Sylvia's Journal

We had our first day of easing into the pace of work here – courtesy visits to the ones in charge and getting the team together to discuss what they want from our visit. We integrated their ideas with ours and will provide them with an agenda tomorrow that we will hold lightly to respond to needs that surface.

We started them on conversations with each other about what they have been able to accomplish in this difficult work context and what they are struggling with. I watched to learn something about the team dynamics and noticed they are not listening to each other. I had already learned about this through our ICRC colleague, but watched it close up today.

None of the rooms that we had hoped to have were available. It amazes me the things we take for granted, like meeting in a nice place with chairs for everyone. Not here, the only place available was the windowless stockroom with hardly any room to maneuver and not enough stools (forget about chairs) to accommodate everyone.

Later we met in the PT exercise room after having dragged the benches from the waiting room and an odd assortment of stools and chairs pulled from all over the rehab center. It’s a tile clad room and with everyone talking loudly over each other I had a hard time hearing everyone. I’ve got to have that hearing exam when I get back, as my hearing is definitely not what it used to be

At the end of the day, just before the sun disappeared behind the river we arrived at the beautiful terrace of the Grand Hotel. It’s the place to watch the sun set and enjoy beer, brochettes and frites (again). Why the architects who designed our hotel (also on the river) did not think a terrace overlooking the river would be a major competitive advantage is something that escapes me. The Grand Hotel, even though it’s apparently not a place one would want to spent the night, fills its enormous terrace with people who stay after the sun has disappeared to eat and drink. Our hotel has an ill positioned, unattractive and unused terrace that looks in the wrong direction. And even if it had been positioned in the right direction, the view would be obstructed by barbed wire, military folks and a kludged together pizzeria and barbecue place. There aren’t even tables and chairs for guests, unless you stand there for a while and they drag out one table with one chair for you.

We were joined by our colleague’s Flemish husband and their 9 year old daughter who speaks 5 languages. She is a citizen of the world if I ever knew one, at ease in cultures as different from each other as Sudan, Bolivia, (Flemish) Belgium, Catalonia and now Niger, all in her nine short years.

We sat on the same terrace where I sat 32 years ago in my second year at MSH, 1987. At that time we drank the conjoncture, (Niger) beer, watched thousands of bats fly out for their nightly feeding frenzy, and followed the camels and cars traversing the bridge to return home. Tonight, there was no conjoncture beer, much fewer bats (and many more mosquitos as a result), no camels and lots of cars. Things have changed a lot and some things not for the better.

I learned that the last brewery was taxed out of existence, not just putting all its workers out on the street but also putting the hundreds of little eating places where people would go for cheap beer and brochettes out of business as the imported beer is now out of reach of the people who frequent those places. It seems like another infuriating example of religious fanaticism with a very short horizon – maybe something on our horizon if our president has to step down?

Back at the hotel I could not get my room key out of the lock. I called the reception who sent a man up. As soon as he arrived the key came out. I quickly put it back in because I didn’t want to let him off the hook so easily. And indeed, he was not able to get it out. He told me, ‘just a moment,’ and went back down. I assumed he went to get something like graphite, but no, he came back with a foot long insecticide spray can. If he had intended to spray into the lock, he could not since it was occupied by the key we couldn’t get out. So he sprayed around the key, as if it was a lubricant. Of course it didn’t solve the problem, only added bug spray to the other fragrances wafting into my room from the tired and mildewed carpets in the hallway. At least I won’t have bugs in my room lock tonight, that’s comforting to know. Eventually the key came out but neither one of us knew the magic formula. I am pretty sure it wasn’t the bug spray. Just a lucky jiggle.

Labor day signifies the end of summer. We already knew it from the shift in the air, crisp at night, no more need for fans or AC, and the days agreeable warm. We still occasionally swim in the cove, when we are not too busy with the management of stuff. This is why getting rid of stuff is so liberating – less management, more time to swim.

Whenever we can we take meals, breakfast, lunch, cocktails, sitting just above the beach. We have created a little eating corner with the bottom of an old bench and two chairs left behind after a party earlier this year, when the summer was just starting (sigh). I both love and hate this time of the year: love because it is Lobster Cove at its best, hate because winter is coming. 

I have put the finishing touches on a weekend in April on the island of Schiermonikoog, way over at the most northern-eastern point of Holland, close to Germany, surrounded by the Waddenzee, loosely translated as the ‘Flats sea,’ a part of the North Sea that empties with the tides. It will be a family fest, a ‘Vriesstock or Vriesenpalooza’ as my nephew calls it. Axel and I will celebrate our 40^thanniversary surrounded by our dear and noisy Vriesendorp siblings, those of their children and grandchildren who are around next April. We will show up with the 8 of us and it will be Faro’s and Saffi’s first trip to Holland.

Among the many things we are carting to Sita this weekend are Dutch books, so that the language barrier will not get in the way of the kids playing together and our son-in-law Jim can say and understand more that the word ‘paprika snippers,’ which he learned on his very first trip decades ago.

Our car could be mistaken for one that takes stuff to their kid’s dorm. But a look inside shows that it is filled to the gills with things that have accumulated after the student experience (mine and Sita’s): desk belonging to her great grandfather on which I studied for my final high school exams in the spring of 1969, books, photos and CDs from Sita’s school and early employment years, blankets from West Africa, an old map of China from the Cabots who left their stuff in the house we live in, to decorate Faro’s room – he will be the only one who can read it.And after that Tessa gets to pick up her stuff and we should finally be relatively free, free enough to empty one side of our office to install a heat pump and we can be warm this winter, and cool next summer. Free at last!

We have a new roof. Roofers bring large dumpsters. After all the roofing detritus was dumped there was plenty of room for more. Our roof expert told us that we had too much stuff in the attic of what is now our combined office. The structure was not built to hold boxes and boxes of school materials and childhood treasures and CDs of our daughters, plus boxes and boxes of old administrative papers, letters and postcards from Axel, his parents and his former loves, clothes for dolls, for babies, for grownups, countless yards of African fabrics, dishes, moth eaten camel and cow hair rugs, saddle bags, mementos, and boxes and boxes of books: French books, African books, Lebanon books, yearbooks, Dutch books, and magazines that we once thought worth keeping.

And so we embarked on an exhausting trip down memory lane, which included countless steps up and down from the attic to the basement and back, aggravating our muscle and tendon problems from which we are now recovering. 

Peter Walsh, whose book, Let It Go, we first borrowed from the library, then bought as we figured it was an important reference manual, guided us on our journey. What is a treasure, what is a toxic memory?  Much as we did some months ago when we threw out all the papers and cuttings and letters related to our plane crash, now we threw out, without second thoughts, dismal papers and photos and magazines about the years we lived in Lebanese which was at war.

I threw out my entire collection of Dutch literature, closing a door on that part of my life. I had put adds on the website for Dutch people in the Boston area but got no response. I knew I was not going to re-red them and knew no one who would want them.

We made piles for the thrift stores in our area, for the Waring School (all the French books), and the higher end (and pickier) resale boutique in our town, the Stock Exchange. The rest piled up in our office to take to our daughters, including my grandfather’s desk on which I prepared for my final school exams in the spring of 1970. Tessa and I had a facetime session going through all her artwork portfolios, a tedious exercise but it thinned things out considerably.

We found a carefully wrapped up and preserved lot of baby clothes, they were Axel’s. I recognized some from pictures preserved in small photo albums, also in those boxes. They are vintage 1940s. There was a story there, a sad story of the siblings that never came, yellow clothes in case the baby was a girl. I carefully washed and ironed them and then hung them in the grandkids room closet. Not that I would want any kid to wear these clothes today but I simply couldn’t throw them out. I did check the vintage baby clothes offerings on Etsy and eBay but noticed there was a glut (though very little from the 40s). I think these clothes are most interesting for textile artists who can turn them into something beautiful. I will ask around to find people who may want to do that.

I offered up to the dumpster a collection of conference briefcases that I had once hoped to attach to a wall in my office as they were all locally handcrafted and some quite beautiful. But the idea was rejected and I had packed them up, for what? So much of what was up in the attic was there because we thought they were treasures but we learned from Peter Walsh that very few items are truly treasures, the others simply labeled as such because we didn’t know what to do with them. Out they went.

When the dumpster retrieval man showed up I asked what happens to all the detritus and discards as I was feeling badly about what we were adding to a landfill. He told me it gets sorted and only stuff that cannot be recycled (sadly: plastics) goes to the landfill. Metal, paper and wood is separated and recycled or burned (hmmm). And there we stood on the now liberated driveaway, looking up at our new roof that we will never have to replace again (our kids will) and then taking in the opened up space in the attic. 

When I was 10 or 12 I used to borrow books from the library about the lives of accomplished women like Marie Curie, Florence Nightingale. I think I inherited a gene from my maternal line that assumed men and women were equal and deserved to be treated equally and could do anything that the other sex could do (men could knit sox and sew clothes and women could be captains, and train conductors). This wasn’t the prevailing opinion in the 1950s in Holland. Only boys played soccer or cricket. Women doctors were rare except in well baby clinics and as teachers of hygiene (which is what my mom did). Most of the mothers of my schoolmates stayed at home, and those who had started university studies stopped them when they got married.  

Mari Popova, in her book ‘Figuring’ tells the stories of several accmplished women who lived in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and whom I had never heard about. All these women, astronomers, artists, mathematicians, inventors also bucked the trend: they were told to get married and focus on children and home.

I am curious about these women who have veered from the path that convention prescribed.  My mom did that, both my grandmothers did that.

To this day I am fascinated by women who dare to run for president of the United States, who take on powerful industry lobbies because of the damage they do, who call out abuses that have gone unchallenged. During my early morning exercise bike rides, I have been listening to Michelle Obama, Melinda Gates, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren telling their stories and making history (her-story) in the process. 

Two things have struck me in all their stories:  they all got to the place where they made history (her-story) because they found (recovered) their authentic voice, never silenced by convention and/or powerful men. They also are (and may be this is a typical feminine trait) driven to understand other people’s lives – empathy is the word they all use. 

In my various neuroscience classes I am learning that empathy isn’t actually as great as people claim. If I empathize with someone who is not in a good place, my brain chemistry micks the other’s and I risk getting into that not so good place myself. Better is compassion, which is a combination of empathy (understanding the other, standing under the other’s reality) and action (“how can I help you?”).

With the democratic primary campaigning in full flight I am looking for candidates who show compassion with proposals for action, anchored in understanding (empathy if you will) that are actually realistic and realizable.

From often windy and overcast and drizzly Scotland we are back in daily 10+ days: blue skies, no or light breezes and temperatures that the Scots would consider too hot but we feel are just right.

After no exercise (other than walking a lot) for two weeks, I resumed my daily swims in Lobster Cove waters that are as close to warm as it gets. 

Before I go in the water I scan the mouth of Lobster Cove for fins, white fins. Great white sharks (one or many I don’t know) have been spotted nearby. Since we already have had a 45 feet whale in the cove (granted, it was dead), why not a great white shark?

I swim with goggles because I want to know what is going on beneath me, which is why I don’t like dark muddy ponds or the open waters outside the mouth of our cove.

Lobster Cove is fairly clear these days. I can see the green crabs fighting with each other. Fine, let them kill each other, after they have eaten all the baby mussels it serves them right!

I just finished Maria Popova’s opus magnum (Figuring), all 550 pages of it; a book I plucked from Sita’s eclectic collection of books, and have been carting across the Atlantic and back.  

Popova (whose ‘Brainpickings’ I have subscribed to for several years now), has created something best described as a tapestry of words. Using diaries and letters as her main source, she took me into the lives of some extraordinary women who choose paths of great resistance over prescribed social conventions. They were all pulled by an innate force that knew of their talent. What obstacles, what bigotry, what bias they all had to deal with. And I wonder about all the women that were not able to muster all that courage, or weren’t supported by some remarkable and enlightened men (fathers, lovers, publishers, colleagues); how much talent was lost?

One of the last creative geniuses Popova writes about is Rachel Carson. I think a lot about Rachel Carson as I step into the waters of Lobster Cove, and watch, like a voyeur, what’s going on beneath me; the creatures that eat each other, wondering about the white shark that would eat me. Rachel Carson saw with great clarity, all these years ago, that you cannot interfere in ecosystems without expecting consequences: the killing of seals (they open lobster traps) led to their protection, which led to seal overpopulation which attracted sharks, first the smaller ones until word reached the larger ones that there was good food to be had along the Massachusetts coast. So what are we going to do now? I know what I am going to do now: I am going to re-read Carson’s Silent Spring.

We are now, what the Brits call holiday makers. We exchanged Manchester at its summer best for a cool, rainy and cloudy Edinburgh. After a short flight from Boston we arrived mid-morning just when the sun was (kind of) peeking out from behind the massive cloud cover. It’s a familiar climate – like Holland, probably a bit worse. 

The Exchange home we will be inhabiting for the next two weeks is lovely. We can see the bay over the roofs of two more rows of houses that separate us from the beach at the most eastern end of the Portobello promenade. A big deck and decent size garden will be nice once and if the sun comes out (not in the immediate forecast unfortunately).

We exchanged leftover monies, some very old British and Scottish pounds, for real money at the bank (except for the 20 Shillings piece from 1964 which is worthless now). We had our first encounter with a most uninformative bus driver who was singularly unhelpful and gave us no change (exact fare please!) from a 5 pound note for dropping us off at the wrong stop. 

Around lunch time things got better. We had a wonderful lunch at the Promenade in Portobello,  overlooking the wide sandy beach, drinking great beer and enjoying weather that the Scots said was warm (68 degrees).  It felt like Holland except for the views across the bay and the hills on the horizon. We were served by a young man from Australia who had studied aeronautical engineering at Purdue University in Indiana, where Axel studied as well (Indiana, not Purdue).

We paid a price for all the walking we did (having no exact change for the bus fare back and underestimating distances).  Back home we watched a video on how to get the knots out of our leg muscles and relieve our sore legs and ankles. We sat across from each other on the small Ikea couches (in this Ikea-furnished house) massaging our legs with ‘Tranquil Chamomille’ oil. Axel is better at this than I am – he has done it before and is treated by the guy from the videos so he knows the drill. I got impatient quickly. 

I brought my ukulele. I have stopped taking lessons in order to focus fully on my violin. Without a teacher to hold myself accountable to I figured that taking it on this trip would impel me to keep playing. I use my computer teacher (Yousician), who I pay 10 dollars a month to continue the teaching job.

In the middle of our celebration of life, all 34 four years of it, with Tessa I received news that a colleague from my early days at MSH had stepped out of life while he still had plans, hiking up Mount Denali. That left his wife alone with those plans. Poof, no summit, not ever again.

I remember, when my parents were in this phase of their lives, hearing from them that this or that friend or family member had died, some suddenly, some shortly or long after being diagnosed with this or that terminal illness. Now this is happening to us. Mortality playing peekaboo, now you see me now you don’t. 

I am thinking about all those people left behind with plans that included the person who left. These plans now need to be re-fitted for solo adventures or thrown out. I think about people who moved or re-modeled their houses to be able to live out their final days together, more or less independently but without having to do stairs, hard chores. Now what, live there alone?

We have many plans that include both of us. One of them we hope to get started this fall: to move our bedroom downstairs and turn the G&T porch with its heavy winter windows into part of that bedroom, with a summer porch attached. No more removing of the weighty windows in June, but yes to the G&T (winter and summer). Would that still be fun without my life partner, I wonder. The line in John Lennon’s Beautiful Boy (“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans,”) comes to mind. And here I am, with a suitcase full of plans for two.