Sylvia's Journal

Today Axel completes the 63rd year of his life and enters his 64th. I was too pooped, after a 19 hour day, to decorate his chair and set up anything that would mark today as extra-ordinary. Luckily Sita and Tessa did. Seeing their display this morning made me smile. Something becomes a family ritual if it happens without you. The transfer of this particular birthday ritual is completed. I imagine years from now, great-great-great grand children wondering, where did this come from?

Yesterday morning I thought I had gotten up at 4:30 AM, my usual time, but somehow the automatic clock that sends signals from someplace in Colorado to my alarm got confused by its Daylight Savings time settings (as had I). I was fully dressed and ready to start the day before 4 AM. The ride into work was the fastest ever and I was at my desk long before 6 AM; hence the very long day.

The students from the BU course presented their final class projects to members of the MSH staff and invited guests. Everyone was dressed to the nines and nervous. Since I had been on the phone in Kabul with the Afghanistan team, I was considered part of the family. All the presentations were polished, focused and engaging. I was blown away by their backgrounds, diversity and by the way they presented themselves. I was sorry, once again, that I had not been able to teach the class last week. I seem to be teaching this class every other year.

In the middle of the presentation MP showed up with her new Afghan family, now disguised as Americans. Wafa, in his khaki pants and summer shirt, had gone through quite a transformation. His English is about the same level as my Dari and the poor fellow must feel overwhelmed with the rapid fire English spoken all around him. Said was beaming and so was MP. I was so happy to see them.

Later we had lunch with one of the Afghan students, a female doctor from high up in the ministry of health who, according to rumors when I left Afghanistan, was planning to stay in the US. She assured me this was not true; in fact she was just reconfirming her return trip on Saturday. Such rumors, she told me, are quite common and are sometimes used as ways to discredit people, especially women. It was a good reminder of the complexity of living in Afghanistan as a foreigner. I have a tendency to always assume good motives and intentions behind actions and to take people’s statements at face value. First I believed the rumor and now I believe her. We’ll see where the truth lies in less than a week.

In the afternoon it was office clean up time. Both Jennifer and I are leaving; between the two of us that is nearly 30 years of accumluated office debris. I threw out paper that dated back to 1990 and realized that I haven’t used paper files and folder for a long time. The first folder took me nearly 30 minutes to clean out; each page was a trip down memory lane. At that pace I would have needed days to complete the job. But then I got better at it and threw everything out, quickly filling up a large container. Morsi, Jennifer and Ashley joined in the fun and we made good progress. Now I have to do the same with my computer files, probably a bigger job and one that can be endlessly postponed without negative consequences.

In the evening I had my first goodbye party, 6 weeks ahead of departure time, with old and current colleagues, consisting of the subgroup of women-of-a-certain-age. We had bonded over the years as we went through major life changes together: having children, raising them, seeing them leave the nest, marrying and having babies themselves in some cases.

We made an exception to the women-only rule for Said and Wafa who showed up briefly. They were probably rather puzzled by these older women having fun like small kids. MP carted them away to their beds when their eyes started to glaze over.

The potluck was hosted by Ann, my squash partner for many years; showing up at her house brought back many fond memories of our twice a week early morning squash games at the YMCA (until my knees gave out) our dress-ups for Halloween and many other goodbyes like this.

It was a reunion of sorts of people with whom I have shared many years of those last 22 at MSH. Some of them have gone on to other organizations in the meantime, but in some ways they have never left. We sat around a dining room table laden with great food. Without any difficulty we fell back into old grooves, telling old stories and poking fun at the same people we have poked fun at for years; remembering things that now seem funny and nice, even though they were not at the time. I think I like this part of growing older, everything repackaged and full of glitter and warm smiles.