Sylvia's Journal

Opa Axel is baby proofing our kitchen. We have one gate (the cheap one) that requires something akin to a PT exercise – leg lifts – if one wants to go to its other side. The gate on the other side of the kitchen has a door which, with some practice, opens easily. It requires a spanner to put in place, a tool easy to loose so we put it in the messy drawer above the gate.

Baby Faro has discovered there is good stuff in the kitchen drawers and would soon have discovered the liquor cabinet if it wasn’t for Axel’s swift response. All morning Opa screwed in plastic devices that have made our life in the kitchen so much more complicated. We can no longer open a cabinet with one hand – it needs two free hands, one to depress a plastic lip and the other to quickly pull the door open. I am not quite used to it yet and somewhat in denial that we have to live with this handicap for years to come.

Faro has discovered clapping his hands, though there is no sound yet, just the motion. He puts them together in a hit-or-miss sort of way whenever one of us starts singing a Dutch children’s song that has a hand clapping suggestion.

He has also discovered pointing, reminding me of Saturday Night Fever. He responds to pa-pa (or daddy) by pointing vaguely in Jim’s direction. He also knows the word plant, both in Dutch and English (like the difference between ant and aunt), and points enthusiastically to the Jade tree as well as other greens nearby. But when you ask where is ma-ma is he comes up short so we have to work on that.

The franticness of last week is over. I arrived back in Boston on Thursday night, returned to Cambridge on Friday where a past CNN reporter and communications director for a congressman coached three of us in public speaking, with or without powerpoint. It was both humbling and eye opening for someone who’s travelled all the way to Japan to do something similar there. Humbling mostly because I learned what I didn’t know I didn’t know. That’s why we promote life-long learning. It had been a good week.

This weekend was our annual Easter or Greek Easter or Pseudo Greek Easter celebration. We pick a random weekend between Easter and Greek Easter and pray for good weather even though we know it is a crapshoot. So we tell people there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing. Our friends know this.

Some 45 people came together, circles of friends which, if not already overlapping, do so by the end of the day. The girls helped out putting together the bunny baskets together. Not baskets really but bags with candy – some leftover Easter candy, some Haloween candy and some generic stuff. The babies got Cheerios.

Then one elderly and one younger bunny hid the loot – with Bunny’s ankle problems the hiding is no longer so sophisticated (as in trees) which some people over a certain age took as an insult (“What? You don’t think we can climb trees anymore?”), while others just noted how times have passed.

Joe had flown in from Sterling Towers West (Alpine, CA) to Sterling Towers East (Lobster Cove), and lend a hand with pulling summer furniture out of storage and setting up the bar – an important support for the traditional Lobster Cove drink (Bloody Mary). Fire places were being stoked inside and out to keep us warm. The fierce wind and dropping temperature mandated this.

Although we are officially ‘in the field’ it isn’t really very ‘fieldy.’ So far I have been far removed from the work in the weeds, for a long time. I have been in central offices, in resorts, in artificial situations, created for conversation. This is important of course, but it isn’t ‘the field.’

And so, finally today, we got into a car and drove to a popular neighborhood of Abidjan, turned off the main road into an unpaved alley and stopped in front of a tiny derelict place. Four large steps up landed us in the headquarters of a tiny NGO that is one of the thousands of ground troops involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS but also helping young women find their voice and their power. We were met by three volunteers while the founder sat on a small chair where he stayed throughout our visit, not taking part in our conversations. He is, I was told, the permanent presence, though I may not have understood this well – I have a different image of founders.

The tour of the premises was short, four of five tiny rooms, loaded with stuff, boxes and what not piled on top of each other. Two ancient computers flickered with spreadsheets, reports to donors in all likelihood, a scanner that didn’t work, an old dusty printer and lots of dossiers. It was all very minimalist and, for us spoiled westerners, not what we would consider a ‘conducive’ work environment. The volunteers who received us, nevertheless, were proud of their premises and the work they do. Hats off to them.

The founder, and anyone else who was not engaged in an activity, were watching a ‘policier’ that had all the ingredients for success: sex, violence, fast cars, strong bad men and cops – probably the same ingredients that make for all the poverty around them, minus the cars and the cops I suspect.

Someone was sent out to get us bottled water and a box of tissues, to wipe the sweat form our brows. And then we started to talk. Hearing their stories, the work they do, the attitudes they change was humbling – they do much with so little. If there is little of the things we generally expect and need in order to do a good job, they do have one thing aplenty: commitment. It drives everything, confirming once more that human energy for something is our most precious resource. In fact, when I asked them about their personal vision, it was the same as their vision for their NGO.

It’s travel time again. I am on my way to two rather exotic sounded places, les cotes d’epices (Zanzibar) and les cotes d’ivoire; one week here and one week there with a cross continental voyage in between. I am going with my brand new orange business card that shows my association with Johns Hopkins’ new communication project on which we are a core partner.

I am flying with my orthopedic boot which gives me support by immobilizing my ankle, and also a business class seat so I can keep my ankle elevated and walk around, both to avoid DVT.

I was able to pretty much clear my desk, a faint vision some weeks ago. Holding the boundaries between work and non work, between mere stress and outright panic has been the focus of my peer coaching conversations. Although these required coaching sessions were themselves a source of stress.

The plane is ready, have to stop now.

When Sita has business in Boston, we get to do business with our grandson. An early morning commute from Manchester to Boston beats one from Easthampton. We don’t mind, even if I only get to hear Faro when I get up early to go to work. I also get home early – now with Daylight Savings Time it stays light longer – and I get to give him his dinner. It was red/orange today: roasted beets, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, turnips and carrots; a nice wintery mush that went in fast.

He has two front teeth that would make the Velveteen Rabbit jealous. I gave him a celery stick which he crunched and crunched, without knowing quite what to make of it. Coming from a musical home, it took a longtime before he put the celery stick in his mouth – he has already learned that sticks are for drumming, not for eating.

Yesterday I had my stitches taken out. The doctor showed us the scope pictures which confirmed that the tibia/talus joint is in bad repair – pink color being bad, bone on bone. It explained the painful walking. We explored next steps if this doesn’t do the trick – too early to tell. Ankle resurfacing (or reconstruction) is, compared to knee and hip technology, lagging behind and the top orthopede at Mass General would not recommend it. The case load is not quite big enough to create deep and wide expertise in this complicated procedure. So for now, we cross our fingers.

The coaching program I started a month ago is picking up in the amount of time I have to dedicate to it. Every week I have two hours of peer coaching, one as the coach and one as the coachee. And then there is a a peer group teleconference, with five other women who participated in our workshop last month. In a few weeks the program adds to that a weekly mass teleconference (of 90 minutes) plus a half hour with my own mentor.  All this should be completed by June when I take the second workshop over a 30 hour weekend. It is all very challenging and the more I learn the less I realize that I know. Coaching comes with incredible promises of more happiness, more income, more customers, and the stories abound, but I can’t quite believe that I could ever pull this off. I have to keep reminding myself that practice makes perfect.

I am immersing myself in the social innovation/innovation world with the coursera course I take which is based on the book “Creative people must be stopped,” by David Owens from Vanderbilt University. Fascinating. I can’t help but think that the new attention to innovation at my work may shake something loose that has been stuck and rusty for a long time.

While Axel is cooking the salmon and the roasted vegetables I am listening to Pat Boone and other singers that connect us instantly to teenage (or earlier) memories. The fundraiser for WGBH is clearly aimed at baby boomers. Of course our memories are very different; Axel has American teenage memories while I have Dutch early teen memories that do not include boyfriends and are fitted in a context that has nothing to do with the lyrics.

Que Sera Sera instantly took me back to my childhood home and my (Irish twin) brother. I remember singing the song at the top of our lungs, without any idea what either the English or the Que Sera meant – for us both languages were foreign – but the words were easily sung, maybe even in the bathtub.  Although the memory is probably a bit distorted, it is connected to another memory, which has us clad in our ‘Sing-Sing’ shirts. We had, once again, no idea what Sing-Sing meant, just the name of these striped shirts, mine red and white and my brother’s blue and white. What did we know about prisons in America, this mystical land so very far away.

I am not up and about with my orthopedic boot. I have taken the bandages off, against my discharge instructions, but I couldn’t stand the tight wrap any longer. I ice the ankle frequently but have abandoned the crutches which are standing lonely against a wall. I picked them up at a recycling place, after having discovered that we had given our crutches away. An appeal on FreeCycle brought 10 responses. Now we can re-cycle them again.

The last few days I was racing against the time, completing assignments that have a due date before I leave, a week from now and responding to new assignments that keep showing up in my inbox.

Axel went out snow shoeing – oh how I wished I could have come along – in the pristine Audubon reserve in Topsfield. Tessa and dogs reported on beaches having practically swept away by hurricane strength winter storms, one after the other. After a 48 hour snowstorm we escaped the house last night for a dinner with Steve and Tessa – cabin fever was beginning to get at me. I had been sitting in the same place, leg up, ice machine on, for 72 hours, working like crazy.

I am hobbling again, sometimes with two crutches, more and more with one and occasionally with none. Surgery was yesterday and went well. I arrived home about 6 hours after arriving at the hospital, 90 minutes of which I was in the OR.

I was greeted at home by MaryAnne’s lemon custard, a hefty tome about Joseph Kennedy, presumably to lighten my spirits, and a pot with blue hyacinths that created instant allergic attacks for Axel and Tessa. Axel had picked up the pain pills in the meantime and Tessa cooked my favorite Dutch meal, boerenkool met worst from their Polish neighborhood Deli.

Tessa and Steve moved most of their furniture to their new apartment but they are still with us as the building had not yet received its occupancy permit. There is still much missing, such as the parking garage and mail boxes, and the varnish on the hardwood floor had not hardened yet, leaving it all scratchy. Not a good entry to their new address. They are lucky in that they still have a place to stay with us. And we get to keep them a bit longer.

I realize that I am now down to one post a week. Time for quiet reflection has been at a premium. Ahead of the blog are my daily meditations, my yoga practice, infrequent as it is, and the long to do list. Yet, in spite of a long and stressful week, today in Quaker Meeting I felt energized, connected and in tune with something bigger than myself.

When the hour was over I discovered that I had been oblivious to all the people who had entered after I sat down. One of them was Sita’s classmate whose school we visited in Sikkim a few years ago. He was over for a brief visit. With a Buddhist father he knows about intentions and prayers and asked our community to hold his kids in Sikkim in the light, after I had asked for light on my ankle, on Tuesday especially. After Meeting a Feldenkrais practitioner among us set to work immediately with this light and gave my ankle a 10 minute treatment. It felt good until I went to the supermarket for milk and eggs; still, it gave me confidence to take the dogs to the beach while Tessa, Axel and Steve took a Uhaul with all their stuff to Dorchester.

During our Meeting for worship a message bubbling up in our midst was about a Bible passage where one translation from the ancient biblical language had used the word ‘perfect’ while another translation used the word ‘whole.’ The latter resonated more with me, reminding me of a dream I had earlier this week. The dream was about keeping your eye on the prize and jumping, then falling, but staying whole in spite of the fall and trying again. Trying is much easier when you’re whole than when you’re broken.

Contributing to both my stress levels and my sense of wholeness is the coaching program in which I’m enrolled. By the end of February 5 long reflective pieces were due. I am glad I started working on those back in December, as these were not assignments you could complete the day before the due date. Having shipped those off, in time, was a big relief. It keeps me in the running for eventual certification by the International Coaching Federation.

There are many requirements for this program. They include weekly hour-long conversations with a peer group, weekly practice coaching sessions on each other, both as coachee and coach, work with a mentor, 25 hour-long tele-classes, two more 30 hour workshops and complementary sessions of one hour before a final exam, later this fall. Altogether this adds up to many hours a week, but it is worth my while, including the hours I spend on this during the weekend. To my great surprise the coaching training I’m getting now seems to be a piece of the puzzle that had been missing. There is that wholeness thing again. As an avid puzzler I understand about these last pieces that fill a hole and make whole.

The phantom storm was no phantom storm further east. On our way home from Sita and Jim we passed through Worcester which had fresh snow on the ground and the trees. It got even heavier further east.

Back home the storm was in full swing. Axel scraped my car clean, turned it around ready for going to work on Monday morning for an all-day retreat with our learning organization team on how to turn MSH into a learning organization. We had gotten some expert advice from a local consulting firm that has much experience working with organizations like us that are trying to tackle ‘wicked’ problems.

“A wicked problem has no definite formulation of the problem, no clear solutions or end points, no immediate or ultimate test of the solution and problems are intertwined in such a way that any given problem, and its interactions with others, will open doors and windows to still other problems.” (From Michael Quinn Patton, Developmental Evaluation, 2011:253). So there you have it. This is my work.

I decided to work from home the rest of the week to bite through a whole slew of assignments that are all coming close to their deadlines. On Tuesday I made some headway but today I had one telephone call after another, and other unexpected stuff landed on my plate requiring immediate action. I did not get a whole lot closer to my goal today and am exhausted from the efforts to keep my head above the water. No more complaints about not enough work – I am nearly drowning.

I have one more day of work at home to make a dent in the pile that is staring me in the face: leadership strategy setting, a one-day event in DC on Friday where I am supposed to present something meaningful on slides; a trip to Zanzibar, continuous multiple doctors’ visits, coaching, training of trainers of basic wheelchair services, a large global meeting in Uganda and another, as large, in DC 6 weeks away. Plus a few requests that have to do with being auditable, paper trails and such.

In some ways, my daily life is the victory of what the women’s movement worked towards – professional and personal fulfillment, as a worker, wife, mother and grandmother. Last night Axel, Tessa and I watched an extraordinary documentary about the women’s movement, from way back, through its heyday in the 60s and 70s, its downfall during Reagan and Phyllis Schlafly (my Planned Parenthood years). Tessa’s enthusiastic post on facebook made me think that it may have planted a seed that will take the women’s movement out of its hibernation, just waiting for new Glorias and Betties to emerge.