Sylvia's Journal

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.

One week into my 64^th year I am settling in to a long routine, uninterrupted by travel. As it stands now my first trip is to Ethiopia at the end of January which I will precede or end with another overnight in Holland, this time at my oldest brother’s new home. Some of us are entering new stages in our lives; moving towards 64 doesn’t seem to be much of a new stage – I am not retiring and not moving.

The Ebola swat and swot teams are taking a considerable amount of my time. I am learning why Uganda, Nigeria, Mali and Senegal have been successful and avoided the many wrong turns that Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia took. 18500 contacts were traced in Nigeria – a lot, but apparently still doable – and the progress of the disease was halted. After years of investing in health systems in those countries it was good to find out that something worked.  It is also good to focus on what has worked as opposed to the finger pointing and blaming that gets picked up by the media.

I am back home from a ‘weather horibilis’ ride in, and then 10 hours later back home, from work. It has been raining cats and dogs, accompanied by heavy winds and icing early in the morning. It is the kind of stressful drive that makes one understand snowbirds retiring in the southern states. What makes it worse is that the otherwise soothing classical music that increases my tolerance for traffic challenges, is interrupted constantly by requests for donations to the member-supported station while the news is, if not distressing, then at least boring and repetitive if one’s commute is longer than one hour.

When I finally emerged out of the car, exhausted and stiff, I requested a stiff drink which Axel, my chief cook, bottlewasher and mixologist promptly produced: a sake martini which I am now sipping as I come back to myself and watch him prepare part 2 of the evening, a roasted garlic chicken with vegetables and fettucini. I am so blessed.

On Wednesday, while I was turning 63, my niece had a baby starting its first year on this planet. Between my brother’s family and mine, we have a bunch of birthdays bunched together, all sagitarii.

That was my first present, which was followed by Axel waking up at 5 AM, quite a feat, and preparing me breakfast with our ritual, but never the same, breakfast table decorations.

Although I was in the office, I used the first two hours off as vacation to attend to the birthday greetings and wishes from wide and far, with some surprising messages from people I have not seen or heard from in a long time, shuffling between Skype and Facebook. In the olden days it was postcards, I remember the excitement as a kid.

My next present was the news that one of my colleagues with whom I work a lot will move into a shared cubicle with me as another leaves to join another part of MSH.

I drove back through a drizzle, then heavy rain – it’s rarely nice weather on my birthday – to find Axel cooking my birthday dinner, a Peruvian fish stew with mussels cultivated in Chili, packed in Thailand and bought in the US. On the back of the package was a recipe for ‘gebakken mosselen’ (baked mussels) from Holland. We certainly live in an interdependent world!

The presents kept on coming. Axel had bought me Novak’s The Book Without Pictures which I look forward to read to/with Faro. Novak is the creator of the American Office and knows how to make people, big and small, laugh.

And then we watched another Poirot episode, I made another batch of Christmas mustard and the birthday was over. I have started my 64th year which I initiated by listening to ‘When I’ am Sixty Four’ on my morning ride into work.

On Friday night and then Saturday we joined first one set and then another of Sita’s in-laws for dinner, for variations on Thanksgiving. It snowed again and then froze which produced a nasty fall and a bruised arm. I made an appointment with the shoulder doctor to make sure I did not tear yet another rotator cuff tendon.

On Saturday night, after Thanksgiving, Tessa and Steve got their electricity back. And thus, on Sunday morning early, with the uncooked turkey in the back, we returned to New Hampshire for a second try at Thanksgiving.

Sita, Jim and Faro were not able to join, so it was a somewhat incomplete Thanksgiving, but still with lots of thanks to go around.

While everything was bubbling and cooking we played one round of ‘The Settlers of Catan,’ our favorite family game with basic and extension sets at Sita’s and Tessa’s home, so whenever we are together we can play, the old fashioned way of sitting around a board game.

After our copious meal (made for 6 but consumed by 4) we left with lots of leftovers in containers.

Tessa had been preparing for weeks for her first official function at her new house: Thanksgiving for her parents, sister and brother-in-law and nephew. It was meant to be a spectacular event with guests arriving the day before and a plan for outings the day after.

On Wednesday we drove to Pembroke (NH) in a snowstorm that left the North Shore with a dusting but covered New Hampshire with a whopping 10 inches if not more of heavy wet snow that crushed trees and dropped limbs on power lines. At 3 PM the electricity flickered and at 4 it was out. The outage affected hundreds of thousands of NH families which would have to do without their turkeys, unless they had gas-powered barbecues and a sheltered outdoor space to operate it. These same families also had to do without the traditional watching of games on TV. In addition, phone, computer and iPad batteries would be worn out before Thanksgiving Day. People would have to talk to one another without the crutches of electronic entertainment.

At Tessa’s house no electricity also means no water as it is pumped out of a well. So here we were 6 adults and one toddler, no electricity, no water (meaning also no flushing of toilets). Luckily the wood fired stove kept us warm and toasty and allowed for melting of snow to provide us with drinking water. The stove surface was large enough and hot enough, to cook bacon and eggs, but not a turkey or any of the other trimmings so carefully selected and prepared by Tessa. It was a huge disappointment.

We ventured out into the snowy landscape which was beautiful and very photogenic; but lacking skies and good outdoor gear, plus a hyperactive toddler who wanted to be carried by his exhausted parents, the escape from the house was a short one. Back inside we acknowledged that this would not be the Thanksgiving we had planned and considered an earlier return to our home, with its water and electricity. Less than twenty-four hours after the disappearance of electricity we gave up and returned home with the large uncooked turkey, ending our Thanksgiving, leaving a very disappointed hostess behind. It was heartbreaking.

Tessa and Steve choose to stay and ride out the power outage – hoping (though knowing the odds) – that the electricity would come back soon. So far it hasn’t and they are beginning to wonder about showers and the content of their freezer. Luckily they are young, have heat, water in 10 gallon containers and a supply of Dutch cheese and licorice. It reminded us how much we take water, heat and electricity for granted and how much these utilities determine our comfort. Nevertheless, the short time we had together, the 7 of us, left us most thankful for each other, our girls, their mates and our most delightful grandson.

Today, exactly 28 years ago that I joined MSH, the week of Thanksgiving, my first three days of work. At that time I had no idea what career I wanted and was happy to simply have a job. Tessa was just over a year old and Sita had just turned 6. Axel was full time employed and traveled a lot, much like I do now. It was a challenge and my diary is full of pages describing how I managed: sometimes good and sometimes only with a lot of tears and anxiety.

When I look at my own daughters, even though one only has dogs rather than children, I am happy to notice that they are doing better than I did. And I believe I managed a little better than my mom did. This must be evolution.

In my week of work I greeted and then said goodbye to my boss who traveled for the next month, leaving me the supervision of two senior consultants and the very vague task of making sure they fulfilled the terms of their contract. I ended up sitting at their feet and extracting as much learning from them as I could. The seeds for my career were planted right there and then.

This month, the 21^st to be precise, also marked the one year anniversary of my ankle fusion. The bones are fully fused, have been for some time now. I have learned to live with the consequences: no more inflammation causing unbearable pain when simply walking short distances. But all this at some cost: stiffness which, when I forget to do my morning exercises, has me hobbling (painless but hobbling nevertheless) when I leave my bed. Uneven terrain remains problematic, such as the woods in back of Tessa’s house or our lawn descending to the beach. But on asphalt or hard surfaces I do fine and no one can tell.

Fall and summer keep playing musical chairs – one day cold and blustery and then t-shirt weather. Axel is busy with estate management which keeps trumping his professional ambitions. Often I find him at the end of the day rather grumpy and exhausted.  He needs a housewife and handyman. I try to be the first whenever I am home and the handyman we hire sometimes. And so squeak along until winter is here and there is nothing more to do outside.

I have started to dismantle a chair that I found by the side of the road decades ago. I learned about upholstery on this chair in a class at a vocational school night program in the late eighties – about the same time Axel build his dory in the same school. Tessa’s dogs had taken possession of the chair years ago and abused it to the point that the insides of the chair started to come out and the springs went in every which way. We made a trade: Tessa and Steve got our 3-person couch and love seat – which had always been a bit too big for our small living room and we got the old chair back.

Every night last week I dismantled the chair a bit more – I even got the springs out, untied them, cleaned them, got all the nails out and now the chair sits there – just a frame, waiting for its renewal. I have an upholstery book by my side and tons of supplies in boxes in my office. I have never redone springs so this will be an adventure. It is also a dry run for the re-upholstering of my mom’s little couch on which she spent the last years of her life. That one also will need to be stripped to its base frame. But first things first.

Last night we had a colleague from Afghanistan over. He and I worked together for 2 years and I saw him in that time move from program manager to chief of party, a very talented man. He is here for 2 weeks and got to experience Halloween. Picture him next to a female colleague in a devil’s costume, red tutu, horns and a tail – it was too funny.

He gave me a better insight of Afghanistan under the new president and told some stories that gave me much hope that things may turn around. People voted to avoid the fate of Iraq which was too painful to consider. A return to warlords would surely lead there. They picked a man of great intellect and integrity, a statesman rather than a warlord. We hope he can withstand the pressure from people who stand to lose a lot with the transparency he is after.

I returned home without a fever, re-assuring my entourage that I had not brought Ebola to Massachusetts. Nevertheless not everyone wanted to hug me or shake my hands so I continued to elbow a bit here and there.

Back in the office I learned that some of my colleagues are in Liberia and doing good work to make sure that sick people who don’t have Ebola, or pregnant women can use the health facilities. I can imagine no one wants to go to a clinic or hospital when these have become depositories of dying Ebola patients. In the panic around Ebola we tend to forget that more people need help for other ailments and more are dying now, probably, of these illnesses because they can’t access that care. I was wondering whether I would have agreed to go there and I am not sure. I am proud of my brave colleagues.