Sylvia's Journal

It is countdown to Tessa’s wedding now, six more days. I am taking the next two weeks off. We are now in New Hampshire, a work party to get the place ready for the invasion of a hundred or so people at the end of next week. We are cleaning and painting and stringing lights and baking. It is a DIY wedding, which means everyone has to contribute their labor. We made this weekend an intimate family work party weekend – not by choice, this last minute arrangement, but because it is very hard to get everyone in one place and healthy. With two small children in daycare, and me traveling, such occasions are rare.

It is the wedding she started planning about 5 years ago when Steve asked for her hand on the beach at Lobster Cove in the presence of lots of people. He surprised us, not with the asking but doing it in public; a daring feat for an introvert. Someone took a video and posted it on Facebook. It played again recently, as FB does these days, picking random or not so random posts and reposting them again.

Tessa and Steve have now been together for 12 years. She was 19 went they hooked up, she is 31 now. The marriage has been long in coming.

I prepared a slideshow for their wedding, a gift that I presented last night in a private showing with Sita, Jim, Axel and the couple in attendance. It had been my nightly second shift job for about a month. The slide show consisted of pictures from their lives, matching as much as was possible, with Steve’s history on the left and Tessa’s on the right. I corresponded with Steve’s mom to get the matches, for newborn, for family portraits, for birthday pictures, music, art, dress up, school, graduations, with siblings.

For this we dived into our archives and emailed endlessly, with attachments. In the process I went through several moldy boxes with flimsy papers that had documented Tessa’s (and Sita’s) intellectual, social and artistic developments. Everything that could possibly be of interest later I put in those boxes, even such silly notes to herself, written on ripped pieces of paper, “remember to practice clarinet.” It made its way into the slide show – one never know what may come in handy later.

When we revisited one box last night we had to laugh so hard that we could hardly finish our reading out loud. A car song, a jungle song, composed by Tessa at about 6 or 7; a sentence completion test (Love is…) where Tessa wrote ‘giving food to the poor.’ We came across her DARE workbook folder, certificate and stickers (a mandated drug awareness education program for school kids in the 90s that was implemented by local police officers). It contained a penciled letter from Tessa to officer Aiello, thanking him for educating her about resisting drugs. Priceless! I suppose it worked, we can say this now in hindsight, though she wasn’t always as compliant with her abstinence oats as officer Aiello had hoped.

I came home to a yard full of people: aside from Tessa and a friend, there were several young graduates from Quebec, frolicking on the beach and water. Most appear to have jobs, which added no doubt to the carefree splashing. Our friend G. and his wife who brought them here is helping Axel with his boat repairs which have lasted all summer despite promises of getting it in the water soon. The boat is needed to set out our lobster traps. So far we have bought our lobsters. It’s great to have friends who have no patience for half-finished work.

I took a nap and then surveyed the gardens where foot long cucumbers, a new crop of raspberries, an abundance of blackberries and much more were showing few signs of the now two month-long drought. The water ban is still in force. The smaller trees and bushes, on the other hand, look tired and spent.

Tessa’s wedding is now two weeks off and she has nightmares about things going wrong. I told her that everyone’s nightmare might be a hurricane touching down at the moment of the seaside vows, and yet this is exactly what happened at Sita and Jim’s wedding. It was exactly 6 years ago that hurricane Earl showed up uninvited at the moment supreme. It was a fabulous wedding even though the band declined to come and all the vases with flowers blew over and everything was wet.

The dreaded seasonal shift, from summer to fall happened the third week of August. It’s just a warning that summer is nearly over. It gets colder for a few days; there is a distinct shift in the quality of the air and I need to wear a coat when I leave for work around 5:30AM.

But then it always gets warm again, and humid, and we are given a respite. We may even complain about the heat. Oh how easily we forget.

Our garden is producing abundance: pickling and euro cucumbers, the enormous tomatoes are finally turning red, the cherries and mini cherry tomatoes seems to be in a hurry (and tight they are), and the eggplant is growing long and skinny, touching the ground, and being nibbled on. The chard stands fierce, bright green and enormous; the cranberry bean pods are turning yellow and their contents turning dark red as their names suggests. The potatoes are working their way to the surface; the garlic and shallots are drying nicely on the porch and in the shed. The kale (sigh), well, we planted too much again and swearing to not bother next year – too much, too large and not the right kind for the Dutch kale-potato stew we like to have in the winter. The large beets that look like radishes have been eaten and done with.

After the winds shifted swimming across the cove is not quite as appealing as on a hot and sweltering day. But yesterday was hot and sweltering and I took my habitual swim across-the-cove. When I was back on the beach our friend W. pointed at something round and shiny bobbing in the water. This turned out to be a lost baby seal. It approached me as if it was a puppy returning a ball. I was reminded of the children’s book ‘Are you my mother?’ Mom was nowhere to be seen. The pup was too young to fear humans (and W’s dog). We called the harbor master who called the NE Aquarium, but when the tide was high the pup had disappeared, we hope reunited with its mom.

Although I think seal pups are cute and lovely, even up close, I don’t really like to swim with ocean creatures. Even the striper that swam below me some weeks ago, beautiful as it was to behold, made me swim fast to the shore.

Recent and less recent former colleagues from MSH came by to visit us at Lobster Cove over the weekend. There was more nostalgia, thinking of good old times, remembering who was there and who is where now,  and enjoying the very good ‘now!’  I love those visits in the summer. We enjoy Lobster Cove as if we are visitors. When we are alone we get busy with so many things that we forget to enjoy this extraordinary little paradise that we call our home.

Lobster Cove is at its best during our much too short summer, between July and September. This is the reason why I declined to travel to Togo this Saturday to attend the conference of African ortho-prosthetic technicians – a group of professionals that feature prominently in the work I have been doing the last few years with ICRC and with wheelchair service providers. I rarely go to conferences and would have loved to go to this one, seeing many friends and doing some intelligence about what is happening in this world, so different and so far removed from the usual MSH networks.

But it meant giving up one week of Lobster Cove in August, which I simply couldn’t. Instead a young colleague is going. I will meet up with her the week after to participate in a post conference workshop with teams flying in from various Francophone countries. I will be back by Labor Day.

The American Labor Day signifies ‘back to work’ rather than celebrating workers and workers parties as the rest of the world does on May 1. It’s kind of typical of the zeal of American workers – with their short vacations (holidays) and long work days that always astonish my European relatives.

Our family labor will heat up significantly after Labor Day as we are finally all converging on Tessa and Steve’s Harvest Moon wedding party (September 16), an event that has been on the planning board for many years.  Friends and family will fly in from Holland, using the wedding as an excuse to come to America at a time that is particularly beautiful on the northeast coast. I am taking two weeks off and we will squeeze in as much Lobster Cove enjoyment as we can. I see much harvesting our oysters, swimming, snorkeling, kayaking and endless corn and lobster meals in our near future. Life is good.

We have yet another celebration behind us. It has been a busy month and next month, with Tessa’s wedding coming up, will be similarly busy with celebrations.

Last weekend we had a reunion of people who all started at AVS (the Association for Voluntary Sterilization, later Association for Voluntary Surgical Contraception, and now called EngenderHealth) decades ago. Some of us worked there for a very short time (like me, only 8 months) while others spent their entire working life there and have now retired. A few drifted off to other organizations (MSH among them) but we never lost our connection to each other and the stories from that time way back when.

This was the 33^rd anniversary of the founding of the Zugsmith Society, a literary/drinking society, created in a booth at Chumleys, under the book jackets of famous people. One of those book jackets was from Leane Zugsmith’s novel ‘Never Enough’ which was promptly adopted as the motto of the Zugsmith Society. We are happy to learn that Chumley’s (holy ground for the our Society) will soon re-open again.

We celebrated our septuagenarians. There are now several among us – a weird idea, considering that when this society was founded all those decades ago we thought 70 was outright ancient.

There is always the AGM (annual general meeting) and the agenda is loose but has to include a review of the year and our accomplishments, adventures, and mishaps; then there is the gossip about those not present, and a reading from the Wine Spectator. Since we are a literary society we read Shakespeare  and studied the theme of Discipline vs Indiscipline through quotes from famous people, adding our own (mis)interpretations to their wisdom. For nourishment and libations there was good wine and lobster. As the years go by we drink less but more expensive and as a consequence our AGMs are less rowdy. When enough was eaten and drunk we assigned the organization of next year’s AGM to those not present, another ritual. We hosted this year’s meeting because we were not present last year. That’s how it goes.

For the last few weeks we have lived with a fervent Trump supporter under our roof. I didn’t know this until I called Trump a clown; that’s when all the buttons got pushed– first his, then mine, when he called Hillary a criminal.

Before I realized what happened my reptilian brain had taken the bait and we were off to an awful confrontation that left me shaken for at least 24 hours.  I don’t think I can do door-to-door canvassing for Hillary because I learned how easily I take the bait and how dumb my reaction was of trying to reason with a Trump supporter.

I reacted with too much vehemence, just like my now adversary (even though he is a member of Axel’s family). As a result I was no better in my defense of Hillary than he of Trump. We reacted kind of similar, in a direct confrontational way, quoting bogus, cherry picked or fantasy statistics and pushing forth statements that neither one of us could back up right there and then in a convincing way.  It was a ‘yes/no’ and ‘either/or’ kind of  discussion (the word discussion is related to percussion as our Dialogue colleaugues will remind us – hard and unyielding).  Each one of us quoted sources that the other considers without merit (The New York Post against The New York Times), an exercise in futility.

Later Axel had me read the New Yorker article and I recognized pretty much all the words, ‘facts’, names that my trump supporting cousin had used. I should have read that article first, be prepared for the Trump lingo and assertions.

Later, during my commute, a great time for mulling things over, I realized that I had let myself go and did not practice the Aikido turns that I learned years ago and still preach (and sometimes demonstrate) in my classes. Theory is so much easier than the real world. Our word (and heart) fencing over Trump versus Hillary was a sobering experience. It reminded me how little the the current divisiveness in American politics has to do with reason.  Right now reason doesn’t seem to have any role in this election – although I hope at some point it will.

In preparation for the party Sita moved with great purpose through the rooms on the ground floor and removed anything that could be considered clutter. We have a lot of that. She used any container she could find (and we have a lot of those) and filled them up with tchotchkes; the containers were then deposited on the floor of my office, preventing any intentional or accidental entrance.

The house looked so attractive after that that we promised to her and ourselves that we would try not to re-clutter the place. But we did, right away the next day because I had to get into my office.

And now we are trying to get back into our cluttered daily groove – the last guest left this morning, the enormous amounts of leftover foods divided, consumed, deposited at MSH, or thrown out, the recyclables picked up from the curb, and the garbage stored in the shed to keep the raccoons at bay for drop off at the dump tomorrow. Our town is trying to cut down on expenses and garbage service is reduced to once every two weeks; do-it-yourselvers can go to the dump on Wednesdays and Saturdays. This is what Axel will do before everything rots.

The daily groove will only last a couple of days more as we are having another party next weekend – this comes in handy from a booze perspective; we have lots to offer. From a food perspective we learned that when you expect 60 people you don’t have to multiply every four-person recipe (of mains and sides and dips) by 12. We will do an after action review so that by the time Tessa’s party comes around (more than 60 people) we will be pros at planning and guessing.

There were only a few days to recover from our roadtrip vacation, a few long days at work, beforfe the next event arrived. Yesterday Axel turned 70.  We decided some months ago that we would not let pass this opportunity to have a big celebration. We’d have a Hawaiian Luau, mostly because I wanted to have an excuse to make ‘Flaming wieners in pu-pu sauce,’ a recipe out of one of our favorite cookbooks (Square Meals by the Sterns).

There is a chapter on Luau at home, which featured the wiener dish, among other tantalizing recipes. It required a large cabbage, a sterno can, bamboo skewers and tiny wieners. The sterno can is put in the hole carved into the cabbage, the wieners put on bamboo skewers and the cabbage leaves turned to resemble a flower. A pu-pu sauce put next to the cabbage and voila, you have an exotic dish, at least people in the fifties thought so. I unnecessarily multiplied the recipe by four: a lot of cabages and a lot of wieners. Our friend M was getting pretty good at ‘roasting’ the wieners over the sterno fire.

Fatou, our amazing Senegalese caterer friend and animatrice-par-excellence went all out with several Hawaiian dishes plucked from the internet (Hawaiian macaroni, coconut crusted lime shrimp, Char Sui chicken skewers and kimchi that will last us until the middle of the winter). Tessa did her fair share of cooking and prepared Okinawa sweet potatoes, sweet rolls, and three macademia tortes. Tessa did most of the party planning – something at which she is very good, temporarily interrupting her own wedding planning.

The square meals cookbook chapter on Luau’s at home was also the inspiration for our offerings of Hawaiian cocktails: Trader Vic’s Babalu, Leilani Grass Hut, Hawaiian punch (the real thing) and Pineapple drops. We needed someone to mix those complicated drinks and Tessa found a friend with a good sense of humor and a willingness to learn. He got some help from another guest and the duo stayed behind the bar which was Axel’s upside down lobster boat, mixing and pouring for the 60 or so guests who joined us in the celebration.

Tessa had organized Hawaiian leis by color (“Get Ley’d”) , depending on which of the preceding 7 decades the guests had met the birthday boy. The yellow leis were for the people who knew Axel (then Richard) the longest, meteing him for this first time between 1946 and 1966. They sat in a circle most of the night, until the mosquitoes chased them home, recognizable by their leis, trading old stories.

With Sita and Jim the musicians, and me the poet, we were able to organize a singalong describing each decade of Axel’s life in a few lines. We printed 30 sheets and invited everyone to, if not sing, then at least read along. It was a formidable team effort of those nearest and dearest to Axel that brought him successfully to tears.

And now we are in the after party mode. Everything is cleaned up and the enormous amounts of leftover food distributed (for Tessa, for Sita and for MSH). There is enough booze to last us through the summer; not just what we bought but also what Axel received as gifts. When people get older and should stop drinking, booze appears to be the default gift. We will be good for a awhile in the hard liquor department, especially rum. I see many dark-and-stormies in our future.

Another week is racing by bringing me closer to the start of our family vacation in California next Thursday. It seemed so far away (as did the summer enveloping us now) when I made the arrangements back in December and January. I am going to have unfettered access to our two grandkids. I am excited. It is the kind of excitement I remember from grade school, when the summer school trip to the zoo or the beach came into view.

In the meantime headquarter work is getting my attention. I get up early (now it is dark again at 4:30 AM) to beat the traffic and arrive at a dark office – springing to light automatically when I enter. I am the only one this early but a few people follow quickly. Around 6:30 there are a handful of us. It is quiet in our open space. I get much done.

I have a lot of desk work to complete before my travel will pick up again, later in the summer. It is the kind of work that keeps me billable through stretches of time when there is no travel. I design events on the horizon. I review what others have written. I revise what I have written before based on feedback or pilots. I check a French translation of something I wrote many years ago. Sometimes I am surprised about what I wrote years ago, impressed with myself (“I wrote that? Wow!”). And sometimes I write new stuff or turn something I read into a short training session. Some of the work is creative and some is not but overall it is fine.

I am turning 65 this year. Some people, especially in Holland, are asking, “are you retiring?” Our CEO, who is from the same vintage, is stepping down as the chief. I don’t have retirement plans yet. By and large I enjoy my work, a privilege I am very conscious of.

My official workday is 8 hours, although I am often putting in more than that. Because I start early I also leave early which gets me home in the afternoon, with hours left before nightfall. Last year at this time I would change into my bathing suit, put my goggles on and swim across the cove and back. This year I haven’t been in the water yet. It is very cold (52F or 11C). If it hurts my ankles when I step in the water I turn around.

This summer’s weather has been funny – from very warm (hot even) on some days to spring temperatures on others. Last night it was like winter in the southern hemisphere – I needed to wear a cardigan in the evening. The warm afternoons, the unseasonably cold water makes for thick mists drifting in from the ocean at the end of the day, lowering visibility to as little as 30 meters.

On my commute home I am listening to a fabulous novel about Malaysia, the Garden of Evening Mists. When I pull up to the house and the mist pushes in from the sea I have my own misty garden.