Sylvia's Journal

The vacation did what it was supposed to do. I didn’t touch my computer for 8 days. I didn’t check my email for 8 days; in fact I didn’t go online except for downloading new audio books, new puzzles and occasionally the New York Times at the local library. I learned that one week can’t undo the stresses of work and commuting to places far and wide – whether these stresses were conscious or not. Two weeks can. We will remember this next year.

Tessa, Steve and the dogs came last weekend which made for a chaotic but wonderful long weekend – 6 adults, one toddler and two dogs in a cabin with two bedrooms. Tessa and Steve camp next to the cabin with their dogs. They are hardened campers – they made their cross America trip in the fall, some years ago, when the north of North America was already in fall or even winter mode.

Those of us who could, slept in. Not me, I am always up at 5:30 AM or so and love that time of the day when all is still. Although not on the water, we have a good view of it and see the sun come up over Booth Bay – the water uninterrupted by boats.

I have been quilting (not by hand) and would sit in front of my sewing machine which looked out over the Bay and the sun streaming into our rustic cabin. Or I would bake, transforming gallons of blueberries into pies, tortes and tarts (there is a difference). I finished 4 books, by reading myself or being read to while doing something else.

On Monday the Dorchester contingent left. We had hoped by then the house in New Hampshire would be theirs and we could admire it on our way home. But alas, the process that started in January keeps running into obstacles and the closing, if it ever happens, is postponed once again.  

Axel and I closed on a simpler deal on Tuesday – we signed the lease on a brand-new car – the third ever in our lives. The first was a Chevrolet Cavalier wagon which we purchased for what would now be a ridiculous sum, when we established ourselves in Georgetown, MA. The second car was a Subaru which got totaled by a nurse racing to work and running a red light and which may well be the cause of Axel’s fractured vertebrae, which is only now picked up by an Xray. The insurance sum didn’t get even close to the value of the car and we swore we would never buy a new car again. We didn’t. This is a lease.

The car business took an entire day which included an hour and a half long wait for our new plates at the registry in Haverhill. We passed the lunch time wait working on our foot long sandwich from an Italian deli that looked like it had been around since WWII.  The foot-long rocket, as the sandwich was called, was the smaller one of the sandwiches offered, and contained about a pound of filling. The Deli was decorated with gallon jars of relishes of one kind or another. Everyone who entered was greeted with a jovial ‘what can I do for you young man/young lady?’’ disregarding the age of the customer. Most were in their seventies, and clearly regulars.

With our new plates we were able to finally pick up our car and drive back to our cabin in Maine to resume our vacation. This we did with a few more lazy days, including a visit to friends a little further south. Faro finally had a playmate his size and gender. Otto is three. He lives in New York City and is vacationing in his grandparents’ house right above a sandy beach. Otto has more trucks than you can shake a stick at. This made Faro very happy and also very tired. On the way home he fell asleep in the car.

Packing for a two week trip to Maine was both delicious and stressful. I was trying to anticipate what I would like to do – in line with the doctor’s advice from earlier this week I was thinking of couch potato kinds of activities. We left the kayaks and bikes home. Even if we had wanted to take them we couldn’t have as the car equipped with the racks and space had died and had been towed to our Subaru dealer in New Hampshire, hoping it had any trade in value.

But that hope was dashed quickly. Repairs would exceed the value of the car; with no functioning brakes we had to let go of it and say goodbye. For a symbolic dollar we sold it to the dealership and then took some test drives in various cars we might consider if we can work out the finances.

A few hours later we pursued our trip to Maine where we arrived just before dark. We settled into the quiet of Maine and started shedding all the ‘have-to’s and ‘shoulds.’  We didn’t have to do anything we didn’t want to do. Sometimes that kind of freedom is overwhelming!

Now, early morning on our first morning in Maine I watch a small squirrel eat the blueberries planted next the cabin. There are so many blueberries that I don’t need to chase it. Besides, the previous occupant of the cabin left us two quarts of blueberries in the ancient refrigerator for a baking project that never happened. She even left the recipe of how to make the blueberry crumble.

The projects I brought are mostly of the handicraft type: finishing that yellow cotton sweater for Faro before it gets too cold; embroidering a wall hanging for a newborn that isn’t even a glimpse in anyone’s eye and then lots of fabric scraps for a quilt, following instructions from the quilting book that I bought in the Shaker gift store a few weeks ago during our previous outing to Maine.

And then there is the children’s story that I started nearly a decade ago. I finished it this morning for Sita to illustrate. I also cut up yards and yards of fabric, old dresses, scraps into neat squares and triangles for a quilting project I started on today. For this reason I lugged my sewing machine along, my iron and ironing board. I am prepared for rain and even snow!

We cheated a little with the off the grid thing. The library has a cozy little bench outside its doors where we can catch the strong wireless signal, even when it is closed. This allows me to post, download audio books and my daily jigsaw puzzle while Axel is looking for cozy mysteries. We will stay busy, but in a relaxed sort of way.

More rain today. There is always a shift in weather sometime in August, but usually not this early. What? Fall already? The ferns are already turning brown and some leaves are turning yellow, oh no, I am not done with summer; we are off to Maine in a few days for 2 weeks off the grid.

It was the perfect day for going to one of our countless doctors’ appointments. Is this what old age is about? We go together to have four ears and two sources of questions. But we were not in luck with this doc, a physiatrist, a specialty most people haven’t even heard off. We asked him to explain what training a physiatrist goes through and his answer should have tipped me of. “I am trained like any other doctor, I am an MD, I went to medical school,” he said, as if we had insulted him and questioned his credentials. He did not seem to be able to distinguish between curiosity questions and an interrogation.

His answers were so short and void of any human emotion that he could have been a robot. Maybe he is very good technically, we hope he is, but in the interpersonal relations domain he was definitely lacking. He was checking on Axel’s neuropathy in his feet, the tight muscles in his legs and his back pain to see if there are connections. The news was not so good. The foot muscles have atrophied. When I asked if this could be turned around he said ‘no.’  That’s all, just ‘no.’ I cursed him quietly, between my teeth. Didn’t he get it that we are anxious about all this, nerve, spine and muscle business and wondering what now, what next? Most of the time he worked on testing the nerves with a big frown, as if he found all sorts of bad things, but he didn’t say a word. And when he did say anything he spiked it with words I didn’t understand and couldn’t reproduce.

The only time he smiled and joked a little is when we shook hands to leave. Maybe he is one of these people that find human interaction a nuisance. He did refer us to another doctor, and so the chain continues, forward we hope, but deeper into medics land and incurring the kind of costs that would have brought us to the brink of bankruptcy had we been uninsured.

His advice to Axel was to ‘be a couch potato,’ and ‘not lift anything heavier than a carton of milk.’  This surprised us as we have never in our life heard a doctor give this kind of advice.  It felt like a poor choice of words, this couch potato business – an image that is so connected with poor health and poor habits. Our couch is not suited for potatoes anyways so we will sit in straight back chairs and walk (light walking only). No kayaking, no lobstering, no shed demolition, no Faro lifting, no help with Tessa and Steve’s move. We went to Barnes and Nobles, afterwards for a Starbuck coffee and then we bought books – couch potato books for our vacation in Maine.

After a week of rain and overcast skies the weekend was glorious. We had friends over on their way down from Castine (Maine) to their home on Long Island and took a break from the horrendous vacation traffic up and down the Maine coast.

When we have visitors in the summer we enjoy our beach and waterfront more than when we are alone because there are always so many chores to do. We like having people over and enjoy our place. What we take for granted becomes very special when visitors come and stare in disbelief at our earthly paradise.

Early in the morning I facetimed with Faro to see him ride on his walking bike – in two months he has grown enough that he can now reach the ground with both feet. After that I facetimed my brother who has finally moved in with his love in a lovely house after waiting patiently for their respective children to leave the parental home and selling their two houses. He gave me a facetime tour of the house and it felt as if I was walking through it with him. How wonderful we can do this now so easily.

The son of my friend Lydia showed up with his family (to enjoy the beach) and a friend (to go spear fishing). They wriggled into their wetsuits and then departed with the red and white diving flag floating in tow to keep them out of harm’s (i.e motor and speedboats) way.

They swam all the way from Lobster Cove to Singing Beach, spearing a view tautogs and cunners (bottom dwelling fish I had never heard of) and flounder along the way. They like these fish because they hang out on the bottom and are, I was told, more easily speared than the fast moving fish at the surface. They also make for good dinners. But it does require you hold your breath, that is part of the sport and the challenge. They returned hours later with their catch and filleted it on the beach, leaving us with some of the fish by way of thanks.

While they were hunting, we did the same in a more relaxed manner looking for oysters. Mother nature has deemed it necessary to compensate for the loss of our mussels after she realized that the green crabs, as ingredients for crab bisque, wasn’t appreciated as much. Turning crabs into bisque requires much effort and wading into the cove to empty the trap twice a day. It has been sitting on the floor of the cove for weeks now, serving more as a playground for crabs than a trap. They have figured out how to go in and out with ease.

Axel snorkeled in the emptying cove to places I pointed out from my kayak. The water was very clear and I could see the oysters clearly. We had seen some shells on the beach lately which gave us the idea of taking a closer look. We harvested about 10.

Still, we haven’t given up on our mussels. We transplanted more mussels from Ipswich Bay and expanded the colonies of last years’ transplants. They seemed to have fared well except that the baby mussels keep getting eaten by something, green crabs or, what we learned yesterday, maybe the tautogs and cunners which have sharp teeth and can easily pierce the brittle shells.

Good news awaited us inside as email and phone messages alerted us to progress in Faro’s potty training and Tessa and Steve house buying saga. The poops are landing in the toilet and Tessa and Steve will become homeowners on August 28, becoming residents of New Hampshire, the state where people want to live free or die.

Axel is now 68 and one week. I used to think that 68 was ancient but now of course I think it is young. However, I am acutely aware that my father died when he was 69 and my mother became a widow at the age of 67. Now that we have arrived in that neighborhood it seems unthinkable that suddenly there would be The End.

When we are with others in our age cohort we cannot help talk about this or that ailment. We have become our parents, something we didn’t want, and laughed at, way back. But now of course we understand. Health is the most precious thing we have, to do what we most want to do. Maybe this is why youth is associated with impatience and old age with patience. We have to accept and do things slower than we used to do them. Except my older brother who seems to be in a reverse trend and at age 67 bikes from Holland to Finisterre in Basque land and then does some more with his son(s) to other destinations in Europe that take them out of the flatlands. I am impressed and humbled.

We celebrated Axel’s birthday last week for two days, the second at a Castle Hill picnic enlivened by a salsa band. We danced and ate and met friends. Then Tessa presented a birthday cake fit for a king or queen. She had made it with unmentionable amounts of butter and sugar. I knew that but Axel did not. He surely would have received some demerits from Weightwatchers if they had found out. I was told that when you know the ingredients of something it affects how you digest it. Empirical evidence showed this to be true – I felt like I had a brick in my stomach while Axel felt just fine – we had consumed the same amount.

It seems silly to take a break from Lobster Cove during the height of its best season; to leave on a Friday afternoon with everyone else from Boston, on a sunny day while moving towards rain and dark skies; to sit in traffic and do a one hour trip in 2 hours. But we did it for a reunion of former colleagues who I have known since 1983.

We used AirBnB to find a room during the Beacon to Beach race and Maine’s busiest time, when all other places were either full or very expensive. To our big surprise we found a room for a very reasonable price and a delightful hostess.

After a fabulous dinner, the first one is to re-acquaint and get updates, we are getting ready for the second which is when we can all pretend to be 30 years younger and hold our rowdy/raucous annual general meeting and decide where we will meet next year and call members of the group who can’t be with us, even if the time zones don’t match and people get woken up. It’s punishment for not being present. Another punishment for not being present is being the object of gossip.

Saturday everyone roams around freely until it is dinner time again. We went with Alison to the Shabbat Day Shaker village where the last 3 shakers in the world live. Some of our misinformed stereotypes about he Shakers were corrected. We got to see several of the hundreds of patented inventions (the circular saw, the flat crib brush, permanent press fabrics) that came from this industrious, god fearing, egalitarian and very entrepreneurial community that is now on the brink of extinction.

They are still recruiting and it occurred to me that they offer an interesting alternative to our hectic life. They are living in the world, so it would not be a retreat. Like the Buddhist monks we saw in Sikkim, there is internet, they do online sales of their branded products and you can communicate by text. The only thing that may give some people pause is the ban on the intermingling of the sexes and their very deep faith. But maybe that is exactly what would be attractive to some. axel, who we nearly lost to the singing monks in Vezelay (France) more than a decade ago, was not interested.