially wiped out the rest of my calendar for the near future – everything got bolded after August 31 and anything that was on my calendar after that has become irrelevant to my new life.

I thought of my friend Susan who has, as the doctors told her, entered the last quarter of her homebound journey – the cancer has spread and is beyond control. Although I am sure she is not sitting in front of her computer and updating her calendar – I imagine that she too has a different outlook on time, calendars and what was written on them; for her, commitments and other dates to show up someplace for something are now irrelevant. My experience last night gave me a teeny taste of that.

In Afghanistan I will not be using my Outlook calendar because somehow it is not set up as a meeting management tool in the office. Things happen the old-fashioned way: you walk over to someone or you call them on a cell phone to set up the appointments. Sometime you even write a letter. Imagine that!

It will be quite a change from our full Outlook calendars and cluttered appointment book that sits on the counter under the telephone in the kitchen. It occurred to me that our lives will be so much simpler: eat-work-eat-work-eat-play-sleep except on Fridays when it will be eat-play-eat-play-eat-play-sleep.