Sylvia's Journal

Multiple strands are coming together, centering around the brain. I may still understand little about what is going on in our brains but it is a lot more than I did only 2 years ago. It all started with a promotional video by an extraordinary woman named Judith E. Glaser, about her Conversational Intelligence™ program. That was my first introduction to how we think and how we converse with each other bring about chemical changes which then bring about other changes in how we relate to each other, the culture we create and thus our ability to rise to great heights and be creative together (or not). I enrolled in her course and saw it through to certification over a one year period. It changed everything.

I soon realized I was missing some critical information about the anatomy and functions of our brains – so I completed a 3 month Coursera course on neurobiology for lay people. That taught me something about the limbic system and the hippocampus and how our vision and hearing and speech work, and much more.

I started to listen to webinars on coaching and the brain and suddenly I found courses and webinars and books on neuroscience (for lay people) everywhere. Then I encountered the word epigenetics and could not grasp what that was all about, so I enrolled in another Coursera course on Epigenetics and paid the 49 dollars for the certificate. Not that a certificate is important to me but paying 49 dollars keeps me from dropping out when the going gets tough. It is forcing me to pass the quiz for each module.  The 7 module course is a huge stretch for me. Although I was good in chemistry in high school, I never learned about biochemistry and molecular biology. I have, miraculously, received a passing grade for the first four quizzes. Passing is the right word, no spectacular results. Some of my answers are guesses and some I really knew. My brain is working overtime. 

Axel wondered if I was actually learning anything or just studying for the tests. I actually do now understand at least something about DNA, gene expression, RNA and methylation and acetylation, long non-coding RNAs, enzymes and what not. I now know that saying ‘that’s just the way I am’ is nonsense. We are what we believe, what we eat, were we live, how our parents treated us, what we see, hear, touch and smell. This is the work of epigenetics. Which, incidentally, is also the essence of countless books and webinars that the internet algorithms now place on my path. And I reward these algorithms by buying the books, registering for the webinar, taking the courses. It’s the ultimate mimicry of how the brain works – more learning, more practice, more strands of neural fibers.

I have been admonished by some of my faithful readers to write more. Why haven’t I been writing for a month? Too busy? I think I was busier before my full time job was terminated. It’s true that the busier I was the more organized I was. So this is a reboot.

I have been kind of busy, but not accompanied by the usual discipline of writing. Since my last post about Senegal I have returned to cold and wintry Massachusetts, went on a ski trip with the grand kids, made a brief trip to North Carolina with its daffodils and flowering trees and returned home to suffer through a series of three snow storms in a row, leaving us with half a meter of snow and lots of black ice.

The grandkids took to cross country skiing with great ease and glee. Saffi’s bottom is about one foot off the ground, so falling and getting up was no big deal, a source of much giggling and laughing by all. Both she and Faro loved going fast down tracks of the little practice hills in front of the Jackson X-country ski lodge. Oma functioned as a ski lift from time to time, pulling Saffi up by her ski pole. Faro was old enough for lessons and made quick progress.

After I became a free agent I had signed us up at the Home Exchange site, a French site that helps people switch homes for a short period. We have three exchanges organized for the summer: one with a family from Breckenridge, CO (though we won’t do the exchange, getting points instead which will allow us to ‘pay’ for stays in people’s homes when they are elsewhere or their second homes); then one with a family from Scotland – we are switching homes for two weeks, and finally one with a family from Canada who will be in our house while we are in Maine. It is our very first experience having strangers stay in our home and it has led to some long overdue repairs and much decluttering. As for the latter we are getting excellent decluttering advice from the book ‘Let It Go’ by Peter Walsh (no, we didn’t find Konmari’s approach as helpful).

And so this is where we are now – the upstairs bathroom is empty (and therefore out of order) except for the bathtub. Carpenters, plumbers, painters and floor sanders are lined up, we hope, in the right succession. With this we are finally turning a bathroom with distinct 50s features (Kelly green trim, severely rusted pipes, leaks, rusted sink, plug-prone toilet) into a 21st century bathroom that is code compliant and has a fresh new look.

On Friday I drove to Boston to get my old violin looked at. I had expected to pay a few hundred dollars and wait a few weeks to get it back, repaired and ready for my first violin lesson in at least 3 decades. 

As it turned out the was so much wrong with my old violin that the option of simply renting a new one for a while became more attractive. It would come all ready to play with a case, a bow, new strings and guaranteed new string if any of them would snap, even a new block of rosin for my bow. The repair lady asked me whether the violin had sentimental value, in case repairs might be worthwhile before she started to point out all the places that needed to be re-glued, re-attached and re-shaped. I told her no. Half an hour later I walked out with my new rental – I had made a commitment for one year. It was cheaper and the rent would count towards eventual purchase. I will made my old violin available to anyone who wants a violin for decoration.

It was strange to put the violin under my chin again. My first efforts to play were horrible and I realized I had seriously overestimated my ability to play again. I called my ukulele teacher and asked for a violin teacher and told her I was ready to start with lessons right away.

Awaiting the appointment for my first lesson I started practicing scales-whether for my ukulele or violin, I knew you could never practice your scales enough. That is when I noticed my shoulder repairs had left me with very little stamina to keep the violin up – five minutes is all I could manage before my arm started to drop. I don’t know whether it’s simply a matter of building up muscle again or whether the rotator cuff surgery had left me impaired for good.  I have decided I will play 5 minutes (scales only) several times a day to see if there is any progress. In the meantime the ukulele teacher has also asked me to do finger exercises to send messages to my aching finger joints that they need to loosen up. Musci heals, I am told. I will test that.

The income generating activities planned for January are not happening as planned, thanks to our president. This will thus be my first month without any income. It’s not affecting my spending pattern tough. Inspired by my ukulele lessons and the joy I get from making music, however clumsy, I have decided to pick up my violin again, and take lessons – for the first time in 4 decades. The violin needs some work, and a new case. The case arrived today, so now I can take the instrument to be repaired and fixed up – a new bridge, new strings and new hair on my bow. It’s a costly operation, but the urge to play the violin again after all these years is strong. The money will have to come out of my retirement fund, which appears to be recovering from a steep drop late last year. 

As part of my effort to avoid getting stale in my coaching skills I registered for peer coaching, organized by the International Coach Federation of which I am a member and by which I am accredited (albeit at the lowest level).  I coach someone in Wisconsin and am being coached by someone in Vancouver. My Vancouver coach asked me about my transition from full time employment to self-employed. After having been FT employed for more than 30 years it was a transition. She asked me what I was transitioning to. I didn’t know and have thought much about it. Over the last 4 sessions with her things have become clearer: a physical move to my new office cut ties with my ‘work-from-home-MSH office.’ I am literally in a new place and it is entirely mine: the computer and printers, the office equipment, the printing paper, the paperclips, the licenses, the pens and pencils and of course the income. 

My priorities have shifted as well: more time with family (a ski vacation with everyone next month), more time with art (hence the investment in fixing my violin) and, as a combination of both family and art, I just registered us for a three-day course at the Snow Farm Craft Center in Williamsburg (MA) in May. Axel will be learning about Japanese lock printing and I will perfect my glass bead making skills. It was Sita’s idea who told us about the place and gave us a gift certificate for Christmas.

The clarity also included a choice to stay in our house as long as we can by moving the bedroom down into my old office. It will be a major and no doubt costly project – but better done now than when all my joints are creaky and failing (some already are).  And it’s kind of exciting during those dreary winter months, to think about possibilities and new vistas.

Like so many baby boomers we are looking at our stuff – the ‘too much’ part of our stuff. We are getting advice from Millennials who are riding the boom, so to speak and selling us methods and books and movies as we transition to what may well be the last phase of our lives.

There is Marie Kondo who tells us how to ‘tidy up’ Japanese style (the folding of clothes into little tents is particularly remarkable). There is Peter Walsh from Australia whose approach gets to the root – his book is called ‘Letting Go.’ It’s the one that speaks most to us. Letting go of treasures (how many treasures do we need?), of stuff we might some time need (but when, didn’t we say this 10 years ago?) of mementos of a long time ago…oh there is so much of that.

And so we are throwing things out, boxes full of written papers we were once so proud of (look what I wrote!), or things I made in Kindergarten, of entrance exams I wrote for the UN, more than 3 decades ago, of my entire administrative correspondence with UNESCO headquarters in late 1979. Out, out!

There is also a staging area in what used to be my office – piles of stuff to go to the thrift store, to the Afghan family in Gloucester, to our daughters.  We are learning from Mr. Walsh not to make a pile of stuff that someone else might like. This would be the equivalent of kicking the clutter can down the street. We help each other by saying – why do you think they’d want this? Aren’t they decluttering too? The hard things are those that express something about what we had wanted to be, aspired to, but didn’t quite get – the letting go is to let go of that image of ourselves. But once you di let go it is so very liberating.

I am now fully moved into Axel’s office. This afternoon we laid the rugs on the floor, over some kind of bubble wrap between reflective paper – it kind of pops, ever so softly, when you walk over it. It is for warmth as the studio has no foundation – just cold air below the floor. The rugs are clean now, we hope, after we hung them out in subzero temperatures for a few days, vacuumed them, sprayed them with pyrethrum to get rid of the carpet beetles that had nestled into the rolled up rugs when we were not looking. The would have eaten the entire rug if I hadn’t moved into my new office and upended the piles of stuff.

The last few days we passed in Den Haag (or rather Scheveningen – the ultimate pronunciation test for non-native speakers) at my sister’s, also in a new house. Here we had our sibling New Year’s lunch, the main reason for the visit.

We ate typical winter fare (pea soup with something like pancetta on dark rye bread) while reminiscing about our youth and our parents, long since gone. It is amazing how different our experiences are and how different our knowledge is. My sister, the oldest, was born during the war (and passed her first winter in what is called the ‘hunger-winter’).  Things were so bad that people even ate the tulip bulbs. I tried to eat one as a teenager, out of curiosity, but dismissed tulip bulbs as inedible (confirming the Dutch proverb that ‘hunger makes raw beans taste sweet’).  

My Irish twin brother and I were raised in a different era, one of great economic growth (the 50s) and my youngest brother, when the rest of us had left for university , has been raised nearly as single child by his parents and grandmother who had moved in – even though he was number 5 of 5.  A pencil drawing of the brother I never knew (who would have been 2/6) hung on the wall. He lived for just a few weeks because of spina bifida, his death an enormous sadness that my parents rarely talked about. 

We looked at old letters and pictures and made new pictures of these 5 aging siblings – it was a joyous occasion! My sister gave me 65 single-spaced carbon copies of letters my father typed on various typewriters during his 3 months trip through Africa. The copies were sent to my mother with handwritten personal notes on the back. The originals are probably still in some archive of the Dutch Brewery Trade Association over which my father presided in the early fifties until he retired.

I am only a third into the letters which provide a window into trade negotiations of European powers in French Africa before countries became independent. Over a period of 3 months he traveled from Amsterdam to Stuttgart to Zurich to Lisbon to Dakar. He stayed in the hotel (the Croix du Sud) where both of us passed our first night in Subsahara Africa, me 25 years later. He then traveled to Conakry where we probably also stayed in the same hotel, then to Abidjan, then via Accra (then called the Gold Coast) to Lome where we also stayed in the same hotel, multiple times upgraded and renamed by the time I got there.

He made all these trips in small DC3 planes which he welcomed because of the air conditioning (I do as well), and mentioning the endless delays between planned and actual departures (maybe not as bad now). He also referred to Air France as a state within a state.  From Lomé he went to Cotonou in what was then Dahomey, then on to The Cameroons as it was referred to at the time. From there to Fort Lamy (?) and then onwards to the Congo, Nairobi, Madagascar…but I haven’t gotten that far in the letters.

I am learning a lot about the complexity of trading with Africa, beer drinking habits of both my father, the locals and the colonial elite (“the French elites don’t drink beer, they drink champagne”), the relationships between blacks and whites and the attitudes of the Europeans towards the locals. Some of my father’s comments make me cringe. My father also writes a lot about the climate, which is of course familiar to me but his comments are interesting given that my father had never been in the (sub)tropics and left Holland in the middle of the winter, now exactly 64 years ago.

People in Holland asked me how the government shutdown is hurting us. Compared to people who work for the TSA and others who have to work without pay if they don’t want to risk losing their jobs, we cannot complain. But now my first income producing activity of 2019 is also in jeopardy as my trip to Senegal cannot take place until approved by government officials who are currently not at their desks. I had another three days of income attached to this trip by an organization that is also in Dakar (but doesn’t need any US government approvals for internal corporate work). But since they are not paying for the travel, that activity is by extension also in jeopardy. 

The flight to Holland was uneventful. But then, as we were walking towards the baggage claim area I discovered that I had dropped my iPhone someplace, probably on the plane. Two hours later, thanks to some concerted efforts by various employees of Delta, KLM and Schiphol I had it back (it was under my seat). After a nice breakfast at the airport, we continued our journey. The first leg was by train to pick up a car in Den Haag, courtesy of another brother. Then, after a cup of coffee and an ‘oliebal,’ (a traditional new year’s eve food, kind of like fried dough but rounder and with raisins), we drove to Amersfoort (in ‘the green heart of Holland’), where my youngest brother and his wife live.  The car is tiny; the wheels no larger than those of our wheelbarrow, with just enough space for our two small bags – but one cannot look a gift horse in the mouth: a car is a car, saving us a pricy rental or cumbersome public transport with suitcases and much walking.

Last year the siblings came together with their spouses to celebrate each other and the new year. We are all still here, all 10 of us (5+5) – with Axel and me being number 7 and 8 out of the 10. I am very aware that this is not something to be taken for granted.  Last year I was still employed and without enough vacation days to make the trip – we joined the dinner via Facetime but it was less than satisfactory.  This year there is another meal planned, on January 6. I guess it now has become a tradition. Not having to count vacation days anymore, and having enough frequent for the two of us to fly for 90 dollars (taxes) there was no reason to stay away from the event.  And so we are in Holland now, till January 8.