Sylvia's Journal

I woke up from a deep sleep full of dreams. All that remained when I woke up this morning was the image of an angling rod, unravelling. I had insisted on manufacturing an angling rod by myself rather than asking someone else to make it for me. Held in a vise and with the help of something that rotated the rod I got it to look just like a real one, pretty decorations and all. Then someone mistook it for flowers wrapped in paper and then it didn’t telescope and the whole thing unravelled.

The dream added another dimension to a meeting we had last night over dinner with the representative from the company that insured the plane. We talked about coverage and liability settlements. The angling and unravelling may have something to do with our fears if a settlement is not reached. Ten months later we are only partially out of the woods.

The meeting overshadowed everything else that happened yesterday, which was, after all a celebratory day, being the 14th, again. All day I had worried about the purpose and meaning of the visit. I have been brought up to mistrust insurance companies, no matter how nice the representatives are as human beings. It has something to do with purpose and mission. Working in a value-driven organization where mission is about saving lives, any dealings with an organization that has shareholder return and profit as a driving force fills me with suspicion and also some dread. It is as if I am on foreign soil. I try to read clues but I cannot decipher them. I can’t decide whether things that did not add up are simply due to the foreign terrain or something else. Today Axel will seek counsel.

I woke up early after going to bed late. Closing off our 13-week course took me much longer than I had expected as it took a long time to review everything so that I could write the proper closing comments. I tumbled into bed exhausted next to a similarly exhausted Axel who was already asleep. We made a nice pair.

My dreams wove many of the yesterday’s strands together with so many images that it is hard to catch them all. Something heavy (which looked more like a large piece of building equipment than a plane) falling out of the sky (still, the concern is obvious); leaving my purse on a table at a busy street and running back to get it through very heavy sand, the kind that makes it hard it hard to run in. All sorts of colored skeins of wool tangled together; a picture of someone’s mother with a bite taken out of it. “He didn’t take his malaria medication,” said one of my public health colleagues as if this was totally normal and to be expected – I did find out yesterday that I don’t need malaria medication for Addis. Groups of purple-clad church ladies fainting in clusters along the road and finally a depressed Axel who told me he was sitting on a hill behind the house, right in back of where Scott, another colleague of mine, was sitting working at his computer, putting in numbers.

If I could only get at the whole story from which these snippets are pulled I could probably write a bunch of great and bizarre books. Now it’s more like a powerpoint slideshow with the presenter notes mostly missing.

Axel had his last PT appointment for the trip that causes him much anxiety. He was told to get up every 45 minutes during the plane and walk – of course this means no sleeping. When we get to Holland we have to get in a car pretty quick after our arrival because the family reunion starts at the end of the morning so there will be no time to rest. This probably adds to the anxiety. He also knows none of those people except my brothers and sister.

I made my first visit to the hallowed halls of harvard (medical school first and then the public school). It was a gorgeous day and the crème-de-la-crème of our next generation of doctors, young, eager, smart, well off and in all shades of skin, hair and eye color were sitting in the sun on the quad, or elsewhere outside having lunch. It was a very vibrant place, as universities are supposed to be. Marc and I had lunch and he then showed me around a bit and we talked some more; we still have about 5 more years to catch upon.

I was reminded again of how much I enjoy teaching. The materials I had brought lent themselves well to a class like that. Three of my younger colleagues were able to attend as well and could advise, at the end of the class, a young woman from the British NHS about how to use our materials to start making small changes in the way people work together. It’s a revolutionary idea but at MSH they are doing just that. Granted, we are a bit smaller, but the principles apply just the same.

The work is not quite done today but I hope, sometime later to veer into the vacation lane. Sita will drive us to the airport at the end of the afternoon. I am very happy I am not departing alone this time, and not straight to an assignment. And now the empty suitcase suggests my next activity. How nice it would be, for once, not have a ‘next activity’ for awhile. Hopefully that will be Sunday morning.

More dreams, sweet ones, about a trip (not surprising) but not the kind of trip I take in real life. There was something about listening to a bird and wanting a young girl to save the song in her auditory memory. I wanted her to be able to listen through my head and hear what I heard. There was also a big house with many places to sleep and a photo of the Harry Potter variety, in which people move. I showed, to women in light blue burqas, a picture of women in light blue burqas, singing and laughing. It was contagious and we all broke out in song and laughter. I recognize some elements of the dream but not all. It was a nice dream and it made me start the day full of energy and hope for a good outcome. One of these good outcomes would be the class I will teach today at Harvard’s School of Public Health on the invitation of my former colleague Marc. I love to teach and I am looking forward to it. I will be trying out some materials that we have developed for measuring the results of our leadership interventions. Some of our younger staff are coming along to the class (young girls listening to what I hear in my head?).

We received an excited email from Morsi and Joan from Egypt about the continuing ripples of their leadership interventions that started 6 years ago. Later I heard from my friend Margaret Benefiel that the Egypt story is featured in her second book that will come out later this year. Margaret and here husband Ken came for dinner, which they do periodically when Margaret is on her writing retreat in Gloucester and Ken comes for a sort of conjugal visit. They always bring a bag full of great Thai food. We ate outside by the cove, for the first time since we started hibernating last fall. It was a glorious evening, marred only by the first mosquito and a few no-see-ums that pestered us towards the end of the meal. Their dog Rufus got to lick the plates afterwards.

Another highlight was Prateek’s visit to MSH. Prateek was one of our students in the first leadership course we did with Boston University in 2006. He is part of an extraordinary group of mostly young people, who we have stayed in touch with and whose public health careers are starting to take off. Meghann, who I saw in Kabul, is part of that group and so is Tae who I will see next week in Addis, and Chaltone who I saw in Tanzania. We sat around the table and ate pizza while we listened to Prateek’s stories about getting public health interventions launched in Cambodia. I see how he is leading, despite his young age and short career. It is exciting to follow his journey and that of the others.

In the background are two virtual events that I facilitate as part of a team. Both are coming to an end today. Participants are starting to comment on the impact of the experience on them. That too is gratifying and makes it worth all the time and headaches that have gone into designing and executing the events. Later today I will prepare a big virtual celebration, which I found out years ago, you can actually do, as if you were all together in a fancy ballroom in a hotel. Your imagination just has to work a little harder, but it can be done.

I woke up with yet another variation of the cold that I brough to Afghanistan, where it took on local characteristics, and then brought back to Manchester-by-the-Sea. It is a cold that drains me and makes my eyes red. It also leaves a trail of crumpled tissues. I miss the abundant Kleenex boxes that were always replenished by some invisible hand in the MSH guesthouse and office in Kabul.

I also woke up from a dream that had threads of Afghanistan woven throughout. Something about going alone to a dangerous place, where I was taken under false pretenses; once there I had to fend for myself. There were people to advise me and pointed me in directions that required following dark passages and stumbling over sleeping children. Somewhere along my stumblings through the dark I found my friend Suzy who was there with a group of law students. They were looking for opportunities to do good work.

I had earlier visited her sister and we had had a ceremony with a bunch of people. I had given them a picture of a few women in Burqa holding hands with small children. I remember pointing out that the picture answered the question why we were there. I remember saying “lillah” which would mean ‘for God’ in Arabic – fancy that, dreaming in Arabic! But one of the women in the group pasted her own picture over the one I had given. I tried to be light-hearted about it, making some off-hand comment but it fell on deaf ears. Lucikly her photo only partially stuck and dangled at an angle, revealing some of photo underneath. I continued my stumble in that dangerous place until a weird sound (my alarm) brought me back to this world.

It is always hard to get back into the going-to-work routine after a trip, getting up when it is still dark. But seeing my friends and colleagues again makes it all worthwhile. It was nice to see everyone at the office. I received big hugs from people who know I am in my third life. I have experienced, now twice, what most people would consider the scariest things that could happen to anyone. Actually, only my body knows exactly, my mind only parts of it. I can see them thinking, what was it like (with the accent on like)!

I spent the morning training with colleagues from other organizations, for a virtual conference that we will be facilitating and that takes place next week. I like such online trainings and events because you can multi-task while being on the phone and online. Right in the middle of the conference call I won an Alden Ocean shell on E-bay which I am going to pick up next weekend on Cape Cod. Imagine that, rowing out off the Cove when the sea is like a mirror. I cannot wait!

On my way home I went to see my Senegalese friend Fatou who is recovering from surgery in Salem hospital. I found her starved for food as she refused the hospital meals. It was funny that it was me this time to feed Fatou, who, during the summer and fall, has fed us and a cast of thousands the most amazing meals. The best I could do for her was a McD’s meal, a far cry from her elaborate African spreads, but it was exactly what she wanted.

Back home I did not last long. I picked at the leftover hambone from our Easter event and went to bed with a book at 8:00 to fall asleep around 8:30 while Axel was slugging away at his computer to get our taxes done on time. He filed 20 minutes before the deadline. I always give him a hard time and he always delivers in the end, making it a much closer call than I am comfortable with. But still, he delivered and we will get a refund. A high-five for Axel and now on with our lives.

It is wonderful to be home again. Spring is around the corner, not like in DC or Holland where everything is in full bloom, not like Kabul where bushes and trees already have small leaves. As Axel wrote me, the grass is thinking ‘green’ and the trees are thinking ‘buds’ and there is that special smell in the air.

The day was on and off rainy, with in between warm weather that made people wear flipflops. I bicycled into town to join Axel at the annual chowder competition. About 8 area restaurants compete for the ‘best chowder’ title, with an extra category for chile. Axel and I have a different taste: I go for creamy and he goes for fishy.

It was a joyful community event, with all ages trying out the various chowders and chitchatting with each other, debating which chowder to vote for. The contrast with Kabul-under-siege was huge. Coming back from that place I realize how lucky we are to be able to have such community events together, in peace. I don’t think many of the people in this small town realize what we have and how precious it is.

In the afternoon I sorted out my travel stuff, completed various reports and got ready for my next two weeks of virtual facilitation while scanning what else is on my plate. Not too far on the horizon is my trip to Ethiopia. I want to take Axel along for a Holland break on the way in and out; that too requires some planning that cannot be postponed.

The evening was reserved for a quiet 28th anniversary celebration with Axel cooking fish over the fire in the fireplace, and a love note with lobster earrings. Halfway through the meal I gave up keeping my eyes open and went off to bed. It was another night full of Fellini-esque dreams. I woke up several times during the night and scribbled the most vivid scenes on small post-it notes next to my bed.

When I read the notes in the morning they made little sense. There was something about a roll-on suitcase with a wad of wool twisted around one of the wheels so the roll-on didn’t roll on anymore. Also a large gathering of people speaking Romance languages, but, as I wrote, “you don’t need to talk the language to communicate, you can make it up.” And finally something about a long train ride, during which we got blankets. When the train split in the south we were allowed to keep the blankets because of a court case.

There is more, nonsensical phrases; some I cannot decipher or understand. I wonder if some of it has to do with the book The Sewing Circles of Herat that I started reading in Kabul; it is a book that is full of stories about the brutality that men have inflicted on their fellow men (and women and children) and that has ravaged Afghanistan for decades. It makes for uncomfortable reading and even more uncomfortable sleeping. It is about a world that is light years away from peaceful and pictoresque Manchester by the Sea.

When I arrived at Logan yesterday Axel and I were like two magnets. The pull even made my suitcase show up early. A brief interference from American officialdom temporarily nulled the attraction. I was welcomed by an officer with a speech defect who fired harsh staccato questions at me like a machine gun: Why were you in Afghanistan? Where is your contractor badge? His red pencil circle around the word Afghanistan on my customs declaration guaranteed another interrogation at customs: Who are you, why were you in Afghanistan, what is your business, where is it, give me the exact address ( I can never remember the street number), show me your business card (sorry, none left). This was followed by a cursory sniffing of my Dutch cheese and chocolate Easter eggs. But once I passed that last hurdle there was no stopping us getting back together. When we finally made contact we stuck together as powerful magnets do, for a long time, inseparable. This was a different kind of homecoming.

A clean house and Sita awaited me; then a bath and a deep sleep until it was time for Abi’s massage in the late afternoon. By 9 PM I was asleep again. I slept fitfully, waking up every few hours but eventually made it all the way till 7 AM, which put me right back on Massaachusetts time.

Not surprisingly the night was full of dreams. At some point in the middle of the night I scribbled my dream on a Post-It Note. I am trying to decipher it now. It was about deeply veined colorful marble slaps that looked like water-colored maps of the Indian Subcontinent. I was with a bunch of women, navigating the veins in the stone like rivers. Someone’s mother was to join us later but then I found Axel and peeled off. There was something about roles and not being with the military; a farewell party with rows of tall glasses full of mint leaves, waiting to be filled with boiling sugar water for syruppy mint tea. I am not sure whether this was one dream or many. Later there was something about mentoring two people for a presentation and being so involved in their success that I forgot to print my own speaking notes. It had something to do with native people from the Pacific Ocean, their architecture and leadership that produced results we wanted to show the audience. When it was my turn to speak I faltered, not having my notes. I was chided for not knowing the highlights of my presentation. I wanted to say to the people, wait, I am not usually unprepared like this, and I know the highlights, but I knew it was useless.

When I woke up it was April the 12th, our wedding anniversary (1980). We had no gifts, no roses or anything like that. The happiness of being in each others’ company and safely back home was the biggest gift we had for each other. We had breakfast in bed and caught up with all the news and things that happened during our separation; and then we planned tomorrow’s annual spring celebration, which we have never skipped since 1985. It is about hope, new beginnings and new possibilities. Now in my third life, we have more survival miracles to celebrate than some people get to do in a lilfetime.