Sylvia's Journal

The nights are getting cooler and there is already a whiff of fall in the air which makes me a little wistful for that feeling in May, when the whole summer is spread out before us like a delicious buffet. Tessa and her friend came over on Saturday to hang out on the beach or onto a surfboard floating in Lobster Cove. The board is big enough to hold the two of them plus the two dogs.

I snorkeled and saved an infant lobster from certain death but realized the next day I only delivered it to the crabs. I found one today with the poor little thing half eaten dangling from its mouth. We fought over it a bit and the crab won, aggressive little fellow. When you snorkel you realize how much aggression there is under the water: eat or be eaten.

We are preparing for next week’s vacation to Southport Island in Maine. It is the place where Rachel Carson wrote her nature books. We are tuning in to the beauty of nature but the crabs remind me there is another side to all that beauty. As if to prove that point again, two bumblebees attacked me today. They went after me even more aggressively than the crab. Somehow the bees knew it was me and not Axel who had hung a hammock on a branch right over their nest and then had the gumption to sit in it (the best view of Lobster Cove); they left him alone while dive-bombing me which was more unnerving than the actual sting.

During the first attack I spilled Axel’s G&T, dropped my watermelon on the sand and lost my page in the book I was reading. During the second attack I lost my page again and dropped my drink. Luckily the G&T ice cubes had remained in the cup and served to keep the swelling down.

While I was fighting off crabs and bees Axel inspected the mussels and noticed the colony is still intact but not visibly expanding by creating offspring. To our surprise he did see several bright white baby oysters. We hope the crabs leave them alone so they can grow into a size we can harvest. We don’t mind switching to oysters for a while, but only for a while.

Axel is learning more about what ails him. The symptoms of Vocal Cord Dysfunction (VCD) – an ailment I didn’t even know existed – match his experiences exactly. I wonder if that is what living in Kabul produced. It sometimes is mistaken for asthma and sometimes accompanies asthma, so we are still in an exploratory phase. The amazing, and good thing, about this ailment is that the treatment is yoga, meditation and generally stress reduction. One might think that living in Lobster Cove would, by itself, be a good stress reduction method, but the last years of breathing problems and doing the specialist circuit have been very taxing on him.

And so we are now stepping up the yoga, the meditation and understanding how the brain mediates between a sense of comfort and security and stress. We are learning about techniques that activate oxytocin production (and suppress cortisol production) and are in awe of our clever brains. We are reading about resilience and what the brain has to do with that and begin to see connections that make some far out things less far out; like the team of yoga and meditators that went out some years ago to the US army in Afghanistan. People made jokes about it, but these folks were on to something.

I also now remember how in the 60s and 70s there was much talk about managing your brain waves through meditation and realize we, human beings, have always known how to do this, going 1000s of years back, until specialized medicine promised easier solutions, like popping pills or surgery. Learning to meditate is hard work and long work, requiring perseverance and starting over again. This in itself is a good foundation for resilience, showing that everything is connected to everything and all happens for a purpose.

Yesterday’s dinner came out of the garden, except for the Boca Burgers; the night before it came out of the sea. On Wednesday, when I arrived home, tired and hungry, Axel jumped in his boat and checked his five lobster traps, then returned with one keeper. The lobsters are moving away from shore and something else is eating the bait, so this may have been the last gratis lobster of the summer.

Last night was a land-dinner night. While Axel was completing our taxes, a dragged out and painful chore, I clipped the kale and dug up one plant of potatoes, providing more than enough for the two of us. The leftover kale and potatoes will be transformed into one of my favorite Dutch dishes, Boerenkool, a winter dish that comforts as the evenings get cooler and the nights colder.

I arrived at work yesterday morning to the sad news that one of our Dutch princes has died. It was a blip on the American news scene, not important here, but somehow touched me deeply. Not because he is a prince – princes always die, usually in battle or devoured by dragons – but I remember his birth and I grieve as a mother. He died after 18 months in coma after having been buried in an avalanche, deprived of oxygen for 25 minutes. This happened in Lech (Austria), the royal family’s ski resort of choice.

Sometime in the early 70s I found myself there, resting on the side of the slope next to the royals, including our then queen Juliana who remarked to me that my ski boot clips were loose. I remember blushing and being all flummoxed, the queen talked to me, imagine! With the news of Friso’s passing all these memories came flooding back.

Sita and Jim and Faro had come for a day and stayed the week. Such joy! I didn’t mind the total chaos in the house, the furniture blocking access by Faro to non-child proofed sections of the living room, the child gates, and the plastic containers and wooden spoons all over the kitchen floor, toys in the living room, and Faro dribbling like an ant hither and thither.

Contrary to what I was told, the ankle brace wasn’t in stock when I returned to the surgicare place in Waltham on Thursday to be fitted. The for-nothing-trip made for a very long commute, 2 hours in total, and by the time I arrived home I had to do a real effort to swallow my self-pity and take in the beauty of Lobster Cove on a glorious summer evening.

Sita and Axel had baited the lobster cages that had been sitting idle for 2 weeks. If there had been any lobsters they would have eaten each other and the winner escaped. One flounder didn’t make it out and became our breakfast the next morning.

Our series of 10+ days was interrupted on Friday by all day rains which relieved us of having to water the parched garden.

On Saturday I made good on my promise to myself to go to a yoga class rather than following a video. Axel discovered a therapeutic yoga class taught in town by a very young woman who is exceptionally skilled in coaxing a bunch of old people with all sorts of pains and aches into doing yoga that made us feel good. This is quite an accomplishment I think. My resolve is to go back any Saturday I am in the US.

Later we entertained friends from Holland, who were present in Lebanon all these years ago when Axel and I fell in love. When we have friends from afar we always have lobster. We spent the day on or by the frigid waters of Lobster Cove and checked the lobster traps for dinner. Axel had prudently bought lobsters just in case and that turned out to be a wise move. The traps were empty except for a few small lobsters which we released back into the ocean to grow a bit more.

Tessa and friends joined us on Sunday for a bloody steak dinner which I don’t care about (the bloody steak that is) but the company was great and so this was another busy social night, followed by another one on Monday night, more lobster, old friends from when the girls were small and we carpooled to the Waring School, eons ago.

I have joined an enthusiastic group of 70+ women at the Manchester Community Center who are doing their weekly (scientifically designed by Tufts) weight training to stave off osteoporosis and remain flexible. With all my joint problems this exercise regime seemed like a good idea. I was warmly welcomed as the new (and youngest) girl and everyone inquired at the end whether I liked it. I did, and I will be back. My muscles protested a bit the next morning but I take that as a good sign.

And now it is a week later from the last posting – maybe the first time in 6 years where a whole week went by without any writing. I think it is because I have a very full plate of work all with deadlines this week and coaching practice as garnish in the early morning and late evening. Time to write has fallen victim but hopefully not for long.

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.