Sylvia's Journal

I took Friday off to celebrate part one of Sita’s birthday by introducing her to some amazing folks in her neck of the woods. These are connections through other connections that were random, or may be not, starting with a plane ride to Dhaka. I have a friend who met her husband on a plane ride to South Africa, these things happen and are wonderful. After a three hour ride we arrived in beautiful Ahsfield on a gorgeous fall day. We had a winter soup lunch and talked about complex adaptive systems, mathematical models, large group methods and working around the world.

Although we were not done talking, we had to leave, late in the afternoon to pick up Jim and the Bunwinkies’ instruments for a show in Worcester. The Bunwinkies were playing without their drummer and their male lead singer, making it an all women band except for Jim. It was the first time we saw them perform; we were in charge of the baby, a charge we shared with the other oma and opa who drove up from Beverly. We were the only people over 40 in an old firehouse that had been bought by 10 young men who’d made it into a very interesting living space with lots of space for band practice and performance on the ground flour.

The bunwinkies followed a guitarist whose poems we couldn’t quite understand but made wonderful music. Everytime people clapped Faro would startle throwing his arms wide open, then fall asleep again. By the time his mom and dad were on he had fallen asleep again, missing a wonderful performance, with Sita on lead guitar. This girl continues to amaze us. We left after the Bunwinkies had finished their act, knowing that Sita could look after Faro again. Besides, it was past our bedtime. After midnight when we tumbled into bed, I realized we had driven more than 200 miles.

The next day was Sita’s real birthday and continued with part two.  Seeing her now at 32 years, a mother herself, brought back many memories. She commented that birthdays should really be celebrations of motherhood and that it was the mother of the birthday person who should be acknowledged and feted.

We gave her a massage by Abi as a birthday present, knowing it would be exactly what she needed (it was). While she was relaxing I shopped for the ingredients of a rijsttafel, an Indonesian culinary extravaganza that required an entire day of cooking, another birthday present. We are now all of the age at which it is people’s time and effort rather than material gifts, that are the best birthday presents. I had assigned Axel and Jim a dish each (coconut chicken and beef rendang) while I took care of the remaining dishes (nasi goreng, telor bumbu, atjar, gado-gado and peanut sauce). All the spoons, bowls, cutting boards and knives in the house were used and re-used, making the kitchen look like a battlefield.

By the time the guests arrived (2 pairs of in-laws) I was exhausted. They ate, provided lots of compliments and then cleaned up the kitchen when not hanging out with our collective grandchild. We concluded Sita’s birthday watching Hercule Poirot after all the guests had left. Sita loves Poirot so much that for his first haloween Faro will be Hercule – the costume is already purchased, he has a pacifier with a Poirot mustache, only the white spats are missing.  His dad will be Captain Hastings (repeating ‘Good Lord’ over and over again) and Sita will be Miss Lemon. They will be quite a trio.

We are treated to another visit of Sita and Faro. Early Thursday we got up what seemed to be in the middle of the night, fed and packed up the baby with all his gear, dropped him off in Beverly, where his (only) retired oma lives and then proceeded to Cambridge where Sita had a one day assignment, scribing for some company we had never heard of but which seems to be doing good work to help people stay or become healthy. All stops were conveniently on the way to work.

During the drive in Sita gave me some good ideas for a global conference I am asked to design and facilitate next spring in Southern Africa. It is the best thing a mother can wish for, to get advice from her daughter on matters related to work. I wished she could be there with me, like we were working as a pair in Afghanistan, 6 years ago.

In the morning we had our quarterly global meeting at MSH. It is a carefully orchestrated and painstakingly prepared event with voices coming in from all over the world – We have come a long way to inclusivity and it was nearly flawless: Islamabad was on the line, with Sania Nishtar, the founder of an organization called heartfile that helps the Pakistani government address the rise of chronic diseases, soon to outperform the infectious diseases. In the (US) Midwest a researcher told us about his Blue Zones work, trying to identify the secrets of longevity (no surprises there: diet, family, community, meditation and such), a colleague in Uganda showed how chronic diseases detection and treatment have been incorporated in the work MSH is usually engaged in.

I reflected on my year back at MSH which started so badly and realized I can once again be proud to belong to this organization I felt so abandoned by last fall. It was an inspiring meeting.

The rest of the day I was invited to learn about a new technology platform MSH has purchased that allows us to design courses online and track who has taken what course. It is truly a Big Brother arrangement because just about anything the learner does can be tracked, except maybe picking his or her nose.

While we were learning about how to build a course my hands were itching to design a real course. I notice a surge of energy each time I am engaged in something creative and a drip-drip loss of energy when I am not.

The new consortium we are part of with John Hopkins allows for lots of creativity, in fact it promised innovative approaches to our funder. I am busy reading up on how insights and innovations happen and am, once again, energized by that.  I am also given the opportunity to become an accredited coach. One of the companies we are considering for the training has an energy model as its basic philosophy. It looks like all energy streams are coming together.

I am zooming in on the next two trips and the last two of this year (Bangladesh and Japan).  Once again I am mired in arranging flights, trying to get good seats and mentally preparing for another set of long flights. This last trip alone, to Dhaka, fills me with trepidation as it is very, very long, spread over 3 calendar days.

I am enjoying being home. A surprise visit of Faro and his parents this week helped shorten the time I had counted down to see him. It was a quick visit but enough to take measurements for a scarf and mittens, and marvel at how fast he is growing. He was no longer dressed like a baby, with herringbone trousers that include a small change pocket and a cellphone pocket, a striped T-shirt that made him look very French and the bear hat to cover his still bold head.

We worked in the garden and I tried to convert the harvest into a variety of meals: soups, kitchari, apple pie, apple sauce and tomato salads. I am making up for lost veggie meals.

We have had a rather active social life with meals in restaurants, at friends’ homes and standing by the counter.  My stomach has gotten rather confused by the change in diet, or maybe it is the new batch of anti-inflammatory pills that made me feel rather punky. As a result I missed the last debate between the presidential hopefuls.  At any rate, I have already voted, so it makes no difference (as if it would).

At work I am engaged in lots of small (near horizon) tasks and lots of reading.  The reading is to catch up with the world of health communications, understand their theories and latest research, so I can sit meaningfully at the table of the new project with Johns Hopkins, of which I am now part. I discovered a great website of the University of Twente, of all places, where someone went to great length to upload all the (health) communication theories, in English even.

Since the project is all about innovation I am also reading up on that topic and am learning about how to switch on my right hemisphere (daydreaming with a touch of awareness so as not to make it the same as zoning out).

Zoning out is actually what I would like to be doing right now.

The best part of travel is coming home.  After a long flight to Amsterdam, a three hour wait at Schiphol that I filled with reviewing a report under a tight deadline, and another long flight I landed in my yellow-orange-red and green home state with Axel waiting at the gate. When I left it was still summer, now it is unmistakably fall.

We celebrated my homecoming with a dinner in one of my favorite restaurants in Gloucester (Alchemy). We were seated on a comfortable couch in a little alcove – with one glass of wine, nearly too comfortable, given that it was already past midnight in the places I had spent the last 5 weeks.

Back home I got to admire the new appliances that look very settled in – a new kitchen look I still need to get used to (I changed my mind about stainless steel but it is too late now). No more rattling death sounds from the old fridge and an over the stove exhaust fan (also stainless steel) to replace the greasy and rusty one that we bought nearly 20 years ago.

I texted Sita and Tessa about my safe return and got one text back from Indiana where Tessa and Steve are visiting Axel’s alma mater (IU) and taking nostalgia pictures when not visiting friends.

Sita is back from two trips to DC and told me our grandson is in the 100^th percentile of height and the 90^th percentile of weight. I am not sure what the universe of these percentiles is – I have a hard time imagining that 100 percent of the kids in that cohort are shorter. He is, according to his paternal grandmother, already at the weight his dad was at 1 year. Faro is not even 5 months.  I can’t wait to see him.

Axel has been busy, too busy, with estate management. Things got complicated when our electrical main, running through our new neighbor’s yard, was nearly clipped during excavation works for their new sun room’s foundation.  The engineer had neglected to put utility cables on the plan and, I am told, has now been fired. It could have been very messy.

As a result of the estate management complication he has neglected the garden a bit. It looks like a jungle, full of unpicked edibles. The beans were too shriveled up to eat so we will dry them and put them up. I harvested pints of tiny yellow tomatoes, a few sleek and bright purple Japanese eggplants, some cucumbers, some baseball-sized zucchini and Brussels sprouts. On the fruit front, our neighbor’s orchard is full of apples, many on the ground. He encouraged us to take as many as we want, which we did. I think today is going to be a cooking day.

At night we were among the first dinner customers of the new Foreign Market café/restaurant in town, finally opening for dinner. We were treated like long lost friends (I think Axel went there a few times while I was away) and enjoyed a lovely meal and great wine (South African), reconnecting with each other after this long absence. It is so good to be home!

On the suggestion of our landlord we got on the mid-lake ferry and visited the small medieval town of Varenna, across the lake from Bellagio.  The boat provided a new and different perspective on Bellagio – a breathtaking view on the tip of the peninsula, with its stately ochre buildings and contrasting evergreens.

We had lunch on a lovely terrace, looking at Bellagio across the water, and feasted on local fare: cheese, wine, and once more a ‘insalata caprese.’ I think I can eat this everyday.

We took the ferry back in time for Jim, whose workday follows American hours and thus starts at 3 PM sharp. We dropped him off and wound our way up the mountain to check out whether the restaurant on the top would be a nice place to celebrate the completion of Sita’s work on Saturday.

The restaurant is part of a working farm, a family business. Alessandro received us in English that was a lot less halting than what we have heard so far.  He explained that weekends are busy as the Milan crowd drives up into the mountains, many coming straight to his restaurant. But we were in time and reserved the best table in the house, for 7:30 – in time to enjoy the spectacular vista of the lake before and after it splits in two, first in daylight and then at night.

The restaurant has a vending machine. At first I thought it was filled with dessert, brown veined white triangles that looked like cheesecake on top and ice cream cups at the bottom. As it turned out, the automat was filled with farm products: various vacuum packed cheeses in the top sections and yogurt in the small containers below.

We then descended down to the beach where parking and bathing is free – one of the fee ‘libero’ places, where you could enjoy yourself and not spend a eurocent. The beaches here are rather pebbly which makes it hard to walk on and even harder to lie down on.  We swam, read, and then fell asleep – I am getting the hang of vacationing. It was a lovely warm Indian summer kind of day. With the setting sun we were reminded that fall is in the air and headed home.

So far we have been eating one kind or another of pasta every night – this night it was leftovers supplemented with a few enormous fresh spinach ricotta raviolis, served with a valeriana (veldsla) salad with very fresh and runny mozzarella and tomatoes, all prepared in our tiny IKEA kitchen.

Sita had an event and didn’t come home until 9 PM but we finally managed to get her and Faro to fall asleep before midnight. She is still in recovery and it shows, though the people she works for may not even realize it.