Sylvia's Journal

Today was Memorial Day, and it rained. This rarely happens. We showed up when the seaside ceremony was already in full swing. This is for the navy, I imagine. A wreath is thrown into the water from the back of a motor boat by a uniformed man. The wreath is attached to a thin white string. I guess this is to fish it out of the water afterwards when everyone is gone, and, hopefully, give it to someone to hang on their door. I am sure in the past the wreath was simply tossed into the water and then left to drift wherever the current took it. But the environmental police must have put a stop to that. It is still a ritual and it is the ritual that counts, but I liked that there was an unscripted part to the ritual.

Every year I sit (with occasional standing) through the ceremony which after the seaside part is done at the cemetery, where Axel’s ancestors lie as well. We had spiffed up the graves of his grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles and now also one niece, with geraniums.

This is our personal (pre-)memorial day ritual. When we are done with the planting we take a little rest on Grampy, Grammy and Ester’s’s grave and drink a toast to all. We thank Penny and Herman for life given to us and then we dribble a little bit of vodka over the grave stones. Axel’s grandparents were teetotalers but their offspring were decidedly not and so we hope the elders don’t mind this little bit of vodka.

This year’s ceremony was held at the legion with major parts left out because of the inclement weather. The master of ceremony told us to imagine the parts of the program that couldn’t be done indoors, like the salvos, the marching, the school band and the taps. As a result everything was done in no time. We shook hands with some folks and I had to ask Axel, who’s that and who’s that? I got introduced, as I am always on this day, to the same people again. I can never remember their names or their faces.

And then I get to vent to Axel, also a ritual because I do it every year, about the glorification of war and the death of our men (and now women) in uniform. I do understand the rituals and the commemoration – thinking of people who died in uniform, and I like the small town community feel, but I could do without the military flavor and the presence of all these uniforms.

What bothers me in particular is the idea that they died for an ideal. This may have been true for WWII but I can’t find the noble goals in all the other war that came afterwards.  I hear people say that those who died, died for the ‘American flag and everything it stands for.’

To me, all those who died (this includes the enemy as well who were alegedly just as patriotic and fighting for their own noble goal) did so because of the psychodynamics of their leadership, the ones who waged the wars; those few men at the top, all driven, in one way or another by childhood traumas, egos under assault, hurt pride and having a surfeit of testosterone.

What were we fighting for in Vietnam, exactly? Having just been there and seen the particular flavor of communism that allows Vietnam to sign the biggest trade deal ever with America, one cannot help wonder what all the fuss was about, a ‘fuss’ that wreaked havoc, both here and there. Why? Because a beloved American president figured it was better to stay put in that part of the world to uphold his image of being tough on communism until after his hoped for re-election. But he didn’t live to see the day, and then everything spiraled out of control. I firmly believe that our messes are for the most part self-inflicted; this is true for individuals and the spheres they govern, whether families or whole countries. Just watch Trump.

For the second or maybe third time in a row I am missing Faro’s birthday. Early June seems to be traveling time – though I suppose every month is traveling time these days.  We decided to spend a good part of Memorial Day weekend with Sita and Jim so I could give Faro his present. As it turned out, I also got enlisted to assemble his parents present to him.

Our present was a little nostalgic – a scooter.  Not the dinky little foldable one with the tiny wheels, but one with air tires. It looks like the scooters that were around when I was a child, except much fancier. It has handbrakes (my brakes where my feet) and a skull and crossbones on the step plate. It came in a box on Thursday and I assembled it under the watchful eye of Axel and Woody and with the help of a martini and some wrenches.

Scooters, in my youth, were called “autopeds” or a “steps” though sometimes we called them “autosteps.” They are actually neither autopeds nor steps as there is nothing auto about the propulsion. It’s actually very hard work, especially when going uphill (no uphills in my childhood), and even more so when Faro decides it is much more fun to stand on the plate and let Oma do the ‘stepping.’

We spent two very hot days in western Massachusetts, sometimes wishing we were on the eastern seaboard and cooling off in Lobster Cove – it would certainly have been several degrees cooler there. But Western Massachusetts is an attractive place to be. We (including Sita) sometimes fantasize about renting out our house on Lobster Cove for oodles of money and getting a small place in western MA. The fantasy is postponed until I don’t have to commute to work anymore – maybe within the next 5 years.

For kids Sita’s neighborhood is wonderful. There is Look Park in Florence, with its train rides, picnic areas and playgrounds. There is also the river with its perfect river beaches and swimming spots that have enough of a current to stay relatively clean, a sandy bottom and little fish to chase after.  Faro has been going to swimming lessons, a Christmas present, and I was curious to see his progress, which was not as great as I had hoped.

Faro’s parents gave him a Bucky climbing structure that needed assembly. We worked on that with sweat dripping down our brows – it was a little bit too hot to do so in full sunlight – but we persevered and had it up in less than 24 hours.  The structure is about 10 feet wide and 6 feet tall. Faro got the hang of climbing on to the lower parts in no time, still a little anxious about swinging like a monkey. I would have loved to have a climbing structure like that when I was his age. We used trees instead.

Sita had given us a walk with a bird expert for Christmas. It was one of those wonderful ‘experience’ presents that she is good at finding and giving. I had taken the day of to cash in our gift.  On this beautiful spring day we met Ben, our guide, at the Mass. Audubon Joppa Flats Education center, a structure that had not existed when we lived in that area.

After we exchanged our dinky little binoculars with two more serious ones borrowed from the center , we set out, first by car, to Plum Island, stopping along the way when he heard a warbler sound. Ben knows birds by their song. They are hard to see in the foliage and the flit from branch to branch so fast that it is hard to find them with our binoculars.

There were other birders looking for the warblers and they exchanged information and clues, using a language I hardly understood. I learned that the warblers exist in many sizes and colors, some weighing as little as 3 grams, less than a nickel, and others as much as 10. The colors vary by sex and age. It was hard to remember all these details, but that is why we have bird books.

The walk made me realize how much live is going on around us, invisible but audible. The bugs eat the juicy new leaves of the trees (warblers like to hang out in oaks), the birds eat the bugs and cross fertilize and we are all the better for it.

That night I dreamed of birds and my bilingual brain was searching for the Dutch name of warblers. I woke up thinking that I knew but when I looked it up I had been wrong; my sleepy brain had found the Dutch word for chickadees (koolmees) but not warblers, which turned out to be a ‘tuinfluiter’ in Dutch. Tuinfluiter means, literally,  ‘garden whistler.’  In the process of my research I discovered that the warbler belongs to the genus ‘Sylvia’ – this must be my bird.

A week ago I was flying back from Holland, with a tremendous urge to see my grandkids. We were going to see them this weekend. But the potatoes that we had ordered from the Maine Potato Lady were beckoning and we postponed our visit to next weekend (Memorial Day weekend).

The potatoes had arrived while we were away and had not received the care prescribed on the information leaflet tucked in with them. They had developed thin leggy sprouts and were screaming out to be planted.

Planting, we knew, required preparing the garden. It was one of those self-generating tasks: before you know it you are looking at a long list of to dos that aren’t half as much fun as the planting.  A large pile of Essex Gold was deposited on the lawn and needed to be scooped into wheelbarrows, spread over the garden and then dug in – all heavy labor which mostly fell on Axel.  It is now two days ago we did this and the muscles are still very sore from bending and scooping and pushing and pulling.  I am beginning to think we ought to pay someone else to do this for us.

While we in Ha Long Bay and kayaked and hiked and biked, a young couple from Belgium told me they could not imagine their parents (presumably our age), could do what we did; that made me feel good. I thought about my parents when they were our age. My father would not have been doing what Axel did because he was already dead at 70 minus two months. My mother might have been weeding, which I think I can do until my nineties if I live that long, but probably not the loading of a wheel barrow with heavy dirt.

I cut back the raspberries, fed the shallots, garlic and asparagus and pulled up anything I didn’t like. And when that was done it was time for our houseplants to go on vacation. This meant more wheelbarrowing, more lifting and cleaning the sticky stuff that gets deposited on our plants by the end of the winter, and not just our plants: on the floor, curtains, woodwork and furniture. This too was a self-generating task.

When I am waiting for planes or in doctors or dentists offices with internet I often go to the LinkedIn site and scroll through all the names that are suggested.  It is a bit of a trip down memory lane as the algorithm digs deep into my past and finds people I haven’t seen in decades. Sometimes I sent of a whole slew of contact requests, just for the fun of it.

One woman, who I had met when I was still active in the Company of Friends circle of Boston, decades ago, accepted my contact request. I didn’t even know her that well. Her accepting my invite led to a series of email exchanges culminating in lunch at a restaurant near my work place in Medford on May 18.

I learned that she was a child of China’s Cultural Revolution. She told me how she was forced to do criticize her parents (scientists) and complete obedience to the system.  Now, all these years later, deep into her adulthood, she is still battling the remnants of this brainwashing.  She got a degree in Astro-Physics from one of the world’s most famous universities. But the stars are not the object of her seeking these days. She studies people and this is what we talked about.

Here, in front of me, was yet another victim of a large scale social experiment that went south. I have read inside stories from the Khmer Rouge experiment, and, on my way home from Holland, finished a book (Pauper Paradijs) of a social experiment done with good intentions but going completely off the track in Holland in the 19^th century.  By putting poor people, drifters and others not fitting in, in a colony up north in what was called the Dutch Siberia. The experiment lasted a few generations and did terrible damage to people whose great-grandchildren are now trying to unravel the story of their ancestors; all in the hope of abolishing once and for good poverty.

This story, or rather piece of his-tory, belongs into the collection of ‘Social Experiments Gone awry on a Large Scale,’ where it lives with the Cultural Revolution, Hitler’s racial improvement experiments, ISIL’s religious experiment, the Khmer Rouge’s return to the land experiment and many others.  Utopias turned Maltopias.

The causal reasoning about how life works, how poverty and economic growth happens that led the architects of these plans so hopelessly astray, is alive and well in the run-up to our presidential elections. Aside from our capacity to harm each other with intent, we may have an even bigger capacity to harm each other with the best of intentions.

There were more moments I came to regret not taking the plane from Penang to Bangkok – we left Georgetown at the end of the morning to get to the station in time for a 1h15 PM departure. This turned out to be 2PM. Our train to Bangkok was number 36 and looked more like a commuter train. It was a local (no facilities) to the border which was 3 hours away. We stopped at small stations and at places in between. The airco system chugged along with some effort and not very effectively.

There were more regrets when we got to the border. The border crossing was easy; no stern immigration and custom officers here. We were greated by a friendly overweight man in a uniform that didn’t close. There was some sort of a trajectory through immigration and customs but when you were done you where exactly where you started and everyone passed freely between the two countries. The numbere of passengers was small; everyone recognized everyone else quickly. If you didn’t need a stamp in your passport you could have slipped easily from Malaysia into Thailand or the other way around.

I had had some naïve idea that a spiffy night train with the sleepers we had ordered would be waiting for us at the border crossing. It was not to be and I realized that this is the difference between a middle income country (our train from KL to Butterworth was very spiffy with an electronic display of the speed at all times and Harry Potter playing on a screen next to it).

Here in borderland it was very hot and very humid, and when we realized our train was still making its way from Bangkok the heat and humidity increased significantly.  We killed the time eating in the upstairs eating establishment until we realized that heat rises.

We had obtained the tickets through a byzantine process that involved multiple emails, a middleman and a courier carrying our ticket from Bangkok to Butterworth (our starting point). It was a trust fall if ever there was one. The courier, carrying a green apron, delivered our tickets and presented us with dinner options: chicken, beef or vegetarian, tea or coffee and a sandwich for breakfast. We ordered four beers; all this for 20 dollars. (Later we learned alcohol was forbidden on the train and the breakfast sandwich never materialized).

When the train was delayed he brought us the 4 cold beers on the customs inspection tables which we briefly had to evacuate for the passengers coming from Bangkok. It was a good sign because it meant our train was there, it just needed to change track and move its locomotive to the front.

We found our places in car number 9 and discovered that there was not much room for luggage. With our two small pieces we managed but the family that came after us had a challenge with its 6 boxes, two giant suitcases, and countless assorted bags. There were other people with luggage like that.. The suitcases and boxes, not fitting anywhere else, were piled up in the narrow corridor between the seats. I thought of the flight attendants at the end of a flight warning us to keep blankets from blocking egress. Blankets now seemed harmless compared to these boxes upon boxes. A quick escape in case of an accident would be very challenging.

As we realized quickly the train was of a different type than the one in Malaysia. It reminded me of the sleeper trains I took in my youth on vacations to Switzerland and Austria, an old workhorse, well-worn, with little inkling about the coming electronic era, internet, and electronic gadgets that need constant charging.

As if the week wasn’t already full enough between two trips, I registered for a two day workshop offered to MSH staff, Fierce Conversations. It was a remarkable distillation of psychology and practical tips and techniques for holding team, coaching, delegation and confrontation conversations, expertly packaged and turned into an industry. It shows what ‘productizing’ can do.  I marvel at how critical pieces of my 250 hour coaching training were condensed into a two hour session. Now that is focus!

Participating in an 8:30 to 5 workshop every day, when my alarms goes off at 4:30AM, makes for very long days. The early morning hours were for finishing tasks that were due by Friday and for taking care of other business before I head out for an entire month on Sunday. Even though I am in an 8 hour workshop, the rest of my work life doesn’t stop – this is the early morning shift, a variation on the late night shift when I am 12 hours ahead on the other side of the world.

Still the workshop was worth ervy minute, very handy, not just for me but also for my teaching others. I got some good ideas and enjoyed the hours I spent with colleagues, mostly younger, who I didn’t know that well.  They are so lucky to have this opportunity – I wished I had known about these techniques when I started out. I learned things the hard way, as most others of my generation.

On Friday I ticked off nearly everything on my deadline list and closed my computer to go on a shopping spree with Axel – we are having our annual spring ritual, an Easter egg hunt that has roots deep in my childhood past. We haven’t missed a year, since we restarted the ritual in the US, in 1985.  But this year we are making one big change: the cheap Easter candies that we usually put in the bags to be hunted for across our property are replaced with seed packets. After my sugar conversion I couldn’t get myself to buy these candies for others. Some sugar is still in the bag, but of a slightly higher grade: a couple of mini stroopwafels, ginger cookies and dark chocolate almonds; the bags need some weight to stay put.