Sylvia's Journal

We woke up this morning to a winter wonderland. It was being constructed last night as we drove back from Essex through the second nor’easter in a week. Last night it was a raging storm, this morning all was peaceful again, and white. It is Manchester at its best, not counting the summer.

Sita gave us an Ayurveda cookbook. We have been learning about the three doshas: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Axel needs to drink more ginger tea, and I less. I should be drinking mint tea, which I happen to like nearly as much as ginger tea. Axel thinks it’s all a bit fluffy, but I take it seriously. With all my recent visits to doctors, I’d like to be able to heal myself.

We went to our last Quaker meeting of the year. Both of us could use an hour of silence, after the franticness of Christmas. Still, the to-do lists remain daunting and kept trying to insert themselves into our meditations.

WordPress sent me congratulations on my fifth year of blogging. The blog site I use was a Christmas gift from Sita five years ago. Although I’m no longer writing every day, I’ve kept it up enough to remain a routine that I cannot quite abandon. Sometimes I use my blog to find out what I did on a particular day during the last five years. I also received the annual stats this morning. The most amazing one was a picture of the globe indicating how many views originated in various countries. People in 96 countries came to the site, some expected, like the US, or Holland, or Afghanistan. But others were quite surprising, like Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Ecuador, Brazil, Chile and Argentina. It is nice that that the stat elves are doing all this work for me. My good intention for 2013 is to keep writing. I hope it will be less about health problems and more about the amazing people I encounter during my travels across the world.

My office has a new layout. After a cursory cleanout Sita judged it was good enough to start moving furniture. We got rid of my desk which was just a horizontal surface and collected stuff. The only desk I have now is little kidney shaped table that is set to its highest level so it is a stand-up desk with a barstool in case I want to sit down. It is tucked in a corner between the Afghan cupboard and the old family chest I inherited from my mother. The furniture that divided the room in half has been pushed to the side and there is a feeling of space again and also an opportunity for the extra or unexpected guest to blow up a mattress and sleep on the ground.

With the house empty I was able to do some work again in between more doctors’ visits. They are relentless, more next week, giving me a taste of what it is like to grow old and creaky. Axel calls it the fight against decrepitude. But, I’m also getting quite handy living with new handicaps.  In spite of my orthopedic boot, today I drove, walked in the snow, picked winter vegetables from the garden and let the dogs out. Although it may seem like a pain in the neck, I am quite happy with the boot. For the first time in months I am forgetting about my left ankle because there is no pain. It’s a little clunky and I’m sure my gait change will affect other muscles and probably create new problems but that is something to worry about later.

I am also getting quite adept at doing ordinary things in spite of my splinted right hand. I prepared a dish from a Norwegian cookbook, Kitchen of Light. It called for mashed rutabaga. It is a vegetable that I did not have when I grew up because for my mother it was too much associated with the war, or more precisely, the hunger winter of 1944. Mashed, with the seeds of half a vanilla bean, and a considerable amount of butter, it was delicious; probably quite different from how it was prepared during those war years. The baked cod that was supposed to be put on top of it was replaced by cold salmon, one of an slowly diminishing stash of leftovers in our fridge.

I am getting a little better at using the voice activated software but sometimes Axel can hear me shouting, no! Not that! Open the darn website I asked for! That’s when I use my hands again. It is a little faster than figuring out what commands to make. I should be more patient – this dictating business is quite nice.

It is two days after Christmas. We are in the middle of a northeastern. It is raining here while further west it is snowing. Masconomo Street was submerged. We have not seen waves this high in a long time. I have been busy with doctors’ visits those last two days. I learned that I have Hashimoto’s disease, an auto-immune disease affecting the thyroid; something I got it from my mother, according to my doctor. Luckily it is benign and there is medication. Eventually surgery is needed when the thyroid gets too big; maybe 10 years from now? Nevertheless it was not great news.

I also now have a boot on my left foot, the one not broken in the accident that should have been broken in hindsight. The boot is to give my left ankle some relief, and reduce the chronic inflammation so that the pain will subside and I can walk short walks again. I’m quite a sight with my right hand in a cast in my left foot in a boot.

I am writing this using Dragon software which I am training to recognize my voice so that I don’t have to type which is a little bit stressful with my broken right hand.

Sita, Jim, and Faro have left for Western Massachusetts, where we believe there is now 12 inches of snow. They have been with us for a whole week and it was wonderful. The house feels very empty without them.

We had some idea that this year’s Christerklaas, our own homemade hybrid of Dutch Sinterklaas and American Christmas would be different since we had a baby in the family. Instead of starting at midnight on Christmas Eve and then going on till 3 AM, we would start at 8 PM and end before midnight.

But Axel hadn’t started on his poem and surprises when 8 AM came around – we gave him an hour but 9 and then 10 and 11 rolled around. So we started 20 minutes earlier than we used to. So what.

But we are all a bit older and tired now and we stopped at 1 AM and resumed the next day around 10 AM. Despite an attempt to make things easier (one person being responsible only for one other’s fun-poking and present – but few held themselves to this new standard.

Once again I was astonished about how our son in-laws have taken to this centuries-old Dutch habit, one of them even trying to convert his own family. Maybe we are starting a movement. Fifty years from now New England rhymes and pokes fun at each other at Christerklaas, the word in Webster’s.

Aside from a ton of chocolate – a substance we tend to give to each other, my two wishes were fulfilled: a new robe, as the old one, bought on Hamra street in Beirut 32 years ago was starting to disintegrate, and a remote car starter – a luxury I had only fantasized about.

Faro got more presents than a 6 month old can handle – it is a little worrisome what small people get when all they want is hugs and kisses and a bottle now and then.

The nice surprise this morning was the white stuff outside. We are counting our blessings.

My home office is overgrown with stuff, primarily papers, CDs, books, memorabilia and then some cloth from all over in boxes. And then there is the furniture; anything that doesn’t fit anyplace in the house came to my office because it used to be the one with unused space. But the measure is full now and I have been fantasizing about an office makeover.

Sita was excited about that idea too, until she walked into the office and realized that I needed to some weeding first and told me the makeover had to wait until the place was uncluttered. After a day of hemming and hawing I finally made a start this morning by throwing out lecture and seminar notes and readings that were 40 years old. To the untrained eye it looks like nothing changed but four hours of cleaning produced two bags of paper for recycling and another with rubbish. With a little bit of luck Sita may reconsider the makeover.

Saturday evening and Sunday evening we went caroling. Saturday in Gloucester the singing was more of a jubilation, with several guitars, ukuleles, mandolins, a small harp, a key board and a piano. The management and orchestration was in the great hands of our friend Andy who knows a bit about Christmas carols and a large crowd. We ended with a formidable rendering of Hallelujah, sopranos in one small room of their enormous Victorian house, altos on the staircase, tenors in the parlor, bases in the hallway.

The power of music and singing together made me want to pick up my violin again – the one instrument that was missing. I was reminded of our West African Grass days in Senegal, with our Sunday morning practice, more than forty years ago.

On Sunday we caroled at Diane’s, also a family tradition. Accompanied by a pianist, with a smaller and older crowd, we sang more or less the same songs, not quite as grand a performance but joyful too. Here too we divided the 12 days of gifting, more or less by family rather than part of the house, creating (in both cases) much hilarity as the competition (to be the loudest) gets fierce. The group with the most youngsters always outperforms the others.

We have a full house, our daughters, their men and one baby and two dogs filled the house with noise, stuff, dog hair and baby toys. We love it.

We hadn’t seen Faro for 3 weeks and were astonished about his development. His grip on things is firm now and his movements less jerky. He can crawl across the room, propelling himself in a clever way, arm underneath his chest, knee pushing against arm, bum up and then forward. He does this with little apparent effort.

He did stare at us when he arrived, for a long time. You could practically see his neurons firing inside his brain, surging for connections (with his opa and oma) that are still a bit weak. And then suddenly there was this smile – connection made! He did the same when his auntie Tessa and uncle Steve showed up. They hadn’t seen each other for nearly three month. He is a different kid now, no longer an infant but a little boy with real boy clothes on.

The storm that covered the middle of this country with snow was wet with 65 mph gusts of wind and the cove a roiling cauldron. Anything not tied down took to the air. A plastic garbage can was floating in the harbor.

I worked from home all day which was a challenge – a squealing baby, cooing Tessa, barking dogs and other mayhem plus the stress of typing with a right hand in a cast. Still, I managed to get about 75% of my goals for the day met.

But now the weekend and Christmas holiday has started. It is time to start preparing for that.

The dreaded Christmas commute home is in full swing. I pass 4 shopping centers. This slows the ride considerably. And then there is the daily accident making it a 2 hours trip from office door to hearth and hubby. Such a long commute condemns me to repeated news cycles so even the radio brings no solace.

Tessa is on the home stretch now too, driving on Thursday from Ashville NC to Pittsfield MA in one fell swoop. From there it is a short ride home on Friday. We think Tessa and Steve will still recognize us, despite all the hours we spent in doctors’ offices, but will the dogs?

Axel has been preparing the nest for homecoming – cleaning the barn (our Brazilian cleaning lady in the lead) and washing the dog-haired sheets, stale from two months of idleness. Tessa and Steve will thus move back in until they find a place of their own (anyone?) between Manchester and Boston that has room for all six of them: 2 humans, 2 dogs and 2 cars.

At work new stuff keeps piling on old. I have moved a long way from my miserable re-entry blues a year ago. Among them some pretty exciting assignments that will allow me to explore beyond the boundaries, in the outer periphery of what I am currently familiar with.

I am learning to live with my hand(icap), periodically unwrapping my hand to massage the stiff fingers but also to type a little faster. Axel massaged the hand yesterday with a ‘poet-warrior’ blend of oils (ginger, arnica and cayenne), recommended by our masseuse. I didn’t care that much about the warrior part but the poet part of the blend was real nice.

The final diagnosis on my hand is in. Only one bone is broken, splintered said the CT scan. No use to put the pieces back together, it would be nearly impossible. The battle plan is to let the pieces glom together and make the bone whole again. It would be a messy whole but who cares. The arthritic joint will be painless or not. If it is not the hand doctor will fuse everything together at no great cost to hand functionality. Fingers crossed.

I am slowly adapting to my handicap. Today I drove myself to two appointments. It was easy as long as I can use my left hand. Anything that requires right hand strength or agility is impossible for the near future. This includes changing the flow of hot or cold air into the car, cutting hard foods and doing the dishes.

I am aware that my troubles are nothing against the backdrop of the unspeakable drama that unfolded in Connecticut last Friday. It occupies every minute of our waking hours and keeps raising all these nasty questions that we cannot seem to answer as a society, like what is the problem with banning assault weapons?

I am a sinistra, a forced lefty now. One or two of the little bones in my right hand are broken according to the X-ray. Axel took the bus to the airport so he could drive me to the X-ray machine which eventually led to the emergency room for a splint and pain meds.

An now I am adjusting to a period of lefthandedness. All the things I would like to do over the next few weeks (and that require two functional hands) had to be dropped in the ‘not this year’ bucket.

I abandoned the pain meds after the side effects turned out worse than enduring the pain of the broken bone(s).  Why anyone would want to take these for fun and pay a premium price for them is a mystery to me.

I have a half cast that an be removed for scratching and bathing, a good thing. I am already quite good at putting it on an off with one hand. For other daily living activities I need help from nurse Axel. It’ all too familiar. But because of the familiarity I also know this phase will pass.

Despite the new handicap I was able to start on my yearly mustard production and was able to produce two batches with one hand and very little help. So those who were worried about a mosterdless Christmass can relax. I call it my mostardicum sinistrum.