Sylvia's Journal

I was invited to teach meeting design and facilitation skills on the request of some young colleagues. After I figured out how to bill my time I said, yes, and let’s do it before my surgery, meaning it has to happen this week. In preparing for the sessions I pulled out a box with materials I had not looked at for a decade. It turned out to contain the sessions of a Leadership Course I did nearly 15 years ago. In the box I found two letters to self, something I used to do at the end of such courses. One was to a very senior official of the Eastern Cape in South Africa and the other to a young researcher in India. They were sealed but had a little notecard pinned to them indicating what I should ask them about when I would contact them some months after the course. I trust LinkedIn to find these people and then will send the letters.

As I went through the session files I realized I was feeling rather sad. The sessions were full of psychology, creativity and fun. I now teach according to something that was designed by others (or even myself) some time ago and that have to be delivered in a short time following a more or less pre-ordained structure. There no longer seem to be space for the things I used to do and loved to do.

It’s true that as you get older you look back on things with nostalgia; making things in the past appear rosier than they actually were. And although I do remember some of the more painful episodes in my tenure at MSH, when I think back on my nearly 30 years here I realize how blessed I have been, and continue to be, to first find and then follow my real calling and, all along, have a chance to rub it off on others who might find their calling resonant with mine. I am looking forward to the sessions, nearly as much as to my surgery, ha!

Never in my life have I visited a bridal shop. My first wedding dress I made myself and had family members embroider sections. It was a hippy dress, a kaftan with a Peruvian motif which was all the rage in 1980. My second wedding dress was an a regular summer dress I already had. Sita’s wedding dress we bought in Beirut when we vacationed there with the girls in the spring of 2010. We walked by a boutique off Hamra street and saw this exquisite dress made from cloth found in Central Asia. It was love at first sight. We walked around the block one time to take some distance, as the price was rather steep, but came back and Sita tried it on. We bought it right there and then. This was 6 months before her wedding. Problem solved.

But with Tessa, our one and only fashionista in the family, things were bound to be different. She researches things such as clothes, especially a piece of clothing as symbolically important as a wedding dress. She signed herself up for a wedding gown trunk sale at a small wedding dress boutique in upscale Beacon Hill in Boston and the invited her mom and sister to accompany her. A trunk sale, I later learned, is somewhat like a chain letter: you get the trunk, invite people to try out the dressed that are packed in the trunk, try to sell some and then pack everything up and send the trunk to the next wedding gown place.

And so we headed towards Boston in the snow. The bridal boutique is located on the top floor of an old brownstone, with industrial size roof windows and everything painted white. The snow outside, looking over one of Beacon Hill’s main streets complemented the indoor white nicely. The saleslady, understanding my concerns when I saw the three racks with fancy dresses, told me which racks were 2000 dollars and under (I don’t think there was anything under) and the rack where prices ran as high as 7000 dollars.

Tessa tried on about 8 dresses and modeled them to us as if she was a professional model. Sita and I accessorized her with various hair pieces we found in the display cases. I noticed one tiny little bejeweled hair comb for 250 dollars and hoped that Tessa would not be impulsive.

Of course she wasn’t. After the selection of dresses we liked was reduced to four we received the price list. Our favorite was 3000 and the other three were 2000. It’s funny how your perspective changes when you know dresses can be up to 7000 dollars. Suddenly the 2000 dollar dresses seemed like a bargain. Tessa now has a focus for her bargain hunting on the internet, something she is very good at. I don’t think we’ll be spending 2000 dollars on a wedding dress.

We said our goodbyes and told the sales lady we would think about the dresses, had a cup of coffee and then lunch at Life Alive in Cambridge, a very creative vegan restaurant that catered to all our wishes. It was a lovely girls outing and I feel so very blessed with these two remarkable women who entered our lives 29 and 34 years ago.

Since we returned there has been more snow, so much that this winter has now broken all records. It snowed last Sunday and it snowed last night again. All the grimy snow has been covered over by a thin layer of sparkly white snow. That’s the only redeeming factor of the storm last night.

That we have broken all records thanks to last Sunday’s storm is a small comfort. There is still about half a meter of snow covering our yard. The lookout bench by the cove is only now starting to appear. In the morning when I get up, just before dawn, I see wildlife, frantically searching for food – the foxes, the skunks have all woken up to their internal clock that says it is spring, but outside their dens it looks more like the middle of winter. The short-legged ones in particular have a hard time scurrying up the steep snowbanks.

I am thinking of the snowbells and bluebells and crocuses that must have come up, creating tiny caves underneath the icy compacted snow. They will remain white and may never show their colors this spring. It’s the stuff of children books I remember – the coloring that happens underground before the tiny flowers show off to the world. This would be a children’s book about frustrations and setback, the little white darlings returning to their home, throwing temper tantrums, and the color fairy trying to shush them.

The past week I was the chief facilitator of a virtual leadership program with teams from Madagascar, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina and the DRC. After about 5 weeks of getting used to the site and the concept of a blended (virtual and face to face) course, most teams have found their groove but it took a lot of handholding, checking multiple sites and constantly switching back and forth between French and the English of the rest of my work life. I would often start typing an email realizing it was full of ‘q’s’ and ‘z’s’ and punctuations at the wrong places. Why can’t we harmonize the keyboards across languages? As the day continued I would make more and more of these mistakes, a sign of my tiredness.

My nights remain problematic. I wake up many times with my shoulder the sorest in the early hours of the day; as a result I get up as I can’t find a position in bed that relieves the pain. Standing up is better, and if it is a weekday, I might as well start my workday, since Madagascar is 7 hours ahead and I can actually get some phone calls in.

Yesterday I had my pre-operation check in, the EKG, bloodwork and such, and was found to be fit for surgery a week from now. I told the nurse if she had found me unfit I would have thrown a fit, I can’t stand the pain any longer.

Our first day home was a workday for me. I worked from home by telephone and was able to be mildly productive. I took a nap in the afternoon and went to bed early. On Thursday I went in to work for a series of meetings that kept me occupied for a good part of the day but by 3 I started to fade, my eyes red. Still, I didn’t drive home until 5 after I had had a chance to say hello to our various country representatives who were in our office for a week of strategizing and connecting. They were in meetings all day long so I had to park myself ioutside their meeting room to get a chance to say just a quick hello.

Sita, Jim and Faro joined us at dinnertime where Axel showed off his cooking skills with a delicious Pad Thai. But always, when Axel cooks, we eat very late. I don’t know how I was able to stay awake till ten when the meal was finally cooked.

During our absence one of our plants died, the passion flower that is a bit of a Lazarus plant, having died a few times before but always coming back. It is an old plant that we rescued from Axel’s father’s greenhouse and has some sentimental value. We keep our fingers crossed that it will come back again this time.

In the meantime, Sita taught us that the leaves and the twigs are medicinal. She boiled the twigs and crumpled the dried up leaves. It helps with sleep, she told us, and isn’t addictive. Last night I made a cup of passion flower tea and fell asleep instantly, sleeping for four hours without interruption.

Since I fell and hurt my shoulder on November 30 I have not had a full night sleep as the shoulder is particularly painful at night. I often wake up every hour or two hours. So the passion flower-induced sleep is an improvement.

I was cleared by my family doctor for my shoulder surgery and have another clearance procedure next Friday at the hospital, and then it is countdown. I never thought I would look forward to surgery but now I do. I would like to get back to a good night sleep and be done with this constant low grade pain in my shoulder.

It seems every year there is some surgery  that is necessary so I can function as a whole person (again). The ankle, securely fused, now allows me to walk without pain on flat surfaces.  Frozen unpaved surfaces remain a challenge, but I am learning to adjust to that reality which is a whole lot better than what happened to others recently.

After a nice Thanksgiving dinner at Sita’s in laws I slipped on a small patch of ice – my luck – and learned today from the shoulder doctor, supported  by pretty graphic MRI pictures that even I understood, that I managed to tear two tendons, the supra and infra spinatus, which are supposed to keep my (left) shoulder in place, entirely off the bone. Although I had already started on a regimen of physical therapy and anti-inflammatory pills, they cannot repair this, only the surgeon can.  Of the eight tendons that keep my two shoulders in place, one is retracted beyond repair (from the plane crash), one was pulled up and is anchored in the bone, and now these two.  Ughhh.

So I am looking at surgery again. I know the drill now – 6 weeks in a sling, and PT for months.

The year started sadly, only days after all the good wishes and happy thoughts, always for a better year than the last. But the reality is that every new year carries sadness and suffering alongside happiness and joy. A young Dutch/Indian couple, rejoicing in the arrival of their first baby later this year, which they announced on Christmas day to the grandparents, friends of mine in Holland, is no longer a couple. The young woman died on the second day of the new year as the pregnancy turned out to be ectopic and, I assume, medical aid came too late, in far away Bangalore. I am familiar with the statistics of maternal death in India (190 deaths for every 100.000 live births) but when it is someone you know, who happens to be the same age as your own daughter, it is terribly upsetting.

We headed to Easthampton on New Year’s Eve, allowing us to get our Faro-fix and also celebrate the arrival of the New Year with some of our daughter and son-in-law’s closest friends. We made raviolis from scratch sitting around the kitchen table, taking turns at hand cranking the pasta maker, placing dollops of various fillings on the thin bands of dough and stamping the raviolis, square and round. A salad and scallops cooked to perfection rounded out the last meal of 2014.

I had a hard time keeping my eyes open past 10 PM, my usual bedtime. Axel closed his eyes and fell asleep and we woke him up minutes before midnight – as my parents used to do when I was little.

I remember being carried down and placed on the black-tiled window sill, cold to my feet, pressing my nose to the cold glass and watching the fireworks being lighted by the older kids in our street.  Most of the grown-ups would be out, greeting neighbors and standing, arms crossed to stay warm, teeth chattering, exchanging wishes and watching the do-it-yourself fireworks.

Inside it was warm and there was food and warm wine, sometimes champagne and always enormous quantities of runny French cheese and baguettes. I wasn’t interested in the cheese and wine; instead I would go for the leftover chocolates. But the biggest thrill would be to be tolerated among the merry grown-ups. Some years later we would all stay up and play card games until midnight and then go out onto the street and wish our neighbors happy New Year. That is still what happens in Holland: the midnight hour is a signal for a neighborhood to go out and share good wishes; here in the US, if you choose to stay home, New Year’s Eve is a private rather than a community event.

On New Year ’s Day we visited Sita Co.Lab in Easthampton, a large loft in an old mill building, where Sita started her 3^rd business,  a place for young entrepreneurs to work side by side or together, turning ideas into something that produces an income, in an environment that is all about creativity. She’s done a great job in furnishing the place, creating a shared vision, a pricing policy and private, semi-private and common spaces; some are being rented, some not yet. It’s risky business, as all new ventures are, but she’s committed to make it work. Now, for their first time, she and Jim have a real office and we have a place to park our unused furniture, our rugs and old copies of Wired Magazine. Now she needs more toys and things that will stimulate the creative urges of its tenants.

We spent the afternoon assembling IKEA furniture, something I love to do, probably because it is simply a variant on my favorite pastime, the puzzle.

Christmas has come and gone. The dread turned into inspiration. First (even before the 25th) I hung all the christmas light we have that still work, everywhere: around the plants, the windows, the curtains – a tangle of wires. On the outside we also look more Christmassy than ever. I figured I would rise in stature as a homemaker in Tessa’s eyes. The lights were also for Faro of course. When I turned everything on he was mesmerized though I am not sure he even saw the outside lights that Axel tangled with.

As every year I had warned everyone about buying things they couldn’t afford and/or we didn’t need and especially those gifts that would produce more clutter in our already cluttered households (it’s a gene  we both passed on).  I think this year the message took. We gave each other either home-made gifts or clutter-free experiences (like restaurant gift certificates two nights at an inn, swimming lessons), though the teepee that Tessa made for Faro does take up valuable real estate in the Bliss’ already full house.  My present to Steve and Tessa were 6 enormous curtain panels that will keep them a little warmer in their drafty house. It took most of the Christmas week to sew them and line them and hem them, sitting in my temporary workshop set up in the basement. Tessa kept me company while she was making the teepee.

On Christmas Eve we celebrated with one part of Jim’s family, dinner and the traditional Yankee swap, though this time we returned home with several of our own presents. This included a box with the ingredients for Jamaican coffee (coffee, rum and 4 cans of whipping cream). We taught Faro one of my favorite things: spraying the whipped creamed right into one’s mouth. “”More..,more..,” he said in great delight. Now we have another whipped cream junkie in the house.

I had tried to give up on the Chisterklaas ritual of starting our adaptation of Sinterklaas avond late on Christmas Eve and instead do it the next morning – given that we have a toddler in the house who wakes up at 7 AM. But we fell back into old habits and started close to midnight with the preceding hours a frantic burst of activity for most: everyone was busy either writing poems, creating surprises, hiding them all over the house, or finishing projects (like the teepee) – it was, as always, rather stressful, so stressful that I kept walking around muttering ‘this is no fun’ and ‘let’s bag the whole thing.’ Tessa was in tears in the basement working frantically on the teepee with a sewing machine that didn’t cooperate. Only Axel was unaffected; he took a nap and accepted the reality that he was not ready and would not be uuntil the 27th.

And so, despite wanting to orchestrate this otherwise, we couldn’t help ourselves and had our Christerklaas that included IOUs from Tessa and Axel who had not even started their poems.  Our poems hang in the Christmas tree, a novel spin on an old ritual. Jim’s poems are of the literary type, with adapted passages from Keats or Shakespeare or the cleverly composed ‘histories of whatever the present it.’ Sita and my poems have real rhyme and Axel and Tessa’s, well we don’t know yet.

And now the house is nearly quiet with the Blisses departed for Easthampton to pay some attention to their cats since they had been a bit forgotten in the frantic Christmas prep and left to fend for themselves in Easthampton.  Steve arrived very early this morning returning from a long road trip to his family near Toronto. He has had his own franticnness up there and our post-Christmas celebration will be a bit subdued in comparison but welcomed no doubt. We will read the last poems this morning…and be done with Christmas for another year.

I have this tendency to dread Christmas because of all the hoopla about it and then, poof, suddenly it is there and I am not prepared, being so busy with the dreading.  That was one reason why I have not been writing. The other is that my fall on the ice after Thanksgiving is turning out to have some more serious consequences (another dread), requiring an MRI and physical therapy and many anti-inflammation pills, daily. I am rather handicapped in activities of daily living, which includes putting on a coat, pulling up and zippering my pants and drying myself after a shower.

And finally, my long stretch of not traveling has been shortened due to the insertion of a trip to Rwanda before I head out to Ethiopia.  It required a lot of re-scheduling and juggling doctors’ and PT appointments with the requirements of having a full time job. The Christmas vacation, short as it is, comes as a welcome rest stop – now that I think everything is back under, at least the illusion of, control.