Sylvia's Journal

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.

There are three sides to this world: this side, the other side and in between this side and the other side.

On this side something good happened as Tessa turned 31 during this year’s long holiday weekend. We started celebrating on Friday night just the three of us at a restaurant in Gloucester. In the morning I thought about that momentous event when Tessa made her way into the world, remembering it as yesterday. Tessa arrived while the remnant of burned croissants was still lingering in the air. Axel had put ‘heat-only’ croissants in the oven of the birth center.  The oven thought it was getting cleaned, locked itself while the temperature increased to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. This activated the fire alarms and brought the firetruck out with screeching tires and probably a hefty bill for the hospital; it should have replaced the oven. Did tiny Tessa smell something was awry? Nothing in her life shows she did, unless it is her obsession that everything should be right.

The festivities of this 31th birthday continued in the morning with our birthday ritual – a festive table with all the tchotchkes we can find in the house standing to attention around the plate of the birthday girl, flowers on the chair, cards and presents. A brief interlude followed to prepare for the annual birthday bash at Lobster Cove: tents, a keg, fireworks, barbecue, potluck, fire on the beach, silent disco, late night fishing and eating it the next morning, cooked over the still burning fire with fresh eggs from Steve’s and Tessa’s Ladyland Farm chicks. Tessa counts among her friends a highly sought after DJ who reserves this event in his full appointment book year after year.

And then from 2Pm onwards people trickle in, accompanied by the gear they need: fishing rods, canoes, kayaks, tents, fireworks and booze. The latter two I don’t care that much about but I usually retire before they get activated.

That was on this side of the world

Once in a while you get news that puts everything in perspective. Sita and Jim’s brandnew niece, hardly 7 weeks old, has been diagnosed with a terrible birth defect and is undergoing her first operation today at Boston’s Children’s Hospital. It’s a condition that is more common in Asia than in the US, rare here, a chance in thousands, a case of really bad luck. She is undergoing a procedure that was developed in Asia. It is probably one of many surgeries she will need in her life. It is both scary and very sad.

The baby would not have lived long had she be born in a developing country, so we should count ourselves lucky, but we don’t know what’s in store. I am thinking about the pain and worry of her parents and grandparents, two sets of which we share with Faro and Saffi.  It is rearranging all the things that I thought important and worth fretting about.