Sylvia's Journal

Last time getting up at 4:30 AM, now dark again, to make sure I can leave for work at 6 AM. This one and a half hour used to be plenty for my morning routine, including the half an hour or so of writing, but now I am pushing it with about one half hour of exercises are added to the drill.

The car is loaded with book bags, duffel bags and other stuff I cannot fit in my suitcases. It’s what I think I can live without for awhile. I checked the weather in Kabul, which is now programmed into my iPod-Touch, right alongside Manchester by the sea, Amsterdam and Dubai – significant places for me these days. Surprisingly, at around 8 PM the temperature (55F), the direction of the wind (NNE) and the number of knots (3) was more or less the same for Manchester and for Kabul. I took a jacket out of the duffel bag and squeezed it back in the suitcase.

The pace is picking up for both of us, Axel’s to-do list, a paper one, looks overwhelming; mine is less so as the big stuff has already been taken off and only smaller things remain, mostly in my head. The trip to the office today pushed several items to the top, among them all sorts of manipulations and forms related to my pension plan that MSH has just changed.

Part of my own preparation required a consultation with a financial specialist to make sure I don’t make any unwise moves with the money I have saved so far for our retirement. Getting the finances right is something that we learned a bit late in life and we swore we would not let our kids make the same mistakes that turn out to be quite costly when you look back later in life. We bought Tessa and Steve a two hour consultation to make sure they get off to a good start with the little money they have now. Sita and Jim get to do the same, an early wedding present.

My hairdresser Bonnie gave me a haircut that is the shortest ever. I think she doesn’t want me to go to another hairdresser in Kabul and by clipping my hairs back to about a half inch, she may indeed succeed; I won’t need a hairdresser for months. We made an appointment for December 23 when she can do it again.

She informed me of the latest developments in her nasty divorce and abuse case and it occurred to me that the only thing we have in common is the power of a community of friends that rallies around one during difficult times; without that, she thinks, she would have died. I can relate to that. But in any other aspect she and I are on opposite ends: self confidence, self sufficiency, family relations, housing situation, money in the bank, job security, technology and administrative savvy. 

I have my mother to thank me for much of that – she was a feminist in a quiet way and taught me that I should be able to take care of myself and the business of running a family/household in all its aspects (financial, administrative, insurance, taxes, maintenance, etc.). She also taught me that a strict division of woman’s work and man’s work in the household has never hurt a man and always hurts a woman when things go off the rails. She saw it around her and I still see it, Bonnie being the latest case in point.