Sylvia's Journal

Our MSH party at Lobster Cove finally happened, on the most beautiful day of the fall; the kind of day we call ‘a ten plus.’ But few people showed up. It was Columbus Day weekend; a long weekend for some, which many celebrate by going to the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont, for a hike in the orange, red and golden woods.

Those who sat in the shade warmed themselves around a fire pit while others sat on the beach in their summer clothes, watching small kids play in the water, seemingly unaware of the water temperature. Axel was the only adult in swim gear and who got wet; he was too good a target for the four year olds with their buckets, and already wet.

I had hoped to bring MSHers together and recognize that we are more than the official functions and roles we play in the organization.  Being in flux, reorganizing, laying off and hiring has left many of my colleagues (and sometimes myself) quite vulnerable. This kind of vulnerability is easily transformed into judging and blaming, black and white kinds of distinctions, dividing lines splitting us into good people and bad people, those who are competent and those who are not. These judgments are harsh, like rubbing sandpaper on bare skin. When I first proposed to open our house/yard and beach to everyone in our Medford office, the offer was greeted with great enthusiasm, more than forty people signed up. People agreed that we needed to relax together and re-discover each other, the person behind the role; the mother of small kids, the wife, the husband or lover, the grandma or auntie. But then there was a hurricane and we postponed by a week. We did get to see some aunties and grandmas and moms and husbands, and it was good. But I would have liked to see some more as I don’t think the outing to Lobster Cove will make much of a difference.

Axel has an enormous collection of Indian music in addition to a bunch of Indian playlists on Spotify. Only on the mornings when I stay home do I get to listen to them. I like the Indian music, especially the peppy songs. I can imagine the music videos that one could make with that music.

But this morning, before heading out to his yoga class he put on very mournful Indian music. I recognize some of the Hindi words that probably come from Persian, and which I learned in my Dari classes; words, like zendagi (life) and hamkara (colleagues).

The combination of these words and the mournfulness of the music make me think of M. whose young son died about a month ago, after we came back from Maine. I talked with her before we went to Maine and she was bored in her new life in Amman, waiting anxiously for her two boys to be back in school. Their school in Afghanistan had closed more than half a year before because of threats and the boys had been climbing up the walls, until they left for Amman. And now this; zendagi, life, and then it is gone, suddenly. I have only electronic means to comfort her but it doesn’t work. I don’t think there is room for electronics in her grief. I remain a very sad bystander.

And then there was P, whose wedding I attended in Kerala in 2010 and who was going to have a baby about the same time that Saffi was born. But she died at the start of this year due to an ectopic pregnancy and life ended, for P and her baby to be. My friend, her mother in law, posted pictures on facebook of the happy couple and my heart broke. It’s breaking over and over again as this Indian music tells about other lives that ended long before old age took over, and of the grief stricken survivors. As a Quaker, we are using language such as ‘holding people in the light,’ the ones who have gone and the ones who are still here. Sometimes I wonder, does this light thing actually touch people they way I would like it to?

We are trying to unclutter our house. I emphasize the word trying because we are not very successful. For every book we get rid of, two new ones appear. This morning I threw out sauce packets that may well date back to our time in Beirut (1976-1978) or Senegal (1979-1981) or New York (1981-1983). I want to avoid that, after we have passed on, our children and their friends who are cleaning up our house make fun of us.

I also found two camping meals, dried up spaghetti and lasagna that must be at least 15 years old. Axel wants to try them. I should have thrown them out before he woke up.

We ought to be in a stage of our lives where we disquire rather than acquire but we are failing hopelessly. I sorted through my clothes a year ago, ashamed of how much we have compared with people who have nothing. I remember visiting houses in one of Dhaka’s poor urban neighborhoods. People have no closets – they have bars tacked to the wall of their hut and they hang their one or two outfits over those bars. Or, closer to home, the Shaker village of West Gloucester in Maine where one hangs one’s clothes on pegs on the wall.

That year ago I had put clothes I never wear in a paper bag. I could not bring myself to dump the bags in one of the containers for recycled clothing and instead put them somewhere out of sight in my office. When my office got too cluttered I found the bags, unpacked them, ironed the crinkled clothes and put them back on hangers. Sigh.

In a week we dropped nearly 30 degrees (Fahrenheit). If last weekend was a 10+, this weekend looks like a 3-.  We had planned an MSH outing to Lobster Cove this weekend. We had picnics, swimming and playing in the water in mind, but the weather did not cooperate. We had to cancel it and postponed it to next week. I fear we were too late; fall is here.

I finished the Aran sweater I have worked on in Maine and in planes. It turned out to be Axel’s size. I am a loose knitter and should have followed the instructions for the smallest size. Axel declined. It’s a girl’s sweater. And so I took it apart again, shortening the sleeves and fudging with the width, using a sewing machine. A little frustrating but I am not ready to unravel the whole thing and start over.

I am in between assignments at work and cobbling together odd jobs to earn my salary and overhead for the company. This includes small writing assignments which I can do from home. I can work well at home, have the discipline, and love that I can stay in my pajamas if the weather is lousy.

Every now and then we join Sita and her family on Facetime and see Saffi grow. She is in her third month now, smiles a lot and is becoming a little person in her own right, rather than just a baby. Faro looks huge next to her.

We also talk with Tessa now and then, getting updates on her babies, the chickens. They are a source of many good stories. These are about findings stashes of eggs (some already rotten) in surprising places, a swimmer among the chicks, a predator in the neighborhood (a bear? A wolf? A coyote?) that leaves feathers and bones and relationships with the dogs. It’s a tale of …and then there were 11, then 10, then a new cohort, then fights of dominance among the new and the old chickens. It is quite a drama and Tessa appears to love it, telling the stories with flair. It seems to me a good distraction, though sometimes too much, from her endless hours in front of her computer screen.

September is one of my favorite months. I arrived back in Boston under blue skies and a perfect temperature. When we arrived home I put on my bathing suit and went for a swim. After that we sat on the beach, Axel was experimenting with water color mixing and I finished the final row of the second sleeve of my Aran cardigan that I started  in Maine. Long airplane rides are perfect for knitting, especially when accompanied by a great book. The latter was Atul Gawande’s ‘Being Mortal.’ I finished both the book and the sweater. Now comes the blocking and assembly. I hope that I have just enough yarn to finish the neck.

I had a quick Skype call with a team in Brasilia that is starting a event that is similar to the one I just finished in Kinshasa. I passed on the lessons I had learned and wished them well. I returned to the beach which had gotten a lot bigger with the tide was going out. Since tonight is one of the highest high tides of the entire year (12.2 feet), we also witnessed one of the lowest low tides. The cove was nearly completely empty. We checked the mussel population (still disappointing) and scooped up several dozen large oysters. They have settled in well. Five years ago we marveled over the occasional tiny oyster and now there are hundreds of them, including some very large ones.

We had a dinner made entirely from things we caught or grew: a leek, squash and eggplant stir fry, home fries from our giant potatoes and oysters. Only the wine was imported. It was a blissful end of a trip and a blissful beginning of my next intermezzo at Lobster Cove before I head out again on dates unknown. Facetime with the kids and grandkids put the finishing touches on a wonderful homecoming.

I missed the lunar eclipse. After a trip that took about 30 hours door to door, eight o’clock was a sensible bed time for me.

It is now Sunday morning; one wedding and one memorial service after my last post. The wedding took place on Friday at a beautiful estate west of Boston. There are several of these jewels hidden in the woods around Boston. They harken back to the good old days when wealth could buy you distance from the misery of poor city dwellers; wide vistas, big lawns cut by hired hands, verandas to catch the sun or shade from it any time of the day, light everywhere and rain spouts made from copper.

The weather was on our side – a lovely late summer afternoon amidst family and friends, good food, good drinks and a smiling couple. For me it was also a reunion of sorts as the bride and groom had met in Afghanistan as MSH employees. It was thus also a coming together of MSH’s Afghan hands, including its founder; some flying in from as far as France and Japan. Most are still with MSH except the bride and groom.

I was paying close attention to the many creative touches of the wedding organizers. Exactly one year from now Tessa and Steve will wed. Years ago when the date was picked we thought it was an eternity, but now we are getting close.

The next day we paid our respects to Axel’s cousin Anne who died this summer, succumbing to two vicious cancers.  Axel and Tessa had gone out to California to say their goodbyes.

Anne’s husband flew to Manchester with her ashes. We had a brief service at the graveside where her mom and dad are buried. Many from her high school class were there as many had remained in the neighborhood. Family from Cape Ann, New York and the South Shore also attended. And so we had another reunion, this time at our house, which lasted into the evening. We looked at pictures and reminisced, enjoying, for a second day in a row, a beautiful late summer afternoon, in the company of friends and family, with good food, good drink and a swim in Lobster Cove’s clear waters.

The third reunion was with the grand kids and their parents. They stayed the night. I couldn’t be happier. Saffi is now 2 months old and working hard on strengthening her neck muscle, much like I am working hard to strengthen my shoulder except she does it without weights and rubber bands. She has started to explore her surroundings with greater interest and smiles when Faro comes into view. It’s all one big treat. And now breakfast: pancakes in honor of Faro.

Faro played in the water with a basketball that had come floating in while Saffi slept in a sling close to her mom, oblivious of the fun to be had at the waterfront.  We climbed rocks, and played around the heavily corroded pipe that drains the Putman estate. Faro likes to climb on top of the 1 foot diameter pipe and sticks his head in. He listens to his words as they reverberate deep inside the pipe, throwing in all the names of his family on the other end of the beach: papa, mama, Saffi, opa and oma.

At lunch time the Easthampton family departed to visit one other set of grandparents before heading home. I took advantage of the cool breeze to clean up that part of the flower garden that was starting to seed itself – it is already a tumble of perennials – so control measures were needed. Removing the many dead stalks also allowed me to get to the hundreds of cherry tomatoes that are ripening on the vine.

Today was the first time that I was not able to swim across the cove or to the mouth of the cove as I have done so many times during the summer. The water was too cold; the kind of cold that hurts when you dive in and isn’t going away within a few strokes. I sputtered and gasped for a short distance and turned around.  I tried again after warming up a bit in the sun but it made no difference – maybe swimming season is over. Something has shifted – it’s fall, and the wind is coming from another direction.

For three days four Fellows of the Japanese Women Leadership Initiative came to MSH to learn about us, about women and leadership, about how we teach management and leadership and how to do political advocacy, NGO financial management and fundraising. It’s a competitive process, to become a Fellow. The prize is worth fighting for: four weeks of learning in Boston; interspersed with sushi meals, dinners, receptions and outings. But it is hard work; one of the Fellows started her Japanese workday by email once we had reached the end of ours.

Last year we were invited into this one month program for a day and a half. Its success led to a request to double the time. I am the chief cook and bottle washer of this program: logistics, administration, delivery. I started working with the same faculty as last year but then this one left and that one got sick and that one sent a replacement, requiring all sorts of last minute corrections. But in the end everything fell in place. This always happen when you are passionate about something. It is an informal program. We sit around a square table and talk for three days in a row about topics we care about. I love doing this workshop which I hope becomes an annual event: it is exactly what I like doing and am good at, without having to get on a plane.

Like any other event, including those that take 24 hours to get to, through the skies, it also makes for long days as there is still travel and traffic: I arrive in the office at 6:15 AM (to avoid traffic and leave me some extra hours to prepare). Our Fellows arrive at 9AM. We stop at 5PM. I clean up, get in the car and hit traffic. 13 hours after I left the house in the morning I pull up at Lobster Cove. Some days I put on my bathing suit and walk straight into the ocean. It’s good that the program is only 3 days and that it is at this most beautiful time of the year when the water is still warm enough to swim in.

I am back at work. Aside from trying to fill my dance card for the next few months (it is nearly filled), I am preparing for a three day workshop next week with four Japanese women selected to be a month in Boston to learn about American NGOs and to strengthen their leadership skills in order to bring about positive social change in Japan and get women to join the effort in droves.

The Japanese Women Leadership Initiative (JWLI) is a 9 year old program that was conceived by an amazing energetic Japanese woman and two American women, one who was my boss once, a long time ago. I have been so privileged to be the lead for this activity at MSH and I am enjoying it enormously. I get to design a program, bring in great people to teach with me, and be invited to sushi dinners at an office high up in the center of Boston with 360 views of the city and its surroundings; really, what more could one wish?

We start next week. I am the chief cook and bottle washer for this event and have been focused primarily on the logistics of pulling this off. Yesterday I had reserved time to focus on the content but other things intervened. I am teaching about leadership, management and good governance as well as political advocacy, the latter two areas where I still need some prep time before we start on Tuesday morning. At the same time I am preparing for my upcoming trip to Kinshasa and figuring out what my role is in a new reconfigured MSH. There are no dull moments and life remains full.

Our Labor Day weekend eased with the transition from summer’s carefree existence to work. The days were 10+ days with blue skies, daily swims in Lobster Cove’s crystal clear waters, cooking meals from the harvest from our garden (leeks, beets, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, bok choi,chard, peppers, fresh herbs), fresh eggs from Tessa’s chickens and offerings from our local farmstand. Life is very good.

I am knitting an aran cardigan. The long vacation days helped me to make good progress. Although for me knitting is usually a winter activity I discovered that I can do it just as well without a fire and a good movie. A good (audible) book, a foggy day or a warm evening are also good conditions for knitting. Even though my travel schedule kicks in shortly, I am sure the cardigan will be done by the first snowfall.

While knitting I have listened to some great books, All The Light We Cannot See, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, The Red Badge of Courage, A Marriage of Opposites, The Boys in the Boat. I so admire the authors of these books. My friend Edith is also an author, in the ‘cozy mystery’ genre. She cranks out book after book, on her 11^th or 12^th now I believe, after she decided that writing was her passion. I started one book for adults, a very long time ago in a moment of inspiration. It never got beyond chapter one. And then there is the children’s book Sita and I are dreaming about. It has been languishing for more than a decade, even though the story is done. But the illustrations, the most important part of a children’s book, are missing. Sita being a working mom of two kids tends to get in the way. We may need to wait until her kids don’t need her attention all the time.