Sylvia's Journal

The longest day of the year has passed and we are officially in the summer season. But outside gale winds are howling and the waves in the Cove are whipped up as if we are on the high seas. And then there is the rain, incessant. We can see the grass growing in front of our eyes, and the weeds. The broccoli, peas and tomato plants are knocked over; today is another dismal day.

Dismal too is the dying around us. The father of one of Sita’s classmates died at the age of 58 of a stroke and it made us talk about stress. All day yesterday was about stress-free living. We were actually quite good at it and may have gained a bit more longevity.

First we met with friends from DC who were over on family business, at a small breakfast place in Salem, the kind with low prices, overweight people eating bacon, jovial waitresses, greasy plastic table cloths, and, according to Jerry, excellent home fries. Jerry’s company works in Afghanistan and he will connect Axel to his colleagues in Kabul.

After we said goodbye to our friends we visited the Dutch Seascapes exhibit at the Peabody and Essex Museum. Compared to the dismal weather and the high waves in those pictures, our current weather predicament is minor. We also don’t have the huge towering cliffs, Spanish galleons shooting at us and large scary fish with bulging eyes waiting to devour the shipwrecked.

I am very attentive to gender balance these days and noticed that women were essentially missing from these windows into the 1600s. The only women I saw where fish sellers, washerwomen and a few noble women coming to buy fresh fish. There may have been a few prostitutes but that was hard to tell from the tiny figures that were only marginal to the grand narrative of danger and the insignificance of man: threatening skies, wild seas, sharp rocks, scary fish and big wooden boats with guns.

We walked around a bit longer in rained out Salem, watching musicians trying to stay dry while making the music they were hired to play, presumably to attract and entertain tourists. Staying indoors was better and so we stopped for a late lunch at a wonderful Czech restaurant called Gulu.

Back home we settled in our living room with books, knitting and tea, practicing for our undisturbed (we hope) cozy evenings in Kabul. If our fireplace had worked we would have started a fire – but it is still not assembled. In Kabul we’ll be sitting around a kerosene stove, probably.

Tessa cooked us pancakes for dinner, after which we watched Hercule Poirot, completing an entire stress free day. I think we’ll live a little longer for that.