Sylvia's Journal

August is a time of friends visiting Lobster Cover. Last night Ok and his family arrived from DC, on a college exploration trip. He hadn’t been here for more than a decade, we figured. In that decade he acquired a family. Old friends from the 70s, we had lost touch and then were reunited because we both worked in international public health, he at the World Bank and I at MSH.

Although he moved around in higher circles, we did have a shared an experience in Nigeria and then one in Washington, trying to get the Africa folks from WHO and the WorldBank to find common cause. I never knew what happened after that but learned last night that it did make a difference. We don’t always get to see the consequences of what we do. When the consequences are not good or lacking, not knowing is just as well; but when they were good, we do want to know, ha!

Now on to the more mundane parts of our existince; for the second time in 2 months Axel let his fingers do the walking trying to figure out what refrigerator to buy. The first we ordered on June 23 never showed up even though the money had been taken out of our account that very day. We cancelled, got our money back and started all over again.

Today and yesterday are tax free days (6.5 percent), an annual event in Massachusetts aimed at boosting the economy when people are, apparently, not buying enough.  It seemed a good idea to try again and save some money, especially since our existing refrigerator is still making death rattle noises.

We ended up buying the same refrigerator again, still back-ordered till late September, but for much less money. Sometimes bad things turn out to be good things. We also bought a range hood to replace the unsightly thing that is now disgracing our kitchen, because buying more got us even more discounts. Afterwards we toured SEARS, being reminded over loudspeakers that we should be buying more because everything is discounted. We fell for it and then ran into the other set of Faro’s grandparents, also with a filled shopping bag. The tax holiday works!

Onwards to AAA to get my international drivers permit for Italy. The stories we read on Trip Advisor about car renting in Italy were daunting so we are taking precautions – an international driver’s permit is one of those.  When we filled in the papers on Friday Axel discovered his US license had expired. He paid a heavy price for that: half of Friday – a gorgeous day in Lobster Cove – he spent driving to and from, and standing in line at, the Registry of Motor Vehicles – experiencing budget cuts first hand. We hope he gets it in time so I don’t have to do all the driving.  We also got a complimentary Italy guidebook and a map that includes Switzerland and France. “Can we go there?” Axel asked, but I think we will be busy enough in Italy, exploring the lake, eating spaghetti and drinking espressos.

On Sunday we had our little SOLA reunion and the first face to face encounter between a student and her Skype auntie. It was wonderful and moving.

The two Afghan girls had completed their intensive English language program at Salve Regina college. They had done well in their final presentations to host parents, skype moms and dads and other well-wishers, and had been whisked away to Maine. There they mingled with the natives, played banjo, learned to kayak and the basics of swimming, and ate blueberries until they popped. They were as far from Afghanistan as they could be.

Sunday afternoon they pulled up at our house. Axel hadn’t seen the girls since May 2011 and I hadn’t seen them since my departure from Kabul last September. We could not have imagined they would be at our house one summer later. And here they were.

On Monday Bill had graciously responded to my request to take them up in the air by organizing an aerial view of Boston. We followed route 1 south  at 1500 feet, circled over my office and the Charles River and Fenway Park and then flew back the same way we had come. It took 20 minutes round trip, a little faster than my daily two plus hour commute.

Flying past Logan the Skyway traffic controller requested us to move a little to the side to make way for jets coming and going. We gladly obliged and then made our way to Manchester to circle over our house. The steep banking made Z. reach for the little plastic bag and soon the blueberry breakfast was out of her stomach and sloshing in the bag. As a result we didn’t see Paula in her (Dutch) orange tee-shirt waving at us from the house. We headed back to base and to land before the bag filled up. Before we had gotten into the plane Z pronounced that she wanted to be a pilot. After the trip she retracted that.

From the air we moved to land and then to sea on a whale watching tour. By the time we reached Stellwagen Bank  we had seen one harbor dolphin, one minkie whale and one humpback. By the time we returned to Gloucester we had followed a mother and her calf and seen a few other whales feed and dive deep, and feed again in one series of long gracious moves. Seeing these giant mamals up close was another first for the girls.

We ended the day that had been full of wonders (wonderful) with a restaurant dinner. The girls got kid menus while we adults feasted on more adult fare.

On Tuesday we stayed close to home. The girls pulled out the kayaks while the tide was low and there was no chance of getting in over their heads.  The dress for the water adventure was unusual: one wore a chiffon dress while the other had each part of her body covered, except for hands, feet and face. It didn’t seem to cramp their style. Never has the cove seen such happy faces as they paddled along, singing Afghan songs in loud voices that carried their joy over the water to us adults who stood watching at the beach while our hearts went pitter patter. We would have held back the tide and stayed there, if we could.

In the afternoon real life came crushing into our idyllic reunion – separating the girls as one headed back to Maine with her skype mom and dad , ending our wonderful time together, and sending me back to a work assignment that was due before the end of the day.  Two days from now normalcy will return to lobster cove as Skype auntie Jo will take Z. back to her Rhode Island host family where she will remain until the start of the school year. She will say goodbye to her Skype auntie and resume the distance relationship that has created a bond no one could have expected over a year ago.

This morning we got up a little after dead low tide and managed to wade out in time to inspect our mussel transplants. We found 7 of the batches we spread over the cove and they seemed to be OK despite the gleaming half shells scattered around the clumps. A few weeks ago I had inspected the sites from above during a mid-tide snorkeling expedition when I only saw the open shells.

Some of the clumps appeared to have expanded into a wider area, around the corner of a rock. Maybe the mussels have the same rule as we, humans have: when there are more than a certain number it’s time for a group to split off and wander away. The wandering wasn’t as far as we would like, but it is a good start.

We also found some other things: several large crabs with big holes bored into their underbellies, two sea urchins (long gone missing from our cove), also with similar large holes, and a dead seal pup on the beach, about one and a half foot long, ready to stink up our beach. The latter, I am afraid, an unpleasant project for the day before the stink gets too bad.

It’s been a time of good music and good company and good food –three critical ingredients for a fabulous summer. I might have been in South Africa (an earlier trip was scheduled from July 5 till mid August) and I am grateful that I am here instead.

On Thursday, after a busy week in the office and three long and hot commutes home I found Axel ready with the picnic basket to head out to Castle Hill for the Thursday evening ‘music on the lawn’ series.  It has become a summer ritual on days free of rain and thunder. Tessa is a regular, always with friends and we meet up with our friends. It is lovely. We sit on the second hill by the statue, our meeting point. We spread our blankets and settle down for a pleasant, not entirely bug free, lounge on the lawn while live music plays on the steps of the big house, far enough away so that we can actually talk.

Friday at noon we headed out to one of the farms that is cultivated by a wonderful project, the Food Project, now in its 20th year. We had participated in a fundraiser by paying a lot extra for our Cirque du Soleil tickets back in June and are now on a mailing list. I don’t mind being on this mailing list because this is a most wonderful project.

We happily accepted the invitation to one of their ‘community lunches,’ where the kids, from places as far apart as Nahant, Marblehead, Lynn, Beverly and Revere, were learning about how food grows, what is healthy food, and to work in harmony with kids that come from completely different backgrounds.  We sat at a table with teenagers from Revere, Lynn and Beverly and heard how the program was transforming them into responsible citizens and adults. It was most inspiring to see them interact with adults and present themselves with confidence. If I wasn’t already engaged in something meaningful, this is where I would go to find meaning,

Friday night we headed out to Cambridge to P’s house. P is always surrounded by interesting young people, more so than we are, simply because they all live in her house. It keeps her young, I am sure. We had a delightful meal and then headed out to the Lizard Lounge where the young folk seem to hang out or work.

Club d’Elf was playing, a jazz ensemble that defied (my) description. At first I thought they were tuning (I am embarrassed to admit) but then I got it as they worked themselves up into up and down spiraling cadences of musical encounters between the various instrument/player pairs. Halfway through I walked up closer to watch how they communicated with each other, musicians talking with each other through their instruments. Amazing! The base player was the ring leader, using his instrument as a conductor’s baton.

The ensemble started after my usual bedtime which was a little trying for me. I am not an evening/night person. Nevertheless I managed to stay awake through one never-ending set and the long drive home.

Aside from all these wonderful things happening towards the end of the week, and the great start with Sita, Faro and Jim being at our house, another good thing happened at work.

On Tuesday when I was given the green light to move in with a dear and longtime colleague who is in an office with windows and light and river views. This is the same place where I started when I returned from Kabul but was booted out soon after to be miserable and depressed in a shared small windowless office. Being in an office with natural light lifted my spirits more than I had imagined possible. And with that came a lift in my energy level for my job. Amazing, how that works.

Axel turned 66 on Monday. I decorated his chair with fresh flowers – a benefit to those with summer birthdays – and displayed the usual array of small tchotchkes around his plate to wish him a happy birthday and, collectively, offer the gift of a new and improved Nano (the previous was left on a flight to or from Tokyo) and a book about the fishing trade and Gloucester (The Last Fish Tale by Mark Kurlansky).

But the best birthday gift walked in just as I was about to make the 15 feet commute to my home office at about 8:30 AM – Faro, his mom and dad. Going to work became a little more challenging! We had them with us for the next 36 hours.  I swear I saw Faro grow during that time: a little plumper, a little longer and with a little more hair (definitely red).

Later Tessa came over as well and eventually Steve and a few friends joined in the birthday celebration. Tessa made a spectacular G&T cake; she knows Axel’s favorite summer drink is a G&T.

On Tuesday, getting up early to get to work, I reluctantly said goodbye to Sita, Jim and babe, all wide awake so early in the morning. On my way home I phoned home and to my delight learned they were still there – double happiness!

Faro has been drinking himself into a deep sleep which was fine with me. I joined in and together we took a little snooze as Faro curled up on my chest. Axel snapped a picture of our little pre-prandial nap.  I look like an ‘oma’ with a double chin. I know my siblings will be chuckling and I can predict exactly what they will say when seeing the picture. After all, our ‘oma’ had about 7 chins, soft, fleshy lobes dangling below her real (and first) chin. When I grew up she had just about one chin for each couple of grandchildren. I am just a beginner.

It was hard to get our Quaker meeting started on Sunday. A high pitched sound from the alarm system pervaded the room. I seem to be deaf to that high frequency as I heard nothing and was wondering why people kept getting up and appeared generally frantic about solving a problem I knew nothing about. I found out later about the sound once everyone had given up to change the conditions of our Sunday worship.

If you believe everything happens for a reason you would have been right. The noise interference made for some wonderful messages about trying to keep the external environment under control when you cannot and the role of irritants in creating something of beauty. The pearl and the sand grain in the oyster came to mind, as did the crab grass that keeps growing in our yard (squint and you can appreciate its beautiful lust green color).

Out of the irritants came a wonderful meeting with the spontaneous singing of a round that sounded to me like the four part harmony songs that South(ern) Africans are so good at.

Before yesterday, my last flight with Bill was about 8 months ago. In the meantime his 2496X was repainted with a faster speed stripe on the outside and new leather on the inside. He keeps the leather gleaming after the students mess it up.

Although there were clouds all around us, and some as low as 1800 feet, we managed to stay under them and make our way to Worcester where skies were clear. From there we turned south to Willimantic in Connecticut where we landed. The place was deserted so we didn’t tarry long and headed out to the only corridor that was relatively cloud free, in easterly direction.

The plan was to fly over the Newport mansions but the clouds were too low so we stayed on the other side of the waterway and admired the views over Providence, Fall River and then turned westwards again to fly around Boston towards an off putting and low hanging bank of clouds. On those moments I am happy to fly with someone who has an instrument rating and could fly through the clouds if needed.

In the end we didn’t need to fly on instruments as the clouds dispersed up and sideways, letting us fly clear through to our home base in Beverly.

It was so much fun flying again. On the outward flight I didn’t do much other than putting in the occasional radio or VOR frequencies and admiring the landscape. On the inbound I had the controls for a while. Bill had trimmed the plane so well that I didn’t need to do much to keep the altitude and speed constant.

If I still had my own plane and if I still would have all my confidence to fly solo or with Axel, I could be in Northampton in 45 minutes to get another Faro fix anytime when the skies are clear. May be one day…

We had not seen our grandson for half of his life and so we dropped everything on Friday to get our Faro fix. As soon as Axel was finished with his physical therapy we got in the car for the long drive to Easthampton. It was made longer by roadwork around Worcester, making the trip a good three and a half hours. But it was worth it.

We woke Faro up as he was comfortably asleep in a sling on his mother’s belly.  I got to feed him until he fell asleep again and slept through most of the afternoon.

We brought part of supper and then shopped for the missing ingredients, including a most exotic collection of beers in large brown bottles from the local beer aficionado shop.

We had dinner in the garden, I fed Faro some more and we hang out on a rug on the grass. After dinner we drove the long way back again, more roadwork around Palmer, another 3 plus hours which made, together for a nearly 7 hour drive to satisfy that most aching need to see our grandson. All well worth it.

Many of my colleagues are at the big HIV/AIDS conference in Washington. Every morning I receive a lot of blog posts in my mail box. Everyone is blogging like crazy. In my mind I imagine the end of the day’s session and everyone running off with their laptops and Pads to blog about what they learned/heard today; only a few bewildered souls standing around wanting to just talk. Ha!

It is good that the conference reports are upbeat because we need upbeatness. I attended a brown bag lunch presentations yesterday. A colleague from Lesotho with whom I have worked earlier in the spring talked about the work we are doing there with orphans and vulnerable children. The work is good and important but also a drop on a hot plate. The numbers of HIV infections among young women is staggering and the number of children left vulnerable to abuse (both physical and socially as they are being cheated out of inheritances) is frightful. Especially if you consider that in about 30 years’ time these children will be governing the country. It brings images from futuristic doomsday movies to mind.

The contrast with my life is beyond description but I will try nevertheless:

I drive home in a car I own that is in good shape because I have money to maintain it. The roads are in fairly good shape and the government has ordered maintenance work on the Tobin Bridge. It creates two daily traffic jams, in and out of Boston, but I can count on the bridge not collapsing under me one day.  I arrive at my beautiful home, inherited from my in-laws, that is situated right next to the ocean and has a small beach that we have mostly to ourselves.

I have a loving husband of more than 30 years, two grown up kids who have work (and cars, and one of them a home) and found good mates. I have one healthy grand child who would not have survived the ordeal of birth if he had lived in the mountains of Lesotho, his mom might not have either.

We pour ourselves some drinks and wander down to the beach where we are the only people. We sit by the water’s edge and talk. We decide it is a good time for a pre-dinner swim and change in our bathing suits; we go back to the beach and discover the water is icy cold. We stand around for a while and then sit down again at the water’s edge and talk some more. Then it is time for dinner, a collaborative efforts (Axel picked the menu and did the shopping, picked the chard out of our garden and I assembled the feta-tomato-pita pizzas). We take our plates outside, pour ourselves a glass of cold white wine and eat while we look at the glistening cove and the flowers that surround us. We talk some more. A few chores later it is time for bed. All is well. I wanted to say ‘we are blessed,’ but that presumes that we deserve to be blessed. But what about all these orphans in Lesotho and their predators?

Monday was recovery day, requiring my presence only at 2 phone meetings. The rest of the day I reconnected with Lobster Cove, its land and its water.

The garden had suffered from the up and down weather and a recent rainstorm had flattened the potato plants which are also infested with white flies. Axel feared that our harvest was going to be poor. I decided to investigate and dug up 3 plants. This produced such an abundance of potatoes, especially small ones that we decided to leave the rest alone and let them small ones mature.

I harvested most of the beets, gold and red, several large and moth-eaten leaves of the Portuguese kale and plucked about a pint of purple beans. Thus our dinner was red, golden, green and purple. Axel added a vase with pastel-colored snap dragons from the garden and our home grown feast was complete! We had this fabulous dinner outside after a quick cooling off in the cove. Things can’t get much better than that (except for the presence of our kids and grandkid).

I learned that while I was away Tessa started her own business. I can’t quite understand how we produced two business owners, but we did. Tessa’s company is called Align Graphic Design, LLC and Sita’s is dpict. I realized that I also have two family members who have ‘domained’ their own name (Tessa and Axel). Tessa’s site is under construction and the other is a little inactive (announcing my return on September 8, 2011).

Although I should be used to this by now, it never ceases to amaze me how one moment Axel and I speak via Skype, thousands of miles apart and then poof, we are in the same place again. Of course the ‘poof’ includes 17 hours in planes (this time the baby was sitting in front of me). Still, thanks to the first (or second?) law of thermodynamics and the Bernoulli principle, we are re-united.

During my lay-over in Amsterdam I bought Axel his favorite Dutch drink: Corenwijn. It comes in a 900 gram stoneware bottle. I tried once to buy him Corenwijn that came in a plastic bottle but it was not what he wanted; and so I added about 1 kg to my already overweight hand luggage. I stayed away from the cheese shop (that would have added a few more kgs) and then filled every empty nook and cranny in my hand luggage with lightweight licorice.

Out of curiosity about all the fuss I watched the Hunger Games on my tiny TV screen. I am not an action movie fan but I can manage on a small screen because the blood and gore is less visible.  After having satisfied my curiosity I switched to Robin Williams with his Weapons of Self Destruction. My neighbor had been watching it and was in stitches for a good part of the trip; it was rather contagious and, as a bonus, it killed the time.

I arrived in Boston with plane loads full of young people who were being whisked off to camps and language schools – it is that time of the year. It is hard to imagine crossing the Atlantic to go to camp. But then again, I flew for 18 hours to facilitate a two-day meeting.

It is summer again. I put my warm sweater, scarf and coat back in the closet to wait for our fall and donned proper summer clothes. It was hot and humid in Lobster Cove. If it wasn’t for the off-shore breeze I would have gone for a swim.