Sylvia's Journal

This week turned out a bit different than I had expected. I had expected to go to work but there was not much to do in Medford. Aside from the fact that I had no billing code, I already had done my required 80 hours during my Philippines assignment and so I would essentially be working unpaid overtime.

I happen to have a great friend as a supervisor and she agreed that it made no sense to drive in and out and spending my office hour on unimportant tasks and chitchat.

And so I took care of health and beauty needs such as teeth, hair, shoulder and ankle. The latter had acted up during my last few trips and the nerve damage that probably happened during surgery got worse. I decided to try acupuncture to calm the upset nerves and open the way for whatever blocked energies had accumulated.

Bill is our acupuncturist in Gloucester. He is a friend of Tessa and I trust him with my life, or any body part. Acupuncture doesn’t actually deal with body parts, unlike our health system, and this is what I like about acupuncture.

Bill observed that I was quite stressed. I tend to deny such assertions nearly as a reflex, but then he got me thinking.  It took me about 24 hours to realize how very stressed I was, and that this might have something to do with my poor sleeping pattern and how I feel after eating just about anything.

Since mid-May, or maybe I should go back to January, I have been ‘on’ without much of a break. The only breaks may have been the brief vacation with Axel in Chiang Mai and the hours I spent in forced idleness inside planes. But even that idleness wasn’t very idle, writing reports, studying assignment documents and finishing the embroidered wall hanging for Saffi. And then there was the arrival of Saffi, also not altogether stress free.  And then the complete overhaul of our organizational structure, lay-offs and funding shortfalls and my wondering where my next assignments (read: employment) will come from if not from overseas work.

If I needed to justify my high stress levels, I think I have just done so. Now the cure. I subscribe to something that can be called an ‘electronic cutting service plus.’  May Popova, who I heard interviewed on NPR some months ago, produces a wonderfully eclectic newsletter Brain Pickings.

I promptly subscribed because I liked how her brain worked. Her latest newsletter came at exactly the right time. She writes about the tyranny of work/life balance and assembled some great thinkers about leisure, then added her own wisdom, which is remarkable for a person much younger than I am. “[…] And yet the most significant human achievements between Aristotle’s time and our own – our greatest art, the most enduring ideas of philosophy, the spark for every technological breakthrough – originated in leisure, in moments of unburdened contemplation, of absolute presence with the universe within one’s own mind and absolute attentiveness to life without, be it Galileo inventing modern timekeeping after watching a pendulum swing in a cathedral or Oliver Sacks illuminating music’s incredible effects on the mind while hiking in a Norwegian fjord.” Amen to that! I am taking her collected wisdom about leisure with me off-the-grid when we go to Maine this coming Saturday.

Today will be the completion of Saffi’s first week in the world. We are all glad it is over as it was a rather trying week. Sita and baby were discharged on Wednesday night. Our plan had worked: the baby had gained a few grams and the hospital staff relented, sending Sita home with some fifty tiny bottles of formula. Later we realized they were about to expire, another item to get out of the hospital as they would otherwise have to be discarded.

Being at home made all the difference. The stress melted like snow in the sun. Sita and Jim were finally able to settle into their new rhythm without uniformed staff interrupting them constantly. The baby met her regular pediatrician who noticed more weight gain and so we are on the path to normalcy. Sita hopes to be done with the formula and pumping after more weight gain is recorded at the next weigh-in on Monday.

Faro is beginning to act out a bit, being a little rambunctious and testy. We try to be gentle with him and Sita gives him special attention when the baby is asleep. The baby’s presence in his life is no longer an abstraction. With Saffi living in his house, and worse,  in his mammy’s and papa’s bedroom, we try to be understanding of the turmoil in his little head.

He was distracted from all the changes by a visit from his cousin who is 6 months older. They had a good time running around the yard and playing on the gym set. Faro was like a little puppy, getting wet in the small pool and then rolling around in the dirt, stuffing mouthfuls of dirt in his face and then looking up to see our reaction.

We had celebrated Axel’s 69 nine birthday the day before. We gave him an etching that he had drooled over some 6 months ago in Manchester’s second hand store, The Stock Exchange. He had researched the etching and had debated buying it. Then one day it was gone and he regretted not making a decision earlier. What he didn’t know is that Sita and I had bought it. He was very surprised to see it again. I also gave him Ottlenghi’s vegetarian cookbook (Plenty). He went straight to work and by Friday night we had already tried three of the recipes, all of them enormous improvements on the hospital food Sita and Jim had lived on for nearly a week.

It was nice to be on vacation, even though it included vacuuming and running errands. I did finish at least one of my trip reports, my expense reports, responded to a few emails and dealt with an email hacking scare, but all is settled down now. This is a good thing as the next trip is already staring me in the face: Thursday I am off to Manila.

Axel and I quickly settled into our new grandparents’ routine. I continued to live out of my suitcase, wearing the same clothes as I did in Madagascar and Lomé. They were too cold for Madagascar, and just right for the temperatures in Lomé and too much for the heatwave in Easthampton.

While Jim slept at the hospital we got Faro up in the morning, brought him to school and then continued to the hospital. Sita was recovering very slowly from the ordeal and in considerable pain. The hospital procedures and rules did not help.

One night I traded places with Jim and spent the night with Sita. It was a sleepless night for both of us. It was an eyeopener for me as I compared this experience with having Tessa at the Beverly hospital birth center 30 years ago.

Although the nurses were nice, except for one we quickly referred to as nurse Ratchet, the stream of specialists interrupting all hours of the day and night is maddening – nurses for this, nurses for that, doctors for this, doctors for that, each demanding adherence to rules that didn’t always make sense. I was familiar with the hospital routine that insist that each caregiver first asks name and date of birth before providing care. You’d think that after this was established at first with the assigned medical staff, or if they’d just seen Sita 10 minutes ago, this could be bypassed.  But rules are rules of course and I am sure that the lawyers had a serious talk with the staff. The hospital had gotten some law suits on its hands a few years ago and the ownership changed. I could see the lawyers’ finger prints on everything. Good care is trumped by rule-following.

Even the person bringing the food tray checked name and date of birth; that was new to me. But again, I could see the lawyer waving his or her finger: deliver the food tray to the wrong person and we have a lawsuit on our hands. Can’t they not simply check the name of the room against the person? How many checks are needed? It is beginning to look like the TSA with five different people checking on what the previous person has already done.

When specialist advice went against Sita and my intuition about how to get food into Saffi we consulted the patient rights charter on the hospital’s website. It was written in language that, although meant to be supportive of patients, was more supportive to the hospital’s owners than to us ordinary people. We figured that if Sita used her right to refuse treatment, she’d have to sign all sorts of harsh sounding and unintelligible papers to release the hospital of any and all responsibilities, even those we thought were justified, like not putting Sita’s baby to her breast for long stretches of time the day of Saffi’s birth and the day after.  When Sita questioned the doctor and nurses about that some days later they responded with ‘that was then and now we are here!” Someone was protecting someone from something.

One night when I relieved Sita for a bit taking Saffi into the visitor’s room, so that the exhausted mom could sleep, I found the room both frigid and noisy. A giant industrial blower was turned on, apparently to dry the carpet under a drink dispensing machine. I asked whether they could please turn it off. No one was authorized to do so.

By day 5 we were told that the baby was still losing weight and she had apparently crossed a line that got alarm bells going. Having seen Faro losing much more than that three years ago and seeing him now, Sita and I were not concerned. But the doctor and nurse Ratchet were;  another rule got activated and formula was added to her regime. Sita and I resisted until we were told that under these circumstances Sita could be discharged but not the baby.  Since our objective was to get out of the place as fast as we could, we relented and embarked on a weight gain campaign and never mind the method.  Saffi obliged, gained a bit of weight and Sita and baby were discharged in the evening. Everyone is home now and we can make our own rules.

The nice people of Delta upgraded me to business class for the long flight to Boston. Usually I don’t consider this a long flight but when you are rushing home seven plus hours is very long. The upgrade made the wait easier and allowed for a glass of champagne to toast myself to my new granddaughter.

Axel picked me up for the ride to the Northampton hospital in Western Massachusetts, where Sita and Saffi were recovering from the ordeal of childbirth. That too was a long ride, especially the bottleneck on the Mass Turnpike where holidaymakers were jamming up the road to points south such as New York and New Jersey, returning from their New Hampshire and Maine vacations.

I found Sita and Saffi, both exhausted but looking good in the maternity ward, surrounded by family and friends. I finally got to hold little Saffi, her eyes firmly closed and probably hoping she was still in the womb and all these noises and lights would go away. During the night she perks up, when everyone is gone and the lights are dim.

Unlike Faro who was rushed off to specialist care in the nursery, and emerged with tubes coming out and going in several body parts, Saffi was unblemished, although she did have a low-jack box around her ankle to prevent her from being snitched away by a stranger, and bands around both ankles to tell who she was.

We stayed for the week to help Jim with the logistics of another child and a diabetic cat. We held the fort at home while Jim kept his two girls company in the hospital.

Faro took everything in stride although he was barely interested in his new sister, holding her only one for the obligatory ‘new sibling’ picture, including the kiss. But that was enough. He did inquiry whether she was talking and pooping, two important activities in the life of a 3 year old.

Just as I was boarding the AF flight out of Lome word came through that our second grandchild had arrived at about 3 PM in the afternoon on Saturday July 25, weighing in at some 8 pounds. I believe her name is Saffi but I can’t get anyone to answer the phone in the middle of the night in Easthampton. I spent the day anxiously waiting for news after hearing in the middle of Friday night that Sita had been admitted to the hospital and that a Cesarean was likely to happen yesterday. I kept beating myself up for not having taken the Friday night flight to Paris, but who could have known? The girl wasn’t scheduled to arrive until August 1.

I had made an appointment for a massage on Saturday at the end of the day, but I completely forgot about it. I was too busy preparing for the two day workshop that started in just a few days on a topic I did not really master. It required reading a hundred page facilitator manual. When I was finally done, with at least a good grasp of the material, the overall design of the workshop done and the first day micro design completed, I contacted the home front. Until Friday I had not had an internet connection in my room, so it was a big luxury to talk to my family from the comfort of my room. I got so excited about these conversations that I forgot about the massage. When I realized this the spa was closed and would remain so during all of my remaining after work hours in Tana.

Sunday I started to get sick. In Ampefy I was fine but in Tana I seem to get sick. I wonder whether it is an allergic reaction to Tana and its dust. My colleagues think I get sick because of the cold weather and tell me to get a scarf to protect my throat, as if a cold comes from a cold throat. Frankly, they have no idea what cold weather is; with 46 degrees at night and high 60s during the day, this is rather a mild climate, requiring nothing more than my well worn suede jacket.

My cold started just like last time, in my throat, followed by a cough and then sinus problems. But so far it hasn’t gotten as bad as quickly as last September when I need a doctor to come to my hotel room; besides I was prepared with my Mucinex, Day- and Nyquil and saline spray. I bought lemons and salt in the supermarket across the hotel, combining home remedies with OTC drugs.

On Monday I told my local colleagues to be prepared to run the two day workshop on their own in case I would lose my voice completely.  Luckily they are very savvy trainers and with the training manual available (in French) I knew they would be able to handle such a contingency.

As it turned out, they ran the entire first day with me on sidelines, coach rather than trainer, which is actually the role I like to play best. This also allowed the workshop to be done in the local language, which was only translated when necessary to get my input.

On Monday I visited the shoulder doctor for the 3 months checkup. I had planned to ignore the summons as I find these check-up visits not a good use of time or money, but this time I went. While in Kampala my ‘good’ rotator cuff slipped a little out of its socket and left me with no strength at all in my right arm. This was a problem because I am not supposed to carry anything heavier than a coffee cup with my left arm. Luckily I was travelling with a colleague who carried the stuff I could no longer carry.

Eventually things got better. The rotator cuff must have slipped back in place and slowly my strength, what little I have in my right arm, returned. I started to worry about having to have yet another operation. My physical therapist had a name for what happen, a sub lux, and taught me how to push the rotator cuff back. The doctor told me there was a solution to this problem (in all likelihood created by the overuse of my right arm while the left is recovering); it is a reverse shoulder replacement. I am hoping that this will never be necessary, what with the left arm starting strength training in a few weeks. I am kind of tired of surgeries and the long recovery process of healing tendons and bones.

In the meantime I touched down for two days at work where things are a little bit in limbo because we are changing our organizational structure. I presume that by the time I come back from my next trip, later this month, the dust will have settled a bit more.

During our long drive home yesterday from DC we talked about the weeks I was busy, what I had learned and facilitation assignments ahead. One Big Thing I learned (the same question I asked the conference participants during the wrap up session on Friday) has something to do with balance and imbalance.

In the middle of last week there was a moment where I had completely lost my balance. I was able to look back at that moment and my reaction to the event and realized that imbalance is actually a good thing, even though it may not feel that way at the moment. It was as if I had fallen into a hedge and came out the other end. Behind the edge, in a Secret Garden sort of way, was a whole new field full of interesting vistas promising things I had not thought about before and raising new questions I had not pondered before.

We tend to look for balance in our lives, convinced that balance is a good thing; thousands of books have been written about it. But maybe balance is boring. Falling and getting up, stumbling over things may seem a bad way to move, but if I would be given a choice now, I think I’d continue with the stumbling. All these moments of imbalance in my past, recent and long ago, have made life so much more interesting and have contributed so much to my learning, that I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

I have been back for more than a week. It was a rather frantic week with long days and early rises so that I could relax this week which is a vacation week.  So far I have managed to ignore emails for one whole day, Monday!

In the meantime Faro turned 3, last Saturday, a joyous day spent in the Nonotuck park in Easthampton amidst a bunch of 0-3 years old, family and friends and an abundance of food. Faro, who has not been exposed much to sugar discovered cupcakes, and in particular frosting. We are indulgent with birthday kids and so he was able to lick the frosting off at least a few cupcakes before we drew a line.

Sunday we worked in the garden, a good workout after a mostly sedentary life of months, no years. The asparagus are popping up, the leeks and onions are thriving in this wet spring, the potatoes foliage is looking healthy, the spinach not quite discovered by the rabbits and the garlic looks vigorous. The more delicate plants were a little perturbed by all that rain, which followed me from Holland back to the US.

Axel and Tessa returned from their mission to Palm Springs experiencing everything that is wrong with air travel, spending about 24 hours to get back home. Tessa negotiated that half the miles used for the trip got re-deposited, plus some extras, as the delays messed up her work week that is now even more frantic. She too has to clear her desk before she heads out with me to Holland for a more fun occasion, the wedding party of my youngest brother where she has a chance to re-connect with her uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews. She negotiated with me about Steve coming along (he is). She should have been a lawyer!

My big sister Ankie arrived with her husband yesterday afternoon. We celebrated their arrival with Lobster and corn on the cob, strawberries and cream. Except for the weather it is summer!

It’s hard to stop the memory machine, my brain, thinking, sometimes even obsessing, about the events of the last few days. It has been hard to fall asleep, despite having skipped a few nights; and then I wake up late, hours past my usual wake up time at sunrise.

I spent 24+ hours in Amsterdam, walking, talking with my friend A. who helped me through the difficult breakup with Peter time 37 years ago. We revisited every corner of our memory in the hope of being able to put all that to bed, including how our relationship had evolved over these three-plus decades.

The weather was nasty on Friday and I felt sorry for the tourists in the canal boats who couldn’t see much through the window panes with the rains streaking against them. If they had only one day for Amsterdam they’d had bad luck.

Saturday was better. We visited the superbly renovated Hermitage museum. An exhibit of Hollanders van de Gouden Eeuw (The Dutch in the Golden Century) revealed how much the current approach to governance has its roots in how wealthy Dutch Burghers organized themselves to govern the country. A basic tenet was that poverty and hunger were bad for commerce because such conditions would only foment dissatisfaction and revolt; as a result a system of caring for the ‘unfortunate’ was put in place by the wealthy burgers as both a Christian obligation and a way to keep the population if not happy, then at least temporarily satisfied and beholden to their benefactors. Over the years this system of paternalistic caring has been handed over to the state, now more as a human right than a gesture of Christian compassion.

When we re-emerged from the museum the sun was out and things looked up. Amsterdam is a great place to walk around and watch people when the sun is out. We had a nice lunch in a tiny place, a simple ‘broodje met oude kaas’ (a roll with old Dutch cheese) and a glass of karnemelk (buttermilk) which is about as good a lunch as one can get.

Back at A’s house we sorted out my return trip by bus to Aalsmeer from where I will return to Schiphol tomorrow.