Sylvia's Journal

I continue the half day of work and half day of rest – that is just about right. Today I am going to drive myself into work, very very early before there are too many other drivers on the road. I have done some test drives around town and as long as I don’t have to buckle and unbuckle myself a lot, or move the gear shift from drive to reverse I am doing OK. I am getting quite handy with my left hand and arm.

Since I could not take Reinout and Maurits up in the skies over Essex County myself, I outsourced this to the Beverly Flight Center and went along in the back seat to make sure they got the royal treatment (they got more than that!).  I had arranged for a scenic/introductory flight and Maurits was put behind the controls in the left seat. He was going to take us up in the air and down again, coached by veteran flight instructor John.  

We flew over the waters where Andrew took them by boat the day before and we circled Cape Ann, over the route we had taken a week earlier by car. It was hazy but at 2000 feet everything below was quite clear; this included our house which we circled a few times. At the end of the trip Maurits received a student pilot logbook with his first flight lesson recorded. He also got a Beverly Flight Center baseball cap and a T-shirt. The outing was, no surprise, a big hit with both father and son, but especially with our pilot. What more could a 14 year old want?

Maybe going home, sleep in his own bed, tell his friends and show off his new iPod that looks like an iPhone but without the phone part. In between flying and boating he poured all his energy in getting the gadget geared up for the long trip home, with movies and music that would keep him occupied during the flight.

I made some significant progress on preparations for the Ghana trip. I finally got my ticket and produced a set of facilitator notes and wrote everyone I know there that I am coming their way. My energy level is increasing slowly and I am dosing my work hours so that by the time I land on Monday morning, I will be ready for the intense week of work. I am glad Diane is coming along to share the load.

We had one final American cookout before Reinout and Maurits drove off to Logan. The fresh corn and super hamburgers should see them through till they land in Amsterdam, allowing them to skip the airplane meal in the middle of the night.

While we waited for the hamburgers to cook Sita gave Maurits one last ukulele lessons and he was able to play along with her quite nicely. He is a fast learner in all aspects: bread making, iPod, motor boat, plane and ukulele – such a wonder boy.

Axel and I spent the entire morning at the orthopedic-industrial complex, most of it in the waiting room with all of 5 minutes, a record, with the surgeon himself. He showed us the pictures he took during the procedure, through the scope. The supra and infra spinatus were torn badly. The pictures show something that looks like nylon roping and enormous screws that the surgeon used to pull and coax the ligaments back to where they should have been attached to the bone. The surgeon is hopeful that I will get my full range of motion back. Given the damage this is either a miracle or unlikely. Time will tell.

The rest of the afternoon I tried to focus on work and my departure to Kabul, with the date now set for 9/9/(0)9 , With all these nines it must be an auspicious day. According to some random numerology website, the number nine is about  “a shift from the material to the spiritual. Selfless service and universal ideas become paramount. […] the Nine closes the cycle by returning its love and compassion to higher ideals.” I think that fits nicely with my desire to work in Afghanistan.

But before my departure to Kabul there will be another departure next Sunday for a quick assignment in Ghana, to hand over senior leadership development work to my colleague Diane. I finally got the ticket and it looks like everything is all set to go. For our administrative staff it has been a month-long obstacle course to pull this off and I am grateful for their perseverance and good humor.

In the evening we celebarted Sita and Jim’s engagement  with three sets of parents and two sets of siblings. We were able to seat everyone around the large dining room table. Axel toasted the young couple and some of us got a little teary. As the mother of the bride this is all new territory for me and I spent considerable energy getting the dinner just right, including, as Sita noticed, preparing appetizers with all the things she hates: anchovies, olives, mushrooms and shrimp. I  had to ask myself what that was all about; some sort of unconscious boycot?

Tessa had made the cutest place setting cards and Reinout folded the napkins (where did he learn that?) that I thought should have been ironed but Sita told me not to bother. The wineglasses, table cloth and silverware did not match (who now has 12 of everything?) and everyone brought a few dishes. The arrangement and informality of it all is simply a taste of the what’s to come with the wedding, of the do-it-yourself variety. We will have little to do with the preparations, a little hard from our base in Kabul – but we will be there when it is all organized, and probably write a few checks.

Just when our party was breaking up Reinout and Maurits returned from their boat trip in the Essex waters, windblown faces, bronzed and happy as two little clams. Maurits had captained the boat at dazzling speed in between the red and green lights that showed the way back to the harbor after the sunlight had gone; obviously much more fun than an engagement party with adults he didn’t know. He’s also happy because he has a new iPod that keeps him busy when he is not boating, swimming or throwing sticks to the dog.

I started the day guiding a frustrated Steve to his new job by phone. He got lost in the Fenway around 7:30, not a good place or time. Having two Google maps in front of me I led him all over the BackBay until that big sigh of relief: destination in sight. Then he discovered he did not have to be there until 1 and suffered that most common illness of organizations: a lousy induction of new employees. I hope this does not omen badly. Steve is not doing work because he likes to but because he needs to – all of it a necessary evil until he has saved enough money to buy himself a goat farm. That is the long term vision and he is willing to suffer through much to get there.

I feel fortunate that I do like my work. My attention is beginning to converge on two countries, out of the 10 or so I had something going on in. Now it is just Ghana and Afghanistan. I thought I was all set with my upcoming Ghana trip and discovered only yesterday that the business ticket I had requested because of my arm had not been bought and is now getting too expensive. This is a trip that has been on the books for about 2 months. I am tired of having this kind of stress just before a trip. Five days before departure tickets become hard to get, especially when vacations are ending and I have lost my flexibility of dates and time. The only ticket I can get brings me home 3 days later than I had planned and only one week before my departure to Afghanistan. Not a nice prospect.

Yesterday I learned that my hearing in my right side is bad; a suspicion of this was picked up by my recent physical. The audiologist tested my hearing and showed me the resulting graph: right was a red line, below normal. I wonder if this is yet another delayed effect of the crash. There was no infection and no obvious reason for the hearing loss and so I have to squeeze in yet another visit to a specialist before I go.

Once again it was hotter than Hades. I tried to focus on my work in our non-air conditioned house, sitting right in front of a fan while on the other side of the wall our fireplace is being installed. It required major reconstructive and noisy surgery on the house. Axel rushed to and fro trying to line up workmen and dealing with the fallout of our incompetent electrician who had made yet another mistake. I think we will drop him from our list. In the meantime I can hear the architect and contractor’s cash registers go ‘Gaching!’ with each passing hour.  That is the hole in which I will pour all the danger pay that is rightfully mine for serving in Afghanistan.

We had our neighbors on both sides over for drinks to meet my relatives, something Axel always insists on even though it adds yet another task to an already frantic day.  These neighbors are related to each other and so we had a lot of relatives chatting and drinking in the shade under the maple tree. Andrew and Woody were the only non relatives but they might as well have been:  close and dear friends are family.

Andrew stayed for dinner which consisted once again of lobster and corn. Our Dutch visitors are running out of opportunities to eat this coveted crustacean. Reinout dug the potatoes for our dinner straight out of our garden. Over dinner Andrew hatched a plan for a boat trip exploring the mouth of the Essex River. I could see Maurits’ eyes light up – it sounded so much more fun than an engagement dinner with the new in-laws tonight. I told him we would happily excuse him and his dad because sunset on the Essex waters is pretty neat and a chance not to be missed.

I am licking my wounds, or welts, rather; huge painful bumps on my neck, arms, legs. They are red, sore and itchy, not your usual mosquito bites; some nasty White Mountain insect that preferred me over everyone else.

We went for a swim in the ocean as soon as we arrived home from the long drive back from Franconia. I don’t swim, one can’t with one arm, but made sure all welts were exposed to the salty seawater. It was as warm as Lobster Cove gets and sitting at the beach I was acutely aware that I am going to be away from this beautiful place for an entire year. Some people wonder why?

I went to bed early, as I am still perpetually sleep deprived. I slept a little better because I had an unlimited number of pillows available and the floor didn’t slope me down the bed as it did the previous two nights. Still, it was hotter than Hades for the third night in a row and the little airco we bought some years ago could not produce enough cold air to justify its name. It does wear me down all this not-so-good-sleeping.

Steve’s the only one up this early because he has to start his new job at Merck’s animal lab in Boston. There is  a new commute to check out and you don’t want to be late on your first day of work.

Reinout and Maurits decided to return to Manchester rather than spend the night in Plattsburgh NY after depositing Michiel (David) at his dorm. Apparently the deal was that they would not walk up with him to see his room and literally drop him off at the entrance. And so dad kept his promise. I don’t think I would have made such a deal if I had deposited my child thousands of miles away in a foreign country. I would have wanted to know where he is going to live for an entire year and who is looking after him. But maybe that is typical girl logic, hardly known by this family of mostly boys.

They arrived back home around 11 PM and, unfortunately, brought back most of the junk food we had sent them off with. It has been a week of indiscriminate eating and grazing and I can feel it. We can do better than that, especially now that our garden is in full production mode: peas, beans, tomatoes, basil, chard, potatoes, raspberries, cucumbers and kale.

I am counting the hours until the next milestone in my shoulder recovery: stitches out – tomorrow morning, just in time for Sita and Jim’s engagement dinner at our house on Tuesday evening.

Sleeping is literally still a pain in the neck. I tried to fall asleep without chemical assistance but I can  not get comfortable with the bulky sling and its bumper right on top of me. I toss and turn which then hurts this or that part of my neck and shoulder. The codeine-coated pain relievers bypass this settling in business. I hope this is not the begining of an addiction.

I was told by the physician’s assistant that the doctor may let me sleep without the sling in another two weeks, if all goes well. It is something to look forward to. After that it will be another 2 weeks when I can be free again.

I am still trying to nail down my departure date but it remains elusive, partially because of the political calendar in Afghanistan and partially because I have no idea how much physical therapy I should have before I go.  I have now decided to wait settling on my departure date until Tuesday when I see the surgeon and get my stitches taken out. We’ll ask the doctor about his opinion. I suspect he may ask, ‘do you really have to?’

I worked for at least 4 hours nonstop on an Afghanistan related writing project that left me exhausted. It is the first intense thinking and typing work I have done since the surgery and it is clear that I am still in convalescence mode and that this was all I could handle in one day. Luckily I have able colleagues in Cambridge who caught the not quite completed assignment and will complete it.

In the afternoon I found the boys back at the beach stoking up the fire that had not really gone out during the night and morning. Because of the high heat it had also produced quite a bit of charcoal, which we were able to use for last night’s beach cookout. A new fire pit was added and we had dueling fire pits, keeping all three very busy stoking again.  

In between these pyromaniac activities I took the boys on a tour of Cape Ann to see the Gloucester Fishermen’s Memorial, Gloucester’s Town Hall, and Motif #1 in Rockport. We drove along the Cape Ann coast until we arrived back where we had started.

In between we stopped at CVS where our new college student got his basic supplies while I started an impulse buy for all the CVS articles that I imagined hard to find in Kabul. I have never spent that much at CVS. It was the first time the move became more than something that will happen the future.

While we were eating the expertly cooked hotdogs and hamburgers, the mosquitoes were eating us; still we persisted and sat by the fire until it got dark. The nephews went for a swim in the dark while Sita and I played the ukulele – She brought one for Axel so that we can perfect our duets during our evenings in Kabul – I still have a long way to go.

It was an all day overcast vacation day for our Dutch visitors. This did not keep them out of the water and finally, I believe for the first time this summer, our various boats were used, including my Alden shell because Reinout and Maurits actually know how to row with a sliding seat. For Chicha it was a day full of balls and sticks and Frisbees that needed to be fetched, over and over again.

I tried to make it a work day as good as I could. My energy level is beginning to rise and I put in about half a day, mostly focusing on how to describe our past and future work in Afghanistan in ways that is aligned with the new US strategy in Afghanistan. This is still new territory for me.

I am teaching my youngest nephew how to use the bread maker since the consumption of bread and cheese has gone up fivefold.  This morning he also learned how to make pancakes and later today we will expand his repertoire with brownies.

Axel spent the entire afternoon walking across the estate with Chuck the septic system engineer to make sure we are putting the new system at the right place. We are getting some new-fangled experimental system; one part of it will look like a Jeu de Boules court I think. It’s very ingenuous and complicated, with fans and pumps inside it; as a result it also costs a lot. But the engineer claims it will outlive us and seems to know what he is talking about; his confidence is contagious. There are many approvals to get, a lengthy process he will lead and that starts this week.

The promise of a fire on the beach produced a surge of activities in preparation: raking the seaweed on big piles, collecting the wood, digging out the fire pit. The anticipation was hard to contain and before we knew it we had the largest roaring fire ever seen on Lobster Cove beach. This should not have surprised me since Reinout’s is the pyromaniac branch of my family.

Our parental home burned down in 1964, when Reinout was 6. The fascination with fire has stayed with him. When there is the promise of a fire he turns into that little boy again and so we had 3 teenagers ‘tending’ the fire instead of one adult and two teenagers. The dried seaweed was particularly attractive because it cracked and sparkled like Chinese fireworks, letting out enormous clouds of thick white smoke. I was surprised the fire brigade never showed up to berate us.

The fire was too big and hot to cook on and besides, the mosquitoes were everywhere, so we cooked and ate the lobster, clam and corn dinner inside. Axel was the lobster dismantling teacher, his every move closely followed by the three smoky boys. For Dutch people lobster is a delicacy they hardly ever eat and it was wonderful to watch everyone enjoy the meal.

After dinner we returned to the beach where the fire was still huge and hot and more seaweed fireworks were produced, mostly by Reinout who was having too much fun to let his sons tend the fire. I introduced them to s’mores, blending melted sugar, chocolate and cookie crumbs with mosquito repellent and sand.

The codeine coated pain relievers help me through the night but take me deep down into dreamland. Axel appeared in a silky bowling outfit, black shorts with a white stripe, red silky bowling blouse with white piping, quite fetching. In another (part of the) dream he was ready to explain to me the complex arrangement of waterworks in some desert place but the foreman would not let us close enough to the machinery so that plan got aborted. The theme of aborting continued when I found myself going down Manhattan in a throng of people so dense that I went past my destination and could not turn around.

When I woke up, groggy, from my deep sleep, I kept rehearsing the words ‘overshooting the destination’ and ‘not being able to turn around’ in order to preserve the mental images of my dreams.

After a few cups of strong tea the words unhooked themselves from the Manhattan imagery and stood by themselves, turning into a summary of what happened on July 14, 2007. This sudden return to the crash was not a surprise: during the day brother Reinout had received a call from his significant other Joke who miraculously survived a blown tire at full speed on the German Autobahn. She totaled her car after swirling around amidst traffic that moves famously fast. Joke’s last thoughts, as she shared them with Reinout, resembled mine at the moment of surrender to forces bigger than oneself, with the words, ‘this is it…’ (not a question but, as the French call it, a ‘constat.’)

Such images and experiences don’t, as the Dutch say it, ‘settle into one’s cold clothes.’ They stay with you and I talked with Reinout about EMDR. Maybe Joke will need something like this if the images keep coming back.

This miracle put the crown on a wonderful day that started slowly in the morning with the Greek painters putting the finishing touches on the primer layer which now has to dry (in the drizzle) for the next 10 days.

 At the end of the morning we all piled into the car to drive to Cambridge. We dropped our Dutch visitors off at Harvard, always a magnet, while Axel and I were treated to a 20^th employment anniversary lunch at MSH. Seven of us who were hired between 1986 and 1989 told stories about our entrance into the organization which elicited lots of laughs, smiles and expression of horror as we recounted hiring and orientation practices that are now frowned upon. It made us all realize how far we have come as an organization. It was a wonderful lunch and I felt very fortunate to have entered this place all these years ago.

After lunch Axel joined the relatives for the Boston Duck Tour and a visit to Boston’s Apple store while I went from one meeting to another trying to fall back in an old work pattern that now seems very alien. My desk has already been taken, my stuff put away in boxed marked with my name. In between meetings I felt out of place as if I am no longer working there. It is amazing how quickly you go from being an insider to an outsider. Everyone was busy and my role in all of it that does not concern Afghanistan is fading quickly.

I was driven back to the North Shore by Barbara who moved, last December, into a beautifully restored and stately old house in Salem that once belonged to a wealthy leather importer some centuries ago. Axel et al returned from the Apple store and picked me up. We ended staying for a pizza dinner served on the beautiful porch until it got dark. When I my nephews no longer participated actively in the conversation, and I watched their eyes glaze over it was time to go home.

This morning Lobster Cove feels like Dubai. The air is saturated with humidity and it is hot. Dog days. Only Chicha the dog is happy because she has teenage boys, 10 Greek painters and two Afghans throw the Frisbee for her, all day long.

The Greek painters noisily pushed their ladders up against our windows, a sound that I incorporated easily into my dreams. The dreams included my arm sling as a means of payment or reckoning, how that worked eludes me now but it made totally sense while I was dreaming and even a fraction of a second after I woke up.

We now have a house full of boys which is immediately noticeable because the molecules around us are moving faster. This nicely compensates for my low levels of energy, far below my usual levels and something that makes me feel a little out of sorts.

The new workweek started yesterday and I worked on a few reports which is all I could manage. I guess I have to accept that I am still on sick leave. People ask me if I am busy on handing over old jobs and orienting myself on my new job, but right now I do neither.

At lunch time MP, Said and Wafa arrived to have another look at the ocean. MP told me that Wafa had broken out in song upon seeing the wide ocean as they traversed the Portsmouth Bridge. Apparently it brought back good memories of being at the Iranian shores at some point in this former life of his we know nothing about.  Getting the right kind of food for them is still a little tricky; MP learned it cannot be hot and cold together and they prefer hot. So we bought them American Chop Suey at the local supermarket while we non-Afghans had French bread with ham.

Wafa and Said loved playing with Chicha. They are discovering that dogs, far from the despicable creature it is in the Muslim world is actually a wonderful companion and fun playmate. Seeing Wafa in his American clothes throwing a Frisbee filled me with joy. How badly we wanted to see this scene over the past months and how elusive it seemed even as little as 3 weeks ago. But now they are here, at Lobster Cove, imagine that!

At the end of the day we headed for Boston for a gift from Anne and Chuck: a seat at Fenway Park for the Red Sox- Detroit Tigers game. After the difficult theatre performance I had agonized over whether to go or not and was glad I decided to accept the offer. My last Red Sox game some years ago was rather boring, but this game was good: suspense, lots of home runs, seeing some good waves going around the stadium and sushi for dinner. Still the seats were hard and the sling uncomfortable in hot and humid Boston, and so we lasted only through the 7^th inning, just when the Tigers were threatening to win.

Together with Anne and Chuck we took a pedicab back to the parking garage on Clarendon, all 750 pounds of us. We did not think the young cyclist could handle the four of us together but he looked us over and said, just like our President, ‘Yes, I can!’ And he could.

We arrived home only minutes after my brother and his two sons, flown in from Amsterdam, one via Reykjavik and the other two via Paris – we all tumbled very tired into our beds, most of us way beyond our usual bedtime.

I am writing this morning amidst the paint fumes produced by the Greek painters. It’s better that I post soon before I start to write nonsense. Today they are giving our house its original color (red) back; this is happening just in time for the arrival of my brother Reinout and his two sons from Holland, later tonight.

I have been haunted by the collision between a helicopter and a small plane over the Hudson River, which happened exactly one week after we passed the same point. We did see the scenic ride helicopters like the one that hit, or was hit by, the small plane. It can be busy out there and I guess we were lucky it wasn’y busy a week earlier or everyone who was piloting at that time was paying very close attention. It is the one rule of tumb when you fly: never stop looking for traffic.

I have decided to expose my incised shoulder, stitches and all, since even people who know I had surgery continue to grab me by the shoulders for a hug. It looks a little ugly, four incisions which sutures sticking out, yellow and red from Iodine and blood. It has been one week now and according to the dismissal instructions I don’t have to cover the incisions any longer.

I can shower without the stool, dry myself and dress myself without help from nurse Axel. I am leaving my arm out of the sling for longer stretches at a time, a freedom from restraint that is wonderful. It allows me to keep my elbow moving, and maintain some strength in my lower arm.

Isabella my Reiki practitioner called on Saturday that she now has her foot in a contraption that comes from the same factory in Mexico as my sling. It turned out she broke her foot six weeks ago and didn’t know it. She asked us to stand in for her as greeters and Quaker meeting on Sunday morning, which we did.

The theme of Quaker meeting was about making room for the Spirit in our lives; that we are like waitresses and waiters, patiently waiting to find out how we can be of service. It reminded me of going out to dinner with Axel who always needs a lot of time to make his choice from the menu; the best restaurants have waiters who patiently wait for him to make up his mind. That’s what service is all about. On our way back home we discussed what this has to do with our move to Afghanistan.

As the clouds rolled in, and my plans to have a Lebanese dish in a Sierra Leone [I meant ‘Lebanese dejeuner sur l’herbe] were aborted, I tagged along with Tessa to the Vietnamese nail place in Beverly, to use up the last of the gift certificates we had received from Ellie after the crash. Tessa had all twenty of her nails done and I only ten, the ones on my feet. I am embarrassed to admit that I still bite my fingernails, and so any money spent on them is a waste. Our short ride to Beverly was really a trip to Southeast Asia; I tried to piece together the stories of our nail consultants, Lisa and Rachel, their adopted names because Americans cannot pronounce their real names that have too many consonants in a row. They left their native country some 16 years ago and you can tell from the thick accents they still live mostly in Vietnam.

With our shiny new nails we went for a walk in Ravenswood with Chicha, a first resemblance of exercise for Axel and myself, even though we had to cut our outing short because of the mosquitoes.

After dinner, meant to be outside but once again moved inside by the mosquitoes, Axel and I drove to Rockport to see the last performance of the Taming of the Shrew, put on by a local theater group with several friends in the cast. It was meant to be an outdoor performance but the forecasted rains drove us inside into a tiny hall where we sat cheek to jowl on hard folding chairs. Although it was a wonderful performance, sitting in these conditions for more than two and half hours was a little hard on our recovering bodies and we returned back home rather crippled.

It made us wonder whether I could handle the invitation to a Red Sox game tonight. I am told the chairs are not so hard and we will have a little more space but then again I remember Red Sox games going on long into the night. Now, with the optimism and freshness of early morning, I am more optimistic about my ability to make the trip in and out of Boston and enjoy the game.

The best alternative to being in disguise [in the skies, you dummy] over Maine is sitting at lobster Cove with a book. So that is what I did. I have lately been wandering around the house thinking about what I would like to take to Kabul. And so I discovered Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet. I found part one and part four [Justine and Clea]. A hand written and hand painted happy Mother’s Day card from Axel fell out indicating that I had started reading volume 1 a long time ago; I will finish it this time.

Despite the gorgeous weather and the paradisiacal surroundings I felt pretty punky, mostly because of the bad night. I tried several different chairs to get comfortable and ended up taking a long morning nap in the recliner. This is why I missed Diane who came by to deliver vichyssoise, just like two years ago. A cup of that delicious cold soup, after a good nap, brought me back into the world in better shape.

It was time to go to Gloucester to congratulate our cousin Britta with her graduation from high school. She too is in a transition, off to New York, at about the same time that we are off to Afghanistan. Some people think New York is just as scary. I remember some years ago when I was sitting in a hotel lobby in Amman, with a bunch of Iraqis and talking to Axel via Skype using my computer. When Axel inquired how scary it was to fly into Baghdad the Iraqis answered that it was probably not as scary as being in New York. For them New York was full of action figures gone berserk, sexual deviants and murderers. They all preferred Baghdad. We don’t think New York is scary and know that Britta will have a great time.

No one told me about the dangers of social gatherings for someone who has just had rotator cuff surgery. Because the arm is in a sling and not the shoulder people avoid the arm when giving hugs. I received many squeezes on my shoulder, encouraging little taps on the back of my shoulder and quickly began to dread meeting yet another huggable acquaintance. It’s better to go to a party of strangers where you can simply shake hands.

Next week we will go to a Magnuson family reunion — a high hug environment — and we have been wondering how we can make this a pleasant event for me. Axel has decided he will make a ‘don’t hug’ patch for my shoulder.

The social event, a barbecue, had both exhausted us and filled our bellies. We organized ourselves a dinner theater in our living room, pulling comfortable chairs up to our tiny [13 inch] TV screen, eating ice cream while watching Coraline in 3-D with the special glasses that came with the DVD.

We interrupted our show to say goodbye to Steve who should by now have arrived in Canada, for a brief visit to his mom and sister.

I removed the wedge from my bed and slept flat on my back in a nest of pillows. This too is a reminder of our sleeping arrangements two years ago. It was a good move; I only woke up once and had a very good night of sleep. In the morning I was able to take a shower and dress myself without assistance. Five more weeks to go.