Sylvia's Journal

I woke up this morning, back at our homestead, feeling a slight twinge of nostalgia and a vague sense of loss. The loss was about the sadness I imagined as F was saying goodbye to her surrogate parents at NMH, but also the sadness of not being able to return to Afghanistan this summer to see her real mom and siblings. Given her high and scarfless profile at public events and in public places she was advised to remain in the US for the summer before settling into Bates for the next 4 years.

Her American experience has opened her eyes to perspectives that had never been in view as she grew up in Afghanistan. She wrote a paper why gay marriage is OK, roomed with a Jewish girl and later with a Russian girl whose grandfather had fought against her grandfather in Afghanistan. She can now separate the people from the issues and make independent judgments. She honed her managerial skills at the rec center of NMH and read the whole bible as part of a class for Catholics only, to which she asked to be admitted. She has developed a theory about geography, destiny and the great religions that is a refreshing view on a very divisive topic in her homeland. A return will be hard because she will be a lone voice. It is good to know that SOLA, and so many others, are working hard at creating a critical mass of such independent thinkers. It is a life’s work for many extraordinary people we have come to know, inside and outside Afghanistan.

Watching the class of 2013 cheering and throwing their hats in the air, the proud smiles of parents and friends also made me nostalgic. I remember my own graduation. It was 1970, a time full of possibilities and open roads. Looking back I can say that, indeed, roads opened and I have travelled a long way, both literally and figuratively, exceeding my wildest expectations. It’s just that now I can’t walk these roads as well as I used to – the crippling ankle pain is beginning to close off those roads that aren’t paved.

It is Memorial Day weekend. It is a long week with filial duties, among others. The coral-colored geraniums were ready, waiting to be planted on the ancestral graves. Axel trudged through the thick mud – it has been raining the entire week – at the town compost dump to fill two large boxes with topsoil and get rid of a car load full of garden debris.

Armed with a small amount of vodka and two glasses, a spade and the geraniums, we headed for the cemetery where we prettied up the graves of the elder Magnusons and three of their sons, Axel’s dad and his two uncles. We thanked them for having been there, and the great-great and great-grandparents to have made Faro possible, by pouring a small amount of vodka over their graves. Although grampie and granny Magnuson were teetotalers, and would certainly not have approved this ritual, the vodka was an important ingredient of party libations enjoyed by the next generations. Incidentally, I learned, vodka also prolongs the life of cut flowers.

Next stop was a farm at Apple Street in Essex which is the farm part of a fancy farm-to-table restaurant in Boston called l’Espalier. We bought our tomatoes seedlings which are traditionally planted on Memorial Day, the start of our New England summer, as well as a few other things like oriental eggplant, peppers and savory. Some of the restaurant hands had cooked a spectacular lunch which we ate, shivering from the rainy cold, in a farm that had belonged to the Perkins family since 1635. We have, somewhere in our possession, a marriage contract dated around that time, written on sheepskin, of one member of the Perkins family and the price to be paid for the dowry (land and sheep).

With all duties in Manchester done we headed out to western Massachusetts to spend the night at Sita’s from where we staged our next outing, F’s graduation at the Northfield Mount Hermon School. We met up with other members of the SOLA family, including Shabana who gave the commencement address. I had not seen Shabana since I left Kabul, although I have followed her rise to celebrity status on TEDex and then TED talks, in interviews and from SOLA emails. It was a joyful reunion with all of us circling around these two amazing Afghan girls.