Sylvia's Journal

Today was our quarterly reporting to ourselves. We call it the During Action Review, or the DAR for short. It is a quarterly review ritual that is done, obviously, every three months, in the first week of the new quarter. The format and the dates are known. Yet my team scrambled to put it together the night before as if it totally surprised them. What do they not know about quarterly? I wondered in desperation as I watched several mediocre slide shows.

I have been quite tolerant of poor performance – there are always many excuses and there is much that is not under our control, but this was. I decided not to accept any excuses this time and called the poor performance for what it was. I like to be the nice boss but today I don’t think I was. My staff are probably saying, good thing she is going on leave for two weeks. I agree.

Axel came back from his language class and found me in a jubilant ‘holiday mood,’ with an adult beverage in front of me and a mana’ish (Lebanese wild thyme pizza) in the oven, producing a most wonderful aroma that wafted from the cold kitchen into the rest of the house.

We told the cook to stop buying things that would spoil. I wrote the note entirely in Dari, in the handwriting of a second grader. I got it back with some corrections. I wrote back on the notice, this morning, thank you teachers, and made yet another mistake in the spelling of ‘teacher.’ I can go on forever saying ‘thank you teacher.’ And so, even though some spoilables did get purchased, there is some progress, on all sides, even if it is only measured in millimeters.

I said goodbye to M and her two little boys in their kodakistan (daycare center). They will have left for Egypt by the time I come back. I asked them to keep a journal (I think it is a good habit that cannot start too early) and to write about their trip to Egypt and draw pictures of what they see and learn.

The oldest child gave me a bear hug, his younger brother was less interested in my lecture. I don’t think he quite realizes the adventure he is about to embark on. I would have killed to go to Egypt when I was a little girl. My father went to Egypt when I was about that age. I remember the picture of him on a camel in front of one of the great pyramids, with a fez on his head. It stood for years in its silver frame on a chest in our living room. One of those childhood treasures.