Sylvia's Journal

Between the two of us we had many maintenance and repair appointments for our first 48 hours home: shoulder, teeth, blood work, hair and stomach, the first appointment only hours after we landed. There will be more after the holidays are over and before we head on to our next stop on this short vacation, Holland. But first there has to be Christmas.

Each appointment required waiting in rooms with piped in Christmas music – bad luck meant that the consultation rooms were also exposed to the music. I am glad that after tomorrow this will be over. In fact, I noticed the stores have already moved on the Valentine’s Day; the red and green being replaced by red in pink.

It’s strange to be home but to be there as a guest. We are now staying in the barn across the driveway. Sita and Jim lived there for a year after our accident, then Tessa and Steve, for a year and some months and now us. Our house is no longer our house. Tessa now makes the rules, which includes ‘shoes off’ just like in Kabul.

Her present to us is the newly painted bathrooms: orange gold downstairs and a bright new coat of kelly green upstairs. It will be a nice home to come back to, whenever that will be.

We sleep on a mattress on the floor of a structure that isn’t meant for sleeping in the winter. There is only our mattress and a think wooden floor between us and the cold winter air underneath. Before we went to bed we ventured out into the crowded shopping mall to get an electric pad to preheat the bed; this was easier than buying a bed frame on the day before Christmas, and it did the job, I hardly remember going to bed except that it was warm.

Walking outside and taking the car to drive wherever we want is an untold freedom, a luxury that we took for granted before moving to Afghanistan. After 3 months of being chauffeured around, driving myself is fun and familiar, as if I haven’t been away that long.

Sita and Jim drove halfway home to Western Massachusetts to celebrate Christmas with his sister and husband. We were supposed to come along but that plan turned out to be entirely unrealistic as Axel is taking a nap and I am struggling to make the Christerklaas rhymes for our celebration that is supposed to start at midnight. I am not at all sure how everything will come together in time, the muse has not arrived yet and it doesn’t feel anything like Sinterklaas or Christmas. But it is surely nice to be home.