Sylvia's Journal

On Tuesday I received what may well be the last of many second opinions on my left ankle, this time at the Boston Sports and Shoulder Center. It has nearly the same letters and logo as the Boston Sports Club that is housed in the same building, one side feeding the other.  This time the doctor, his PA and his intern told me there was an alternative to surgery that was better than my clunky and sweaty booda which allowed me to walk New York over the weekend. They did confirm that this would be only a temporary measure and seemed to have no hesitation to recommend ankle replacement over fusion (just when I was about to veer towards fusion).

I went straight to the place that provides the braces but wore the wrong shoes for a fitting. There were all sorts of braces, clunky, plastic, leather, lace-up, velcro-ed, high low. The one I was prescribed made me think of the South African blade runner, slick and minimal, that can be worn with regular shoes. I will go back tomorrow with the right shoes for the fitting. After that I will return to the doctor in a month to evaluate the brace as an interim measure and see whether we should move ahead with scheduling surgery.

An overnight on Goat Island, Newport, Rhode Island, right across the water from the jazz Festival site was the final highlight of our vacation and my three week absence from home. We have friends who have nice places, such as this one. You don’t have to go to the jazz festival as the jazz comes right to you over the water, especially if the wind is right.

We drove by a few of Newport’s famous mansions before heading back home, more stop and go, unairconditioned, unpleasant. We were home in 3 hours and greeted by everyone: two daughters, their mates, grandbaby and friends. We sat down to a meal that brought us the abundance of the see and our own vegetable garden: swordfish kebabs, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, peas, two latebloomer raspberries and one final blueberry. We celebrated Axel’s birthday once more with cider from Virginia and poundcake, berries and much whipped cream.

While the Bulger drama in court hangs out the Irish mafia’s dirty linens, and that of civil servants paid to protect us from them, and a kitchen store on route 1 promises a free bathing suit (on the way in) or a free sprinkler (on the way home) with the purchase of a kitchen, I am trying to stay sane in the face of constant schedule changes. The good thing is that the heat spell seems to have passed. We can breathe again.

The trip to Egypt is probably cancelled by now (rather than postponed as I was told before). If it was a coup US law says we have to suspend aid to Egypt – smart minds are debating whether it was a coup or not, in our steamy capital. The Pakistani embassy is holding on to my passport, for 7 weeks already. That trip, scheduled to have started last Friday, is now postponed until next month when I will surely have my passport back with the coveted visa; unless of course something happens in Pakistan that will derail those plans as well. I wouldn’t be too surprised.

With my July schedule suddenly cleared and wide open, an SOS came in from Benin to help out with a leadership program that my local colleagues are not familiar with. Axel put passport, yellow vaccination card and photos into a Fedex that was swiftly expedited to the visa service but then it was the Fourth of July and everything came to a screeching halt in DC. Even a two day emergency visa, for a stiff fee, couldn’t get me the visa by the requested departure date, which is today. I am still here and the visa not in sight yet. A ticket has been bought, by optimistic souls, for a Thursday departure.

This will get me to Cotonou at the end of the week that was supposed to be dedicated to preparation and coaching. I will slide straight into events that are planned in ways that will require a lot of ingenuity to produce the desired effect. And so, there is never a dull moment.

Calm has returned. I am by myself. Axel has his weekly ‘lads’ get together, sort of a men’s group that occasionally allows women – when they drop their men off or some festivity, like a harvest moon or an abundant mussel and oyster harvest. I am glad he has this – men are not naturally good at deep friendships in that phase of their lives when their women do – because of children and juggling professional and domestic careers. Now appears to be the time to catch up.

I have a thousand things to write about, because for the first time in a week there is this stillness around the house. It’s a precious stillness that returned after Tessa’s 30 hour party where some 50 (60? 100?) young people invade Lobster Cove for a 30 hour birthday bash, Tessa’s 28th.

Everything was taken over by food, drink, tents, ashtrays (this generation smokes like there is no tomorrow), and the headphones that come along with the silent disco. This year I never made it the start of the silent disco. I retreated into the only room that was invasion-proof, our bedroom.

I think I was asleep before 9 only to be woken up by the fireworks. In hindsight we didn’t think mixing vodka and fireworks was such a good idea, nor did one of our neighbors think so. This may be on constraint we may put on next years’ festivities.

Unfortunately I also did not see the dozens of large (2 feet tall) paper lanterns that are propelled by a flame and drift off into the atmosphere or far out to sea. One neighbor who monitors the police scanner told us that several Manchester citizens reported seeing UFOs. He showed me the pictures he took from the roof. I would have believed in UFOs myself.

When I woke up at 6 AM on the morning after the party the last people had just gone to sleep. Some sprawled on our large Afghan pillows in my office, some in half a dozen tents perched along the perimeter of our land, some intertwined on quilts on the grass, some on sitting places in our living room not meant for sleeping, one in a hammock that wasn’t his own, leaving its owner to seek out our couch. There were two young men sleeping in regular lawn chairs, looking much like economy class travelers, awkward but too tired to mind.

And everywhere the debris of partying – paper plates and plastic utensils, half eaten food, warm watermelon, fruit mixed with ashes and limp potato chips, Hershey bars left over from the s’mores prepared over the campfire at the beach, already melted in the early morning heat; and then there were the empty kegs, the empty bottles, the empty plastic cups and other substances that are not really good for young minds.

And then, one by one, stirrings left and right, tent zippers opening, couches being evacuated. The revelers woke up (around midday and some mid afternoon), wanting coffee but too tired to drive to Dunkin Donuts to get some. So they helped themselves to bloody Mary’s instead, accompanied by stale bagels and cream cheese from small containers. Some left because they have jobs or other social obligations, other stayed until a hastily ordered pizza delivery at the end of the day, making it a 24 hour party for some of them, a 30 hour party for others. Tessa stayed one more night to put the final touches on the clean up on Monday. One year from now everything starts all over again. Our trampled lawn has a year to recover. We know it will.

The festivities are ratcheting up. After Tessa’s birthday there is the Fourth of July, Faro’s first, that is, his first ‘aware’ Fourth. We stood on the steps of one of his grandparental homes which is conveniently located on the parade route. He didn’t seem to be disturbed by the noise of the trucks and musketeers shooting their ancient guns. He was entirely enthralled by the parade passing before him. I am glad he is still too young to get excited about the candy being thrown from floats.

We did our usual route of social calls – as the fourth in a small town is very much a social event – and returned home, blistered and exhausted from the 90s degree heat. We found Tessa and friends lounging by the water, the only sensible place to be on a hot day like that.

The lobster traps were hailed in with only two lobsters, one under measure who was returned to the sea and the other a cull (a one-clawed lobster). Young Graeme who did the heavy lifting was given the cull for a lobster bisque his mom was making. He lives in an ambassadorial residence in Delhi, far from the ocean. The catch made his day.

Friday was a full workday for me, while there was much toddling and visiting going on outside: friends, cousins, in-laws, aunts and uncles – being at the best possible place one could be on another 90 degree day. Halfway through the day we went to the appliance store and bought another, our third, air-conditioner. It is funny how we lived through two Hivernages in Senegal and at least 15 years in Lobster Cove using only fans. It is either getting hotter every year or our ability to withstand heat is going down. I am very thankful that we can simply go to the store and buy these things. That is what workdays are for.

Faro toddled around in a T-shirt that showed the face of (now past) President Abdou Diouf from Senegal (Fidelite et Reconnaissance). In the Senegalese summer, surely hotter than 90 degrees, of 1981, Sita had worn the same T-shirt during a trip to the Casamance. She was 9 months at the time. We tried to re-create the stance, with some degree of success: mother and son – some 30 years apart.

I spent the 6th of June in Easthampton, marveling at Faro who, at one year has moved into another phase: he is walking, albeit it very hesitantly and only when he is not in a hurry. That is very sensible of course. early on Friday morning I headed partway home, to Marlborough, to attend the 2nd of our 3 required face to face trainings.

Since our first intensive training, four months ago, and countless hours of coaching, my confidence has gone up a few notches. But then, when I compare my level of proficiency to that of our coaching trainer it feels like I have light years to go. And so we move forward to the next (and last) retreat in September and another 50 hours of practice coaching!

During the weekend I had one major insight, triggered by one of the (33) coaching principles that inform our education: “There are no mistakes.” Although my brain was willing to go with that statement, my gut was not, until I understood at a more cellular level what the implication is of this principle. That understanding all by itself made the 30 hours of instruction worth it: when there are no mistakes there is no blame (of self and others) – what a liberating thought!

I returned home and the end of Sunday, with just enough daylight left to squeeze about 25 asparagus beetles, some in the act of procreating, between my fingers. But the damage is done: many shriveled up spears, prematurely ending the asparagus season that started so auspiciously. We are learning that having left the dried out stalks over the winter is partially responsible for this invasion (not a mistake but something we didn’t know any better at the time). I also harvested the radishes, all with tiny teeth marks indicating that they are (somewhat) attractive to other critters. The abundant harvest of arugula and pakchoi was mostly clean, we tolerate tiny holes in the leaves, and immediately consumed.

Early on Wednesday morning my sister woke me up with the long awaited news that her grand baby Romi Aline had arrived early morning of June 5th in Amsterdam, which was also her 69th birthday; what a magnificent birthday present to receive from her daughter, who is also my niece!

Romi’s arrival has increased the number of my parents’ great grandchildren to 3, with another scheduled to arrive in 2 months. I hope they watch from someplace.

Today I took the day off to celebrate Faro’s first birthday. I was the first grandparent to watch one year old Faro. We celebrated in a local restaurant where Faro practiced his newly acquired ‘goodbye’ skills, waving his entire arm willy nilly to unsuspecting patrons especially those closer to his age.

He had his first strawberries, whipped cream, angel food cake, garlic spinach, cod (oh, no, I forgot, he is a vegetarian), and breaded eggplant . Jim said I had poop duty tomorrow but I won’t be there. I will leave at some ungodly hour to get to Marlborough, halfway back to Manchester. I will be sequestered for 3 full days in a Marriott conference room to complete retreat number 2 of my coaching program. I will miss his 1st birthday party. All the other omas and opas, one aunt, one uncle and one cousin will come out west to celebrate the day. Faro will be 1 year and 2 days by then.

Sunday evening we started with a WorldCafe-ish introduction to the two day event organized by my pharmaceutical colleagues about medicines in Universal Health Care. Sita was hired to capture the conversation on a 16 foot knowledge wall, which she did in her usual awe-inspiring way.

Axel checked in with us at the end of each day, seeing the progress in Sita’s scribing and gauging the progress of the meeting by the level of energy in the room. He met colleagues from Ghana, Ethiopia and Bangladesh – the fact that he was Sita’s dad helped with the introductions.

The joy of working with Sita is that we get to have all our meals together. On Sunday we ate Lebanese (Kebabji), on Monday we ate at Kramer’s bookstore café and tonight we ate at a greasy airport joint, bringing to an end this intense workweek for me and an friends-and-art vacation for Axel.

On the way to the airport, while Axel was deeply engaged in conversation with the taxi driver, Sita knitted this experience together with all her other scribing events, reflecting on what she learned in others and/or missed in this one. Sita is better schooled in system dynamics by now than I am. By putting one and one and one together she is intensely aware of the messes that people have created by thinking in a certain way and is dismayed when she sees similar thinking, intended to end the messes, create more of the same. It is why Einstein said, you cannot solve a problem out of the same consciousness that created the problems in the first place. But we do.

She is seeing the cataclysmic events or trends from the last years (Katrina, Sandy, tornadoes in Oklahoma, violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, and the rise of chronic diseases, missing mussels in Lobster Cove) not as exceptions and rare and disruptive occurrences, but as the new normal. Where I am still thinking of black swans, she quoted someone present at the World Economic Forum as saying, “these are large blinking neon swans.” If we choose to ignore them we do so at our own risk and peril. Afghanistan, New Orleans, Oklahoma, Syria, the morbidly obese and the Jersey shore or far away from Lobster Cove but it could be different.

Pondering all this I flew home while listening to Ludovico Eunaudi’s Divinire and reading about Gloucester and Charles Olson. The combination of sound and word made me want to write poetry, seeing hope and possibility behind this veil of worry, concern and pessimism (“no,” says Sita, “realism”). But there is no chance of that. I was distracted by the fish, chips and tartar sauce sloshing around in my unsuspecting belly, and in thousands of other bellies. There is some digesting to be done before figuring out what to do next (and before my cholesterol check blood test tomorrow).