Sylvia's Journal

The fifth snowstorm since I landed nearly 3 weeks ago has announced itself. This is why some of my colleagues like to travel to assignments in warm places this time of year. Many people are getting very impatient for spring but I know it is a long way off here in new England. March here has nothing to do with spring.

But I don’t mind the winter and the snow. I actually like snowstorms – at least under certain conditions: I don’t have to be on the road or have a flight to catch (or land), our snow plow contractor shows up, we have dry wood for the fireplace within reach and the electricity stays on.

Snowstorms greatly advance my knitting. I completed another sweater for Faro from the wool Sita and I bought at an enormous wool/knitting warehouse that happens to be in her neck of the woods. I was like a kid in a candy story and spent a chunk of my Kabul danger money there.

Both Axel and I have body parts that need healing: his thumb and my foot. Both of us started off a little too enthusiastically exercising our tender parts too much and too quickly. Now there is push back and we are told to back off.

My impatience makes me forget that the body heals at its own pace. I should know better. But I want to walk, hike and ski (cross country) again. The ankle doctor told me I should count on a half year for 90% recovery and a full year for a full recovery. I am only 3.5 months into the process.

My physical therapist creates adjustments to my exercises to avoid the pains and aches that have surfaced and counsels ice packs more often and short ‘ice-naps’ with my foot elevated above my heart. “Can you do that in your office?” she asked me. I surveyed the office landscape in my mind, searching for a place. I think I can find one where I have a view of the outside and no one has a view of me.

Axel and I watched and listed to Alexandre Dumas’ Count of Monte Christo. I had downloaded from our Manchester library the unabridged (English) narrative while still in Kabul, for the long trip back. The download took an entire night, 42 parts, each about one and a half hour of narration. It took me another two weeks after I landed to finish the book. The snowstorms helped. There is nothing like sitting by the fire, knitting and being read to by a superb actor.

Axel got us started, in parallel, on the French mini-series, starring Gerard Depardieu as the count. Some members of my family call him Gerard Depardon’t which irritates me mildly – just because they can’t pronounce dieu it doesn’t mean it is funny. I told them the joke, if it is one, would not be understood in Europe. Ah, American humor. I suggested to call him Gerard Depardiable, but that is not funny; it is, in some ways, the role he takes on.

Listening to the 60 hours of English during the day and then watching the 6 hours of French ( spread over the two weeks as well) was interesting. I pointed out the many liberties the script writers had taken – which I suppose one has to when having to reduce a story by 90%.

The story is a classic indeed, leading to many conversations around the dinner table about justice, righting wrongs and taking the law into one’s own hands. But in the end I think it is about life’s purpose, happiness and the toll that anger and revenge take. As for the writer, we can’t imagine how someone can write such a long book with a quill pen and ink. And to think it was only one of many books he wrote. On to the three musketeers!

As I am progressing with my physical therapy, I am learning much about the intricate design of the human foot. My left foot, having been packaged for the last 3 months, is protesting about the sudden activity it is required to engage in; especially the many little tendons and muscles that have been inactive for so long and now have to compensate for part of the foot unable to move at all.

I started to do my PT exercises with too much enthusiasm which backfired as muscles protested, sometimes in unexpected places. That’s how I learned about how everything is connected to everything, foot, knee, hips.

This week I started to explore the commute to my new place of work. I am helped in this by the social navigation app ‘Waze.’ Based on input from 1000s of Wazers it computes the least obstructed way home or work; as a result every trip is different. Waze was celebrated in this month’s Fast Company as one of the top 50 innovators. It certainly helps me get home as fast as possible. My commute has greatly improved now that I work north of Boston.

Axel went out to the woodpile over the crusty snow in order to supply us with wood for a night of sitting around the fire. He had put on his snow shoes as the snow was knee deep. A few minutes later he came back into the house, without wood and with his thumb bent in a funny way. He had fallen through the upper and middle crust and caught himself with his thumb up.

Fifteen minutes later we were in the emergency room of Beverly Hospital where we spent the next three hours with various professionals attending to his thumb. At 10 PM his thumb had resumed its regular shape, albeit swollen and painful.

Our daughters, who were kept informed via text and pictures of our latest hospital adventures, are getting a little tired of these kinds of updates and wished us well.

We can only be grateful of this mishap not being more serious and of course having a health insurance card.

And so, on February 17, after months of being a care receiver, I became the care giver for a change.

I received my marching orders from my physical therapist: writing the alphabet in the air with my fused foot, a semi-squat side step with my feet tied with elastic and balancing on my left foot, first with eyes open and then, if too easy, with my eyes closed.

I slipped into my ortho boot to recover from the workout and we set out for Easthampton in a light snow. West of Worcester we could see the areas worst hit by Thursdays’s snowstorm, always quite beautiful in the aftermath with all the hard edges soften under a foot and a half of snow.

What a joy to see Faro. It was mutual. He kept muttering, opa, oma, opa, oma…and then we got to read and play and empty baskets full of toys on the floor. Faro is now stringing words together that start to look like sentences, like ‘books on the floor,’ or ‘where is opa now?’

I did my exercises once and then was sore for the rest of the day. I am on the mend but not quite as fast as I wished.

Jim cooked us a nice dinner which we shared with friends of theirs and then I hooked off when the evening just took off, to rest my foot and catch up on sleep.