Sylvia's Journal

The ice cold and relentless wind made me look forward to Dubai. But first there is the appointment with the shipper and making sure everything we want in Kabul gets included. The only things we did not get was Scrabble and Pictionary, both standing as symbols for wholesome family fun when not too tired or not computering in our Kabul home.

We claimed out Christmas gift from Sita, two sets of warm lambskin slippers, and to hang out with DJ for a bit. For this we had to brave the even icier wind on the Rockport shore. We took a hot coffee/cocoa break before making it back to the car, to Manchester and various engagements.

We discussed Sita and Jim’s wedding, 9 months from now, over a lasagna dinner with both sets of Jim’s parents and one of his siblings; none the wiser were we even after the coconut cream pie was finished, but all in good spirits. Sita and Jim are mobilizing their friends to make it a low cost, green and memorable event. We have no worries about it – our Magnuson reunion tent, a few port-o-potties and Lobster Cove as a backdrop, how can we go wrong?

We will continue the conversation 6 months from now when we get back to Lobster Cove for our first Stateside R&R. That seems a long way off.

Departure is already in sight but there is much to do: family and friends to visit, more appointments for various body parts, shopping and getting our shipment ready for pick up by the shipping company on Wednesday morning, all the while trying to vacation with one more week to go.

This morning I got certified as a bona fide traveler who can enter the country by simply swiping one of my two passports in a kiosk. I should have had this during my intense travel schedule in and out of the US, travelling on my own; now Axel has to stand in line while I bypass the lines and then wait for him later.

I swung by the MSH office on the off chance of finding some colleagues and friends to wish them happy new year and found some indeed; a few pregnant, others ready to retire and the rest at the same place and in the same condition as I last saw them. It felt odd to be at the office which is no longer my place of work. There are no regrets.

The rest of the day was dreary and cold and bets used to take care of some last minute shopping, gifts for the guards back at our house in Kabul, some starter toys for the daycare center that may start soon at our office and the missing warm clothes for the remainder of Afghanistan’s cold winter.

Sita, who has become a vegetarian after Copenhagen, cooked us a wonderful veggie stir fry. She has also sworn never to use the dryer again and now our basement is draped with clothes that are trying to get dry. You have to duck a lot when walking around there.

We ended the day playing one of Tessa’s new games, something about apples, that kept us entertained for the remainder of the evening while Jim multi-tasked, cooking our evening meal for tomorrow with his family which will also be our goodbye dinner for the next 6 months.

I don’t live here anymore, I think, while cleaning up the kitchen early Sunday morning, putting things people have left where they last used them, into the places they belong. It is an odd experience being guest in your own house and a little unsettling. What used to be my office, and where I had expected to be making the piles for the shipper to pack up for Kabul, has been made into Tessa’s and Steve’s computer room. I don’t live there anymore.

Our room is the barn with all the space we need; actually it is perfect for making the piles I had in mind. We can take 1000 pounds which is, apparently about 25 boxes of stuff. I couldn’t imagine what I would fill 25 boxes with but now I am sweeping through the bookcases, the stacks of DVDs and the discarded kitchen equipment in the basement and the boxes are filling up. A wok would be nice; we have, for the first time in 20 years a gas stove and can actually use it – a new cook training project for Axel.

With everything that I put on the Kabul pile I ask myself, would I mind if I never saw that back again? It is one way of clearing your house of unnecessary stuff.

Outside the cove is churning with foam covered swells that hit the beach angrily. A warm winter storm is hitting us and melted most of the snow, revealing the dirt and mud of the septic system construction project; this is more familiar than the picture perfect white Christmas landscape that we found on arrival. This is more like Kabul.

We are snug in our camp space with our heating pad below us and the small stove flicking on and off to keep the temperature inside comfortable and even.

We are now midway in our stay here, as much ahead ad behind us and we have to think very judiciously how to use the remaining time well so that when we leave there are no regrets.

December 26 is, traditionally, leftover day. We shared our turkey leftovers with Anne and Chuck and Edith and Hugh who brought their own leftovers (salmon bisque and Christmas cookies). We sat around the table and caught up while nibbling at all the dishes set out before us, including Brazilian leftovers from yesterday’s spectacular spread at Steve’s brother who married into a family of Brazilian cooks. He is both lucky and it shows.

We visited Sula and Jacek whose parents lived in Kabul in the 1950s where he was helping to get Ariana airlines of the ground. They have hundreds of slides from that time, and a promise to show these to us one day. Not today as they were getting ready to leave for Scotland.

I have been knitting on an off. I bought several skeins of interesting yarn and knitting as much as I do is proof that i am really on vacation. I produced a third batch of baby booties that I can now knit in my sleep. Before I leave I have to show Sita how to make them so that she can stop making scarves, something she has been doing for years in spite of the multiple knitting books I have gifted her for Christmas. Her friends are starting to have babies so this would be a little more practical than scarves.

I am now walking around with a mindmap in my pocket of the things that we want to put in our shipment. They are, and have to be, objects that we won’t mind losing in the case of a quick exit/evacuation but that would add a little to our comfort while in Kabul.

The shipper comes on Tuesday to pack us up which means that sometime between now and then we have to make a trip to the shopping mall, a scary thought for someone who has managed to avoid the entire Christmas shopping season.

Things did come together, as they always seem to do and showing once more that traditions are hard to break. Our Christerklaas celebration started at midnight, as it always does. Axel took a four hour nap which made it possible to be up about half the night, while Sita and Jim had a Christmas dinner and Steve, Tessa and I worked on our poems and packaging of the gifts.

We were done around 3:30 in the morning and tumbled into a deep sleep on our preheated bed. Christmas morning, later, we continued with what was left under the tree before tackling the task of cooking our Christmas dinner, together. Tessa and Steve had planned the meal: turkey cooked under cover of maple soaked bacon, cranberry compote made from the cranberries that Axel picked in October, just before heading out to Kabul, creamed onions, mashed potatoes, ginger almond green beans, carrots and squash.

For desert Tessa had brought a Buche de Noel from the fancy bakery near her old job – it tasted as perfect as it looked. We missed Sita and Jim for our Christmas dinner because of yet another family engagement – both our daughters have found men who come from families that split up which multiplies the number of dinners that require their presence.

And now we are off for a late after dinner Christmas celebration in central Massachusetts where Steve’s mom and sister are visiting his brother and his family. So Christmas is not quite over.

Between the two of us we had many maintenance and repair appointments for our first 48 hours home: shoulder, teeth, blood work, hair and stomach, the first appointment only hours after we landed. There will be more after the holidays are over and before we head on to our next stop on this short vacation, Holland. But first there has to be Christmas.

Each appointment required waiting in rooms with piped in Christmas music – bad luck meant that the consultation rooms were also exposed to the music. I am glad that after tomorrow this will be over. In fact, I noticed the stores have already moved on the Valentine’s Day; the red and green being replaced by red in pink.

It’s strange to be home but to be there as a guest. We are now staying in the barn across the driveway. Sita and Jim lived there for a year after our accident, then Tessa and Steve, for a year and some months and now us. Our house is no longer our house. Tessa now makes the rules, which includes ‘shoes off’ just like in Kabul.

Her present to us is the newly painted bathrooms: orange gold downstairs and a bright new coat of kelly green upstairs. It will be a nice home to come back to, whenever that will be.

We sleep on a mattress on the floor of a structure that isn’t meant for sleeping in the winter. There is only our mattress and a think wooden floor between us and the cold winter air underneath. Before we went to bed we ventured out into the crowded shopping mall to get an electric pad to preheat the bed; this was easier than buying a bed frame on the day before Christmas, and it did the job, I hardly remember going to bed except that it was warm.

Walking outside and taking the car to drive wherever we want is an untold freedom, a luxury that we took for granted before moving to Afghanistan. After 3 months of being chauffeured around, driving myself is fun and familiar, as if I haven’t been away that long.

Sita and Jim drove halfway home to Western Massachusetts to celebrate Christmas with his sister and husband. We were supposed to come along but that plan turned out to be entirely unrealistic as Axel is taking a nap and I am struggling to make the Christerklaas rhymes for our celebration that is supposed to start at midnight. I am not at all sure how everything will come together in time, the muse has not arrived yet and it doesn’t feel anything like Sinterklaas or Christmas. But it is surely nice to be home.

I am back where I started. The weather in Atlanta, where I was to have caught the plane to Dubai, was so bad that planes in and out of Atlanta were cancelled or delayed by several hours. Somehow my four pieces of luggage went to Atlanta on their own while I stayed behind. The flight they travelled on would not have made the connection (I hope it didn’t) and given the choice between spending the night and all of today in Atlanta I opted for a return home.

I had not meant to let my luggage out of sight but an error uploaded them rather than offloaded them. I had hoped to repack this morning to avoid the $200 extra payment that Delta exacted from me for the fourth bag. Today I am going to try to leave again and reunite with my luggage in Atlanta before we fly to Dubai.

It was a bonus for Axel and me. After much waiting, we drove back north, had a quick bite –spare ribs, my last pork for awhile – and then went to see Julie and Julia, a lovely movie about following your heart. And although I am following my heart to Afghanistan, last night I followed it back home.

I have embraced my daughters and their men as everyone went his or her way. I promised to be back at Christmas, if we aren’t evacuated before that time. Today is it, the day of my departure; it has been in the works for the last 5 months. Cast-off is at about 2 PM.

It is a time of ‘lasts.’ Last Quaker meeting, last PT session, last early morning routine which wasn’t all that routine anymore especially since Sita used up all the coffee for our fabulous brunch yesterday – I can’t write my blog without coffee. The flavor of the writing is affected.

To make my departure even more difficult than it already is, Mother Nature pulled out all the stops and Manchester, especially Lobster Cove, is at its most glorious. Yesterday morning I took Sita’s fancy camera, early in the morning, just when the sun was coming up over the trees and an empty Lobster Cove was basking in its pink and orange light and took pictures from every angle. These I expect to be looking at when the absence of an ocean nearby starts to get at me.

I am finally ready; a few more small things to squeeze in empty spaces in suitcases and some repacking to make sure the last suitcase closes and will stay closed. My next sign of life will come in from further east.

All of yesterday morning was devoted to bodywork. This is possible because all is quiet in Kabul, the weekend of Eid is upon us and people are getting ready to feast, so very little email activity from that end.

I started with PT, getting a few more exercises as I am entering stage II post-op according to the doctor’s protocol. I declined the icepack at the end and headed straight for Abi’s massage place for a last and wonderful massage. While she continued with Axel I had my nails done by a tiny Vietnamese girl. I arrive in the midst of a wedding prep party with young blond girls debating the colors that would go best with their wedding party outfits. It made me think of the girl at Yale, murdered days before her wedding party by a deranged lab technician and all the things that did not and will not happen as a result. So very sad.

With most of the body work done, one last PT appointment on the day of my departure, I will be limber and spiffy when I arrive in Kabul, with my shiny dark red toes, short hair and no visible signs of a recent rotator cuff operation.

After his massage, Axel joined me for a lobster sandwich lunch at Panera (as advertised) and from there we drove to a community that is built for mature persons with money, just behind Wal-Mart to say goodbye to our neighbor Jacqui. The place is like a forest of large buildings that have been sprouting up, one after another, for the last few years, catching the front end of the baby boomers. The complex houses thousands of them;  people who are tired of mowing grass, shoveling show and the risks of walking out one’s front door.

Our neighbor Jacqui is one of those and has happily exchanged her beautiful but large house at the end of Lobster Cove for a small apartment at this retirement village. She told us about the possibility of walking for miles around the place, from one building into the next, without ever getting outdoors. For her that was a good thing. It makes us hope we are not going to get old for a long time, wanting such things is very scary.

While we walked back to our car I wondered why we put people of the same age together like that, all in one place. Why not sprinkle a few day care centers across the buildings and impeccably groomed lawns? The very young and the elderly, usually only mentioned together when we talk about the flu or other infectious diseases, ought to be living together. They would be able to give each other what they want most of all: attention. It would also make the place a little more lively; children’s voices and the pitter patter of small feet in a place where people speak softly and shuffle; what a concept. I see a business opportunity there.

The rest of the day was filled with a flurry of activities, checking things off multiple lists and following the finishing touches of the carpenter in our living room. He had to be a bit more precise than I was (slower is faster), so that he did not have to come back on Monday and we could move things back into the living room and invite our dinner guests to enjoy the new living room. When the first guest arrived, he was just cleaning up; we had about 30 minutes to get the place ready. We succeeded and the living room, except for pictures on the wall, is finally done, about 10 months behind schedule and just in time for my departure. We had a lovely evening sitting around the table and eating the goodies that all the guests had brought in and then, when it was parting time, we pretended that nothing is going to change.