Sylvia's Journal

The last few days before departure have bene relentless and exhausting as tasks piled upon tasks. Some came back after I thought they were done, like the Ethiopia visa that expires two weeks before I even get there. The Ethiopians must assume that one makes short trips. The visa was stamped on October 23 and expires on November 22. I arrive December 5. That was not good value for money and requires now another 175 dollars for a rush visa, ughhh. But after an whole day trip across the continent on December 5 I don’t want to wing it and try to talk my way into the country on an expired visa. What if they were to send me back to Abidjan?

The good people at Delta managed to get me from the waiting list into a B-class seat for the long haul from Atlanta to Johannesburg, so the first part (and the longest) of the mega trip looks good.

Last night Tessa came over in the storm to pick up some of our plants and collect her wedding paraphernalia that are being recycled from one of my colleagues who just had her wedding in the north country.  This means the decoration part is done.

Over dinner at a local restaurant she went over her list: save-the-date to invitees – not done (the hardest part), dress, about to be ordered,  Steve’s outfit (no idea yet), music (some ideas), food (figured out), putting up the guests (ideas only), officiator (done), place (done – their home), photographer (everyone), flowers (will grow), wedding cake (we got the stand, homemade probably), wedding party (small, no bridesmaids, done). We have 11 months to go so we should be in good shape, ha!

And now I have to pay attention to the open suitcase with things strewn around it. Three hours before push off.

I am continuing my preparations for the trip, which are also happening at night, in my dreams. This morning I woke up from a frustration dream in which I was delaying a trip because of my knitting. I kept losing it (the knitting, not my marbles) and constantly had to retrace my steps to find it. I was never going to leave it seemed.

Reality is the opposite; the departure is getting closer and closer. Much of my ‘get ready’ work is about finishing (big) reviews I promised to have done and the designs of the various interventions I am tasked with. Obviously, based on my dreams, I am not convinced of making much progress, even though I am checking things off my ‘to do’ list.

Yesterday, when internet access disappeared about half past 5, I took it as a sign that the workweek was over and it was time to play. I was reminded of words uttered by my brother in law, years ago: ‘pas trop de zèle. These words have stayed with me ever since, whenever this ‘’ trop de zèle’ exhausts me.

We had an impromptu evening with our friends from Essex who came with their inexhaustible supply of roasted vegetables, to which we added grilled salmon and potatoes from (the exhaustible supply of our garden).  We picked a movie, very old fashioned at a  movie theatre, and watched Bridge of Spies with a flawless Tom Hanks performance. It brought back memories of visits behind the Iron Curtain in 1973. The scenes of people trying to get across the Wall before it seals off the East from the West were haunting. Back home, over a warm (Irish Coffee) and/or cold late night snack (ice cream with chocolate sauce) we sat by the fire mulling over the film, the cold war, the suffering, the divided cities, streets and families, bullies in uniform, and the terror of living in constant fear. We searched inside ourselves for whether we could ever display the moral character and courage of Hank’s character and his spy, whether we could be this ‘standing man,’ a key phrase in the denouement . We expressed gratitude for being born and living where we did and do. We are living such a live of abundance and freedom that it puts my mild suffering on long airplane ride entirely in perspective.

I have been busy getting ready for my five-week-criss-cross-Africa-mega trip – getting the tickets approved and bought (requiring several different projects to sign off), hotels booked, airport pick-ups arranged just on the logistics side; then there are the medicines that need to be stocked up, requiring overrides from the insurance company for supplies lasting more than 30 days, and then the malaria pills. And then of course, most important, the preparations, the designs, the calls with key stakeholders to get ready for the various assignments. On Sita’s recommendation I now have an app on my phone (Wunderlist) that tells me what’s left to do each day, in addition to getting milk and eggs and other supplies for daily living.

This evening I found a large box on my doorstep at home. I was surprised, racking my brain for something big I had ordered but had forgotten about. But no, it was Delta Airlines reward for me having flown more than 2 million miles with them. I started acquiring miles on Northwest in the late 80s so this has taken me about 30 years. It gets me a gold card on SkyMiles for life, this is nice. The package contained a carry on case that is made from material tested by the army, by the National Football League and by NASCAR (racing cars), so it should last another 2 million miles. The second 2 million will go faster, given the tempo of my trips, though I doubt I will be traveling like this in 20 years.

I looked up what this gift cost Delta and priced the Tumi case at about 600 dollars, so it is a real gift, not a crappy Chinese case with a zipper that breaks on the first trip. But then again, I don’t really need a fancy carry-on; I would prefer upgrades, especially on long rides like the upcoming one from Atlanta to Johannesburg. I hope that the 2 million miler status pushes me to the front rows whenever it gets too crowded in the back; fingers crossed.

Sita is working again and struggling with having an infant, nursing and pumping in between complex assignments that include travel. Even if travel isn’t all that far (Cambridge), it is complicated with an infant and a 3 year old who is in school. She arranged a deal with her sister who came to Cambridge. She brought her work with her (=her computer) but ended up having to use the computer to look up what to do with a gassy crying baby. She did well on one day but on day two mom came to the rescue and together we worked on getting the burbs out of Saffi. When she finally stopped crying (more like the braying of a donkey at times) we rewarded ourselves with a nice lunch and a bag of brownie crisps.

On Friday night I picked Sita up for a night at our house before going back to work on Saturday. By then the hotel staff had thrown her breast pump and various other items left in the room, out in the trash. It was a sorry performance by a worldclass hotel. For the pain and suffering this cost her, not to mention the distraction from the work she was paid to do, Marriott gave her a platinum membership in addition to reimbursing the cost of the lost items. But what use is a platinum membership when you only stay at such hotels once in a blue moon?

Both Tessa and Axel are recruited to repeat the babysitting stint a few more times before the next month is over. Axel was practicing this weekend whenever Saffi was crying. He takes his job serious. We are all happy about that. I won’t be able to come to the rescue because I will be in Madagascar.

On Saturday Sita borrowed our car without the gizmo that clicks the car open and shut (and with it the alarm). When she arrived at her hotel in Cambridge and gave the keys to the valet parking attendant the alarm went off – and we got another one of Sita’s stress calls. We ended up driving, all of us, into Cambridge, dropped the keys with clicker off and let Sita focus on her work. Once in the city, we decided to go to the Aquarium which is a treat with a 3 year old. Saffi slept through the whole outing, including the rides to and fro.

Once Sita’s work was done, on Sunday, we all decompressed at home, surrounded by toys, books, diapers and bottles. I finished my small knitting project, a sweater for Saffi which was just as well as it fitted like a glove. This means it won’t fit anymore in a couple of weeks. It’s called just-in-time knitting. The knitting hasn’t been good for my shoulder and so I am holding off on a new project until the shoulder is in good working order again.

On Sunday afternoon we went for a lovely walk in the Audubon Ipswich River Sanctuary, getting chickadees to perch on our hands picking seeds that a nice person had left scattered throughout the park. They wouldn’t perch on Faro’s tiny hand as he was too obsessed with catching them. They figured that out very quickly.

The last week has brought Atul Gawande’s latest book (Being Mortal) to life for Axel and me. Our neighbor Charlie turned 93. He is doing amazingly well but he is of a different opinion, lamenting his shuffling walk and the things he can’t do anymore, like driving a car. He gave up driving after a brush with a stone wall and we are all better for it, except Charlie himself who has now become more dependent on others. He is lucky that there are others, but still, this dependency stinks.

And then we went to M’s 84^th birthday party and kissed her husband goodbye, not knowing if we will ever see him again. He sat there, listening, dozing. People had not expected he would be there to celebrate but he did. M read a Gibran poem to us, but it was really to him and I could tell she was preparing herself for his departure. All the emotions are so raw now, she said through tears.

And finally we visited A. and her husband who survived a brain tumor but the aggressive treatment has left him a shadow of his former self. Axel and I are digesting all this aging business, or trying to, wondering what our time horizon is, five years? Ten years? Twenty years?

We are also wondering what it is like when one recognizes that the horizon is closing in. We are still considered the ‘young old,’ with Axel hitting 70 next year (I am a spring chicken in comparison); our friends we visited the last two days are medium old and Charlie is getting up there with the very old. We are watching all of these people age (mostly men at this point), trying to learn from what we see. But we don’t know what the experiences actually are and what there is to learn; we are onlookers for now, though increasingly aware that slowly (or fast) we will be sliding into the experience ourselves. Preparing for the inevitable is steadily moving up on our list of priorities.

Our MSH party at Lobster Cove finally happened, on the most beautiful day of the fall; the kind of day we call ‘a ten plus.’ But few people showed up. It was Columbus Day weekend; a long weekend for some, which many celebrate by going to the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont, for a hike in the orange, red and golden woods.

Those who sat in the shade warmed themselves around a fire pit while others sat on the beach in their summer clothes, watching small kids play in the water, seemingly unaware of the water temperature. Axel was the only adult in swim gear and who got wet; he was too good a target for the four year olds with their buckets, and already wet.

I had hoped to bring MSHers together and recognize that we are more than the official functions and roles we play in the organization.  Being in flux, reorganizing, laying off and hiring has left many of my colleagues (and sometimes myself) quite vulnerable. This kind of vulnerability is easily transformed into judging and blaming, black and white kinds of distinctions, dividing lines splitting us into good people and bad people, those who are competent and those who are not. These judgments are harsh, like rubbing sandpaper on bare skin. When I first proposed to open our house/yard and beach to everyone in our Medford office, the offer was greeted with great enthusiasm, more than forty people signed up. People agreed that we needed to relax together and re-discover each other, the person behind the role; the mother of small kids, the wife, the husband or lover, the grandma or auntie. But then there was a hurricane and we postponed by a week. We did get to see some aunties and grandmas and moms and husbands, and it was good. But I would have liked to see some more as I don’t think the outing to Lobster Cove will make much of a difference.

Axel has an enormous collection of Indian music in addition to a bunch of Indian playlists on Spotify. Only on the mornings when I stay home do I get to listen to them. I like the Indian music, especially the peppy songs. I can imagine the music videos that one could make with that music.

But this morning, before heading out to his yoga class he put on very mournful Indian music. I recognize some of the Hindi words that probably come from Persian, and which I learned in my Dari classes; words, like zendagi (life) and hamkara (colleagues).

The combination of these words and the mournfulness of the music make me think of M. whose young son died about a month ago, after we came back from Maine. I talked with her before we went to Maine and she was bored in her new life in Amman, waiting anxiously for her two boys to be back in school. Their school in Afghanistan had closed more than half a year before because of threats and the boys had been climbing up the walls, until they left for Amman. And now this; zendagi, life, and then it is gone, suddenly. I have only electronic means to comfort her but it doesn’t work. I don’t think there is room for electronics in her grief. I remain a very sad bystander.

And then there was P, whose wedding I attended in Kerala in 2010 and who was going to have a baby about the same time that Saffi was born. But she died at the start of this year due to an ectopic pregnancy and life ended, for P and her baby to be. My friend, her mother in law, posted pictures on facebook of the happy couple and my heart broke. It’s breaking over and over again as this Indian music tells about other lives that ended long before old age took over, and of the grief stricken survivors. As a Quaker, we are using language such as ‘holding people in the light,’ the ones who have gone and the ones who are still here. Sometimes I wonder, does this light thing actually touch people they way I would like it to?

We are trying to unclutter our house. I emphasize the word trying because we are not very successful. For every book we get rid of, two new ones appear. This morning I threw out sauce packets that may well date back to our time in Beirut (1976-1978) or Senegal (1979-1981) or New York (1981-1983). I want to avoid that, after we have passed on, our children and their friends who are cleaning up our house make fun of us.

I also found two camping meals, dried up spaghetti and lasagna that must be at least 15 years old. Axel wants to try them. I should have thrown them out before he woke up.

We ought to be in a stage of our lives where we disquire rather than acquire but we are failing hopelessly. I sorted through my clothes a year ago, ashamed of how much we have compared with people who have nothing. I remember visiting houses in one of Dhaka’s poor urban neighborhoods. People have no closets – they have bars tacked to the wall of their hut and they hang their one or two outfits over those bars. Or, closer to home, the Shaker village of West Gloucester in Maine where one hangs one’s clothes on pegs on the wall.

That year ago I had put clothes I never wear in a paper bag. I could not bring myself to dump the bags in one of the containers for recycled clothing and instead put them somewhere out of sight in my office. When my office got too cluttered I found the bags, unpacked them, ironed the crinkled clothes and put them back on hangers. Sigh.

In a week we dropped nearly 30 degrees (Fahrenheit). If last weekend was a 10+, this weekend looks like a 3-.  We had planned an MSH outing to Lobster Cove this weekend. We had picnics, swimming and playing in the water in mind, but the weather did not cooperate. We had to cancel it and postponed it to next week. I fear we were too late; fall is here.

I finished the Aran sweater I have worked on in Maine and in planes. It turned out to be Axel’s size. I am a loose knitter and should have followed the instructions for the smallest size. Axel declined. It’s a girl’s sweater. And so I took it apart again, shortening the sleeves and fudging with the width, using a sewing machine. A little frustrating but I am not ready to unravel the whole thing and start over.

I am in between assignments at work and cobbling together odd jobs to earn my salary and overhead for the company. This includes small writing assignments which I can do from home. I can work well at home, have the discipline, and love that I can stay in my pajamas if the weather is lousy.

Every now and then we join Sita and her family on Facetime and see Saffi grow. She is in her third month now, smiles a lot and is becoming a little person in her own right, rather than just a baby. Faro looks huge next to her.

We also talk with Tessa now and then, getting updates on her babies, the chickens. They are a source of many good stories. These are about findings stashes of eggs (some already rotten) in surprising places, a swimmer among the chicks, a predator in the neighborhood (a bear? A wolf? A coyote?) that leaves feathers and bones and relationships with the dogs. It’s a tale of …and then there were 11, then 10, then a new cohort, then fights of dominance among the new and the old chickens. It is quite a drama and Tessa appears to love it, telling the stories with flair. It seems to me a good distraction, though sometimes too much, from her endless hours in front of her computer screen.