Sylvia's Journal

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.

From Wednesday till this morning, Sunday, we have been on a roller coaster ride – Sita in the front seat. We have been considering plan A (we are all leaving for Italy today) and plan B (Sylvia and Axel going alone), with Sita calling off the entire trip because of her slow recovery from her surgery ordeal.

On Thursday I had a conversation with a colleague who is working on a course on decision making. I have been thinking a lot about that. I know that some people like decision matrices where you put various options, like plan A and B, in a matrix, attach values and add things up. The highest number wins.

But in this case such a matrix is not very helpful because everything has values attached but these values change day by day, and simply adding things up removes the entire emotional element from the equation – and there is lots of that.

Someone pointed me to a Wikipedia pages about decision making biases [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases] – I read through them and realized that many are in play as we struggled with what to do. The most we could do was postpone, and see what would happen. But today the moment of truth has arrived.  We are going, all of us.

Yesterday we drove to Rockland Maine and back for the wedding of Jim’s brother – he was his best man two years ago when Sita and Jim got married, and now it was the other way around.  Driving with the Labor Day weekend exodus from Boston to far up in Maine was another ordeal for Sita but we also realized it would be a bit of a test case for whether she could be in a plane seat for even longer.  She has decided she could – and hopefully, with the helping hands of her sister and husband around, she can find sleep in small spaces.

The wedding was on the lawn of the Samoset resort, looking out over one of Maine’s beautiful bays, on a 10+ day. It was a short and sweet ceremony with much language about ‘through thick and thin.’ I thought about Sita and Jim, this has become all too real for them – the ups and downs of starting a family. But then, everytime I see Faro, the ups steps forward and the downs fade into the background.

Aside from running errands for Sita, Jim and Faro, and preparing banana ice cream (cut up three bananas in small pieces, freeze, puree in blender or similar device – voila) I have been using this unexpected slack time to catch up on reading and surf the net. It produced a major jolt in my brain, creating new connections, laying new neural tracks and starting a bunch of conversations that are about possibilities rather than results. It confirmed my belief that slack time is critical to creativity and connectivity.

In the process I learned about tons of interesting conversations that are happening in universes that are parallel to mine/ours. So today I was a connector.

Faro has been sleeping right in front of me for the last few hours while Jim is working on a couch in the next room and Sita is preparing for her vacation/work trip that includes the wedding of her brother in law on Saturday. This is all very taxing for someone who is on pain medication and had abdominal surgery yesterday.

We calculated the amount of soy formula Faro will need while in Italy as we are not counting on that being available in the local Bellagio supermarket – we think it will cater to a different population than soy-drenched Northampton. To be on the safe side Axel and I will pack two enormous containers in our baggage.

While Sita was buying her biennial supply of markers, a multi-hundred dollar expense, I bought the floor model of a kid-sized whiteboard/blackboard easel that was on sale – a clear oma-impulse. The sales lady and I disassembled it in the store and I re-assembled it in Faro’s bedroom.  He had his first marker experience and seemed to like it. Afterwards he had a little practice on the piano – music and visual arts should be embedded in his genes but we know that practice is part of the deal.

I have been singing Dutch children’s songs with him. He particularly likes the song about Kortjakje (meaning short jacket) who is sick throughout the week but not on Sundays when she goes to church with her bible with its silver fittings. Or the sheep with its white feet, a lullaby that does indeed make his eyes a bit droopy. Sita remembers those songs but only the sound so she asked me to record them. Together we have been singing row-row-your-boat whenever he starts to get cranky. The words ‘merrily merrily merrily’ immediate bring a smile to his face. I knew music was in his genes.

Exhausted from all this hard of practicing his scribing skills, piano and listening (when he is not drinking) he slept the rest of the day – dreaming of great things to come.

Sita’s bad luck got my entries out of order. This predates the panic call.

On Saturday we drove out for a lovely breakfast somewhere on a pig and peach and apple farm. This is Western Massachusetts at its best. We stocked up on juicy white peaches, apples, jellies and more. Faro’s other oma and opa arrived midway through the morning and we hung out in the local park, watching dragon flies skim the water and birds dive for fish.

After lunch we sat in the garden, the other oma having first dibs on Faro, since I will have him for 10 days in a row, soon. Sita and I weeded the zinnia plot, overgrown with grab grass. It is a dirty but very satisfying pastime, weeding. We drove back in the late afternoon.

We are going through some 10+ late summer days. Sunday was one of them. After a very quiet Quaker meeting, where we welcomed Carole back from 3 weeks at an orphanage we support in Kenya, I pedaled back to Manchester.

We had a lunch date with Alison and Carry, two ex-colleagues and dear friends, accompanied by their mates. While Axel went to get the lobsters (only our 2^nd time this summer), I prepared a Martha Stewardesque table for 6, in spite of the cracked plates and mismatched glasses, under the tree looking out over the cove.

Axel made us poblano-cucumber margaritas, a concoction that may well be our all-time favorite summer drink. After lunch Alison and Mark ventured out in the kayaks while I swam behind them to the sentinel rock at the mouth of the cove from where I could just see Alison’s kayak as it was turned over by a wave.

I swam back to shore to get my kayak for a rescue maneuver but she was already being towed into the cove. The unexpected swim was wonderful because of the unusually warm water. By the time we arrived at the beach we discovered one thing that tends to come along with unusually warm waters: a dark red and translucent jelly fish the size of a dinner plate and thousands of small ones, the size of a finger nail. Suffice to say we did not go back into the water.

As I was paying the cashier in the supermarket for the ingredients of what was to be a spectacular desert to follow the poached wild salmon, Jim called. Could I get in the car and drive out to Western Massachusetts?  Sita had gone in for what should have been a routine procedure, part of the aftermath of the difficult labor three months ago. The emergency C-section back then had not been neatly completed.  There were adhesions and things needed to be corrected. Why this had to wait to five days before our departure for Italy is a mystery.

But things had gone bad – a puncture, nick or perforation led to profuse internal bleeding and she fainted just as she was discharged. When she came to she was in agonizing pain and wheeled back into surgery. That’s when I got the call. Jim was with baby, unprepared for a long stay into the night.  The only thing that worked out well was that the baby is used to being bottle fed. If he hadn’t, it would have been a very abrupt weaning.

I canceled the desert, Axel packed me a commuter dinner and I headed out to Western Mass, just barely after the heavy commuting traffic had eased up.  I made the 125 mile trip in just over 2 hours (don’t ask) and found a restless baby and a distraught Jim.

The hospital closes exactly at 8 PM. Except for the emergency entrance and the wards, there was not a soul to be seen, a ghost hospital. Doors closed after you went through and locked, requiring a search for someone with an electronic key to get you back in. Jim’s cell phone battery had died and the charger was of course at home.  To make things worse there is no phone signal in the hospital. We had already experienced that in another wing, three months earlier, but the day surgery family waiting area was also without signal. So you have to go outside, but then the doors lock behind you. Ughhh. I was able to bring relief (cellphone and baby wise) so that Jim could go outside and let a long list of anxious people know what was going on, and, after the phone call, get back in.

Faro and I were the only two in the large day surgery family waiting area. A large flat screen monitor was mounted on the wall. It indicated, with color codes, the various stations one has to go through in day surgery. I can’t remember them all but there are about 9 stations. The screen was empty except for one line: patient initials S,M. Under the station column her row was colored blue, meaning she was in PACU. A discarded brochure explained to me that that meant she was out of surgery and in the recovery room.

In the meantime the baby started crying, wanting more milk, but nothing was prepared and there was only one, used but empty bottle. I also had to go to the bathroom. It reminded me of the trials and tribulations as a new mother, lacking hands, juggling, packing the baby up for a trip to the bathroom, with the added difficulty of doors shutting behind me, not to open again.

Eventually we were notified that the patient was in her room – on the joint replacement ward for lack of beds elsewhere. She was groggy and in great pain and utterly depressed about the bad turn of events. Seeing us all back in the same hospital where she struggled through and after delivery was an unpleasant deja-vu. The only difference was that Faro was gurgling and smiling at his mom who couldn’t hold him but gurgled right back.

And now I am waiting for the house to wake up, anxious to get back to the hospital. Only three days after I was here last, the cats are starting to accept me, no longer an interloper.

The weeks are racing by, hurtling us towards the fall, but we don’t mind because September means Italy, now on the horizon. Everyday something wonderful happens and if nothing wonderful happens then I go to the garden to see the wonders there:  tomatoes in all colors, chard, Portuguese kale, Brussels sprouts, midget cucumbers, purple and green beans,and the giant blackberries that taste like vitamin C. We should wait for them to taste like sugar but the critters already do that. So we scrunch our faces and pick the seeds out of our teeth.

Midway through the week Tessa and Steve came over for dinner. They have just one week more before their lease ends at which point they and our grand dogs will move back in. We are making space, giving stuff away, moving stuff around, temporarily parking things here and there. It is not clear when and where their new lodging will be – so for now it’s mom and dad’s.

On Thursday we packed a picnic and joined the crowd converging on Castle Hill for the before last Thursday evening concert. Tessa is usually there with lots of friends but now that she has her own business she has deadlines to meet to secure her reputation and get the word-of-mouth that is so important for her start up. Instead we met up with a, for me, unknown cast of characters. At our age we are pretty settled in our circle of friends so adding a bunch is neat. We shared a potluck picnic and met more friends of new friends, while listening to Entrain (sp?) at a distance that was comfortable to the ears and allowed for conversation.

One of our new friends, a Spaniard who makes walls in Chile, drove to our house the next day to bring us the best European defense against mosquitoes. He swears by it (and Europeans need it badly here in Essex County – so they are good judges).  Until recently it was not approved for sale in the US so we don’t really want to know what is in it.  We are moved by his generosity and will treasure the gift simply because of how it came into our possession.

On Friday we decided it was time for a Faro fix. We had only seen our grandson on Skype for the last three weeks so it was time to see him and hold him. We took a piece of furniture from Tessa and Steve along that needs a parking spot for the next months, to serve as an extra excuse for making the long track west and back.  Since Axels’ asthma has kicked up again we booked a hotel for the night as we feared that a night in a house full of cat hairs and dander would make things worse.

I got to spend much quality time with our fast growing grandson who was exhausted from eating and growing by the time our dinner was served – a tasty combination of colorful foods that did not include any animal products.  Our doctor, asked about the China Study during a visit, agreed with the basic tenets of the book, though not with every detail. He told Axel that in his long career as a family practitioner, he has seen that vegetarians tend to live quite a bit longer than the meat/animal product eaters. We have strayed a bit from that path but Sita has not. Long live Faro!

After the dishes and grandson were put away we played Monopoly, supposedly the fast version, but after two hours we yawned so much that we interrupted the game. At that point Axel had much cash but few streets, Jim had little cash and few streets, I had a little more of each and Sita was accumulating money from rents at a disgusting rate.

We drove over the mountain to our hotel in Holyoke. We have stayed there before. We call it a Patel Motel because it is owned, as so many others of its kind strewn along the Mass Pike and its extension through Northern New York State, by Indians, many of whom are named Patel, who seem to have a knack for the hospitality industry.

It is dark again when the alarm wakes me up at 4:30 AM, signaling 6 long months of getting up in the dark. It is also cold in the morning. I am not yet putting a coat on, but soon that will be the smart thing to do. When I drive home from work it is still hot.  The changes in temperature are getting bigger each day. I am watching the trees for signs of fall – not quite yet.

This is a good time of the year to live in the moment as the moment is full of goodies. Axel put a Pooh quote on our refrigerator to remind us. It goes something like this:

Pooh (to Piglet): “what day is it today?” Piglet: “it is today.” Pooh: “Today is my favorite day!”

This morning on my ride home I saw a falling star. The sky looked like a Disney picture, with Tinker Bell shooting across it, just a few hundred meters above the road. The star’s tail was thick and clear, pastel-colored. I have never seen one so close and so clearly. On impulse I made a wish for our grandson’s continued good health and good temper.

Tessa and Steve came over yesterday with the grand dogs. We fed the humans a great meal from the garden (potatoes, squash, zucchini and beans) and the dogs the whey from the yogurt cheese. Everyone was happy.