Sylvia's Journal

Axel interpreted my very vivid dreams from last night as anxiety dreams. After three weeks at home I’ve come to the realization that this is what forced retirement must be like: one moment you are fully engaged with work and with the world and then, from one day to another, you are not.

My anxiety comes from being completely disconnected from everything I have been involved in over the past two years, or even the past 25 years at MSH. My homecoming was wonderful and sweet but it was also incomplete as there was no re-entry into my former professional world. Vacation is not really a vacation if you don’t know what happens after it is over.

Although I am considered 100% employed (billable we call it), I don’t have a desk, an entry card to the building, or a place to sit and call my own other than what I have at home. At first I thought this was a good thing but now I recognize it is not.

When I went to the last week I parked in one of the parking spaces assigned to my company. For this I had to sign in a book, much like I used to before I left for Kabul. I was told I had to pay 15 dollars if I was going to stay longer than 2 hours. I responded, “I am here for a meeting,” to which our receptionist responded, “but you are an MSH employee, are you not?” Employees have to pay for parking. I realized that I was indeed an employee but I didn’t feel like one, more like a stranger coming in for a visit. That exchange was a turning point.

This feeling of disconnection has only intensified since then. And so this morning I called in and asked for an entrance card and a space to sit. Once I have those I will discipline myself to come in three days every week, like I used to, and re-insert myself physically and psychologically, so I can feel like being part of something again.

Everything was unpacked today. The only things that did not emerge were my 20 colorful kites. I suspect they were at the bottom of one of the wooden packing crates and, because of their lightness and thinness, overlooked by the moving guys. It is such a shame as kites don’t transport that well any other way but at least I have the pictures to admire.

Most of our stuff has been slotted into existing spaces and our house has now a bit of an Afghan feel to it, replacing the pronounced African feel it had before. All the African stuff is packed up and ready to go to people who are into African things.

Axel has been busy re-installing himself in his winter (which means inside) office so we don’t have to heat the barn all the time. This is turning out to be a very time consuming task.
We realized that this is the first time since July 21st 2007 that we are living all by ourselves in our house again – so this is really a move back into our own.

I have booked my ticket to Holland at the end of November. I will be visiting my brother for a few days before picking up Axel and friends whose departure dates are still under discussion – before we all head out to the island in the north where I will enter my next decade.

Our shipment came in today, not our ship, the one Axel has been waiting for for so long, but the stuff packed up on September 5 in Kabul. All 3000 pounds were taken by two beefy men into our empty barn which is no longer empty. The night before I had not slept well, waking up every few hours agonizing about where all the stuff was going to go.

We had a big living room in Kabul, much bigger than here in Manchester. Some of the items that came out of the container are rather out of place here, like the small 4-inch high tables and stools that are meant to be next to Afghanistan’s traditional seating arrangements, the tushaks. These low to the ground pieces of furniture are of no use here where all our furniture is high off the ground. We don’t know what to do with them other than store them or give them away.

Despite our lack of absorptive capacity We are complete again, gone full circle from two years ago. Everything is here now except for things I left in Kabul – things I expect to need/use during a visit to Kabul in the future, if there is to be one. Now with the new twist in the (public) PAK-USA relations it seems all bets are off.

In between the unpacking of the 18 boxes I skyped with old friends and my future co-facilitator, fourteen timezones away, about the upcoming gig in Japan, one of my two pieces of work for the fall. I did accept the proposal writing offer because it was thrown into my lap. I have never done such a job before but people think I can do it.

M. called me from Kabul to say that the third leadership workshop with the midwives had gone very well. It had left everyone inspired, including the facilitators, and produced more confidence all around. If this is my only legacy in Kabul I would be very pleased indeed.

Today we ate lobster number 10 and 11. Axel is having a steady record of catching two lobsters every two days with the increasingly smelly haring bait.

While he was providing sustenance for the family I went to Quaker Meeting, on my bike, trying to re-establish a routine that I had before I left for Afghanistan. Sitting an hour in silent expectancy of communion with God I found my head all but silent – my thought racing around my head remarking that this needed to be done and that, and that, and that. Whole to-do lists emerged while I was trying so hard to meditate and be silent. At the end someone said that the silence had been wonderful. Oh, how I wished…
But the bike ride to and from is also meditative, in a different sort of way, as one has to be careful about traffic and follow the rules. Feeling the warm wind on my arms, neck, face is an untold luxury, still; not having to be all wrapped up such a thrill.

While I continued to adjust to my new life of freedom and complexity and abundance, my two mentees did the third workshop with the Afghan midwife association chapters from several provinces. The first workshop I sat in the back, the second I was in India and so they were on their own – this had not been the plan but postponements had led to this. The third workshop, which was also supposed to happen with me still around also got postponed and so they were once again on their own. I have been thinking about them all weekend and am anxiously awaiting pictures and a report.

Two weeks after I landed I have back my house, mostly, minus things that I have outgrown and things that have outgrown me. We had given Tessa and Steve our couch, partially because it had suffered from bunnies, dogs and other living things over the last 17 years and partially because we had this fantasy of getting a nice new clean couch.

But after shopping around for a new couch we realized that, without a guaranteed income, and certainly without post differential and danger pay, and a costly trip to Holland in the near future, we better not spend our money on a new couch. And so we bought the one we had looked at in the second hand store near our house. With the cushions coming in from Afghanistan it will look great – in fact it already looks so natural that our best friends didn’t even noticed the new old couch.

We spent the evening with our friends who were baysitting their grandchild, something they highly recommended. While baby Otto was asleep we plotted our trip through Holland later this fall. We put before them many difficult choices that require at least a two week vacation which they can’t afford – we probably cannot either but we will sort that out later. Planning a vacation is half the fun of having it.

I have decided I need an office outside our home simply to park all my African and other collections of stuff collected over the last 25 years. I don’t want all of it in my home anymore because it collects dust and Ali Ghulam is no longer there to keep things dust free. Visiting colleagues at MSH this week I realized how many knick-knacks that people buy, or that are gifted, are parked in their offices. I even recognized knick-knacks I had given away when I left two years ago.

They fill 100s of yards of shelves and every horizontal surface. I was wondering whether I could slip some things in, like my collection of African toy planes that I have outgrown, without anyone noticing.

I went into the big city for the second time this week, to catch up on two years with my longtime (but no longer) squash partner Annie, then have a wonderful Thai lunch (much better than the kind of Thai we would get in Kabul – so much better that I practically licked the plates clean) with people from Boston University’s School of Public Health, and then back, through excruciating slow traffic to MSH for a discussion about a chunk of work that needs to be done and for which I was considered a good candidate.

Since I will be running out of vacation time in the next couple of weeks – and was starting to get a little nervous – this was good news. I went home with some papers to study and accept or decline early next week.

I talked with M in Kabul, who was at home because the traffic is all tied up in condolence events for the recently slain leader of the peace process. I think that since the start of Ramazan in early August there has not been an entire work week, what with attacks, holidays, and traffic chaos. The phone call was to let her know that I may be far away but there is still that piece of my heart that is over there. M. says she will be hiding it so that I have to keep on coming back, over and over, to find it.

I do miss my team. Here I am not on any team at the moment and I realize that I need to work with a team to feel complete. If I accept the job given to me today I will be on a team with people I can learn much from. I have also made contact with my co-teacher for the Japan assignment in early November. In the meantime I am on my husband’s team as we move back into our home.

The moving back in, which went so fast when I just got home, is running into some snags, mostly mildew-related snags, exacerbated by the recent water main break – but not entirely. And so my neatly arranged office is in disarray again with stuff and books piled up on every horizontal surface, the smell of bleach and piles of books I am discarding but don’t know where to discard to.

Only a month ago I in my Kabul home with piles everywhere. Now I am back amidst different piles and the removal of these piles is so much more complicated because most people don’t want my stuff but I can’t throw it out. What a luxury problem to have – abundance!

All the dog hair has been removed from the car – nearly all. I found a few stray ones to the great consternation of Andrew the car detailing man who had promised I would be totally satisfied.

While Andrew was detailing our car I visited a friend who hired me 25 years ago as a family planning counselor at Planned Parenthood. Our contact has been spotty but we never entirely lost sight of each other. Now her son is a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lesotho. It was fun looking over the map of Lesotho and hearing the stories about his new life there.

I spent the remaining hours enjoying the freedom of walking around on my own in Gloucester on this warm fall day, had a nice lunch and some wicked good espresso. And while I was doing this Axel and Joe drove to western Massachusetts to take care of some Joe business and have the company of each other during the five hour round trip.

Our shipments have cleared customs, 250 pounds in Minneapolis and the remaining 2500 pounds in Boston. There is now more urgency to rid our house of unnecessary pounds to make room for the new stuff. All of the new pounds are expected to arrive at our door step any time now.
 

I went to MSH today and felt much like when I am in Holland: I am from there but have become an alien simply by being absent for a while. I did see some people who I have known for over 20 years and it was nice to see them but everyone is busy (‘very busy’) with stuff I know nothing about. I felt strangely out of place.

The big project that is supposed to give people like me work has still not been awarded and I wonder whether it ever will. I saw some writing on the wall and decided I better re-activate my looking for secure employment elsewhere – it is not an easy decision and somewhat out of my comfort zone, but one has to be practical about such matters and there is a whiff of excitement that comes with the idea.

I had carefully prepared my lunch, a salad from Axel’s lobster (his fifth caught since I got home) plus the beets and a salad made from the red cabbage from our garden but I forgot to put it in the car. So I had to go to Trader Joe and buy myself lunch. In the meantime Axel and Joe ate mine.

While at TJ I bought a sea salt-caramel-dark chocolate bar and ate it on the spot. A colleague at MSH, a no-nonsense public health physician, told me he read of a longitudinal study that concluded that people who ate chocolate everyday were healthier than those who did not. He and I didn’t even ask for the credentials of the researchers and used the study’s conclusion as sufficient justification to go out and buy (then eat) chocolate.

In the afternoon I visited MP and her Afghan son who decided that my farewell speech was appropriately poetic and he concluded I had learned Dari well. This was the second Afghan I impressed with my (written) finals, my farewell speech at work. But when he asked me how to say something in Dari I stumbled – I am quickly getting out of practice in spite of my good intentions.

Pia lives nearby and was my next visit. We talked about futures while sipping tea and watching the still wet but clean kitchen and living room floor dry in the late afternoon sun, very slowly. Some ideas are hatching, slowly, about what comes next. I realize that some things need an incubation period.

In the evening Axel and I, still cleaning out cabinets, re-discovered a portfolio with letters and newspaper cuttings from 1772, 1806 and 1845 from various and sundry people about matters of estate and other serious things – parts of the estate of the Cabots that were left in the house when Axel’s parents bought it in the early 50s after Cabot had left with his Mexican bride for warmer climes.

The 1772 newspaper (the Essex`Gazette) advertised the sale of a ‘29 year old negro’ by a widow in Newbury-port [sic] and the arrival of goods from India. It also had a series of ‘anecdotes’ written by someone who knew King George (the one who went crazy) and his consort, princess Charlotte whom he adored – a difficult piece to read as all the s’es are written as ‘f’s and images from a time very long ago. Amazing to be reading all this now, sitting in a place lit up and connected in ways they couldn’t have dreamed about then.

People ask me if I have re-adjusted to life in the US and I think I have but then I feel sleepy at odd hours and am overwhelmed by choices and chores. Although I am supposed to be on vacation it doesn’t feel like it. There is so much to do again, a demanding house, especially during season changes, promises of keeping up with people in Kabul, reading writings from the SOLA girls.

We visited Sita in western Mass and sat with the mosquitoes amidst the results of over-enthusiastic tomato planting some months ago – shriveled up tomatoes everywhere on vines – next to an abundance of 6 feet zinnias.

If I’d still be flying we would have been there in 45 minutes but by road it is nearly 3 hours. I have been looking at the sky a lot lately – partially because it is so perfect blue but also because I would love to fly again. Still, with the job situation, and thus income, a bit unclear, flying will have to wait until I can buy a share and take some lessons again.

On the way home we stopped in Auburn to dine with Tessa’s mother-in-law who is babysitting for the honeymooned couple, her brother in law and his not so new wife. I finally got to taste the fancy wedding cake that I missed because of our early exit from the wedding – now nearly 10 days ago. It was still pretty good but a little old. Axel drove back while I slept. A back-and-forth to western mass requires over 5 hours of driving. We are both exhausted.

It is getting a bit nippy. Fall is in the air. I had to bring out sweaters and warm shawls. We passed the dividing line between summer and fall. Still, it was a beautiful day. Today was less work and more social: a brunch with friends from DC – the same friends, in a Salem restaurant across the street from where we brunched two years ago on the eve of my departure to Kabul. It was the closing bookend brunch of that two year period.

We had left Joe to his own devices which he likes as he is (a) overcoming a cold and needs quiet rest and (b) is trying to come up with an integrated model combining permaculture, the timeless way of building and some other important thought frames about a better future world.

After a walk in the woods, amidst thousands of mushrooms past their prime, we sat on the beach to burn those frames that were no longer of use to us. Each of us would take an old frame, declare it no longer valid or useless and then ceremoniously tossed it into the fire. We also burned baskets, and with them, expectations contained in them about how and what we should be. After that it was freedom for a while.

Just when I was relishing my new freedoms a little boy, 10 years or so, ran onto the beach with a plastic AK-47 replica. I was so astonished, seeing this kid with the so familiar weapon, that I was speechless for a while. He ran up and down the beach looking for bad people or good people, we weren’t sure on which side he was – armed opposition groups (AOGs) or Taliban or the national army, blissfully pulling the trigger which made a real tat-tat-tat sound. If only he knew.

After our outdoor fire Axel started an indoor fire in our fireplace that was just installed when I left 2 years ago. It got me warm and sleepy. Bedtime it was.