Sylvia's Journal

Yesterday evening we left Sita in her room with babe in arms, trying to recoup hours and hours of lost sleep. We moved back to the waiting area where we spent most of the day before, waiting and, to pass the time, working. It still felt all very unreal – June 6 far away; the stresses, the scare when a pediatrician was summoned over the intercom, when some coded color was called – my gut tying up in big knots.

Our new grandson’s entry into the world was a little hesitant. He had to be assisted to get his first breath, clear his lungs and so didn’t get a 10 on his first test (the Apgar test). He spent his first few hours with wires and specialists around him, and his dad. Only in his fourth hour did he get some real quality time with mom. That was hard on Sita. He slept through most of it and didn’t seem to mind the poking and prodding but all the rest of us, his doula, his auntie Tessa and we the grandparents did mind. We watched him through the half closed louvers of the nursery, as if through a looking glass. Was this my new grandson?

Our little man spent most of his first day sleeping and didn’t seem to mind being handed off from one admirer to another. He would startle a little and then snooze again. He spent much time with mom, and dad, skin to skin. It is good that he is oblivious of his mother’s agony as she is adjusting to postpartum-with-belly-stitches and what appeared to be a hematoma. They will stay for a week in the hospital so that the pediatrician can treat the baby for whatever infection his newly deployed white blood cells are fighting. Having ingested meconium he was at risk and this should nip anything untoward in the bud. This healing time is also good for Sita.

I don’t think the new parents mind staying in the hospital with many helping hands for baby and mom, a bed that adjusts up and down, lactation support and Percocet.  Their home is not quite adapted to her special condition and making it so would be a major effort.

During the many hours of waiting I managed to read, breathlessly, the China Study, a book about the links between nutrition and disease that has smashed some of my sacred nutrition cows to bits. I already knew that a plant-based diet is good for us and our experience with the Ayurvedic cleansing and diet has been nothing but positive. But I didn’t know how bad dairy products are for us, the well documented associations between the major diseases of our time. I was weaned on the slogan that milk is good for strong teeth and bones and am now learning about some less than positive effects of calcium that comes from an animal based diet.  I am also learning how about grip the dairy industry has on us, starting early with kindergarten kids and learning resources (free) about nutrition for teachers – with dairy products playing the star and central role. Should we be surprised?

I have also started reading Gary Hamel’s new book (What Matters Now) – a book that is in many ways quite similar to the China Study. If I look at these (and probably countless other books) from a 30.000 ft view I am encouraged – the counter forces to corporate greed, hubris, blatant self-interest are starting to meet their opponents. I am not quite sure how and what role I am to play in this drama, but whatever it is I will take it on, on behalf of baby Bliss and all the new kids on the world block.

Everything that Sita, Jim and Kara their doula, decided to put on their ‘don’t want’ list materialized as she found herself succumbing to the relentless pytocin-induced contractions all day long until the release offered by an epidural. She was hooked up with all sorts of wires and finally ended up with a C-section. The baby, a sturdy little fellow of 8 pounds, 7 ounces and 22 inches was born minutes before midnight on June 6.

The C-section, although not desired was unavoidable as baby Bliss was not well positioned – his cone head is proof – and also post due – as evidenced by his peeling skin and the meconium that he had ingested.  As a result Sita had to wait several hours before she was able to hold him. The camera pictures had to stand in for the real thing while the pediatric team checked him out.  He too was hooked onto several wires, just like his mom.

It is 3:30 AM now and we are all exhausted and very very grateful for the staff and their expertise that helped on this difficult journey. And of course we are all hooked already by this darling little creature with his cone head and a fuzz of red hair.

We’ve all converged onto the birthing center of the Cooley-Dickinson hospital where w found Sita attached to diverse monitors that made the place look more like a hospital than a birth center.It wasn’t quite what they had had in mind.

After some intense chemically induced contractions they unhooked her from the chemical drip so that she could have a good night sleep before proceeding.

We said goodbye to the exhausted couple and installed ourselves, including the doula, in their house. Tomorrow we promised to show up again at the birth center, early in the morning when the more potent labor inducing drug will be dripped into Sita’s arm.

We’ve all converged onto the birthing center of the Cooley-Dickinson hospital where w found Sita attached to diverse monitors that made the place look more like a hospital than a birth center.It wasn’t quite what they had had in mind.

After some intense chemically induced contractions they unhooked her from the chemical drip so that she could have a good night sleep before proceeding.

We said goodbye to the exhausted couple and installed ourselves, including the doula, in their house. Tomorrow we promised to show up again at the birth center, early in the morning when the more potent labor inducing drug will be dripped into Sita’s arm.

A timer on my computer has been blinking for the last 5 days with the words ‘Time’s Up!’ I installed it some months ago and put ‘Baby Bliss’ as the name of the event. Everyone except baby Bliss agrees that time’s up, Sita in particular.

And so we continue to live our pre-grandparent status lives, a penciled in social life – all events listed as tentative, just in case we’d be heading west.

On Friday night A and KB joined us for a quick summer meal in the late summer afternoon sun so we could go out to the movies. After 6 months of teasing trailers of the Marigold Hotel we finally watched the movie with all of our favorite actors and enjoyed ourselves fabulously in a nearly empty theatre.

On Saturday we celebrated  the retirement of Allegra and Peter from the Waring School after 34 years of beyond-the-call of duty service. I fondly remember working with Allegra on bringing the French immersion program back to the school. It was nice to see friends we hadn’t seen for a long time. Despite the pouring rain, 100s of parents and alumns showedup and seated themselves comfortably under a giant tent arund a spectacular meal to pay homage to an extraordinary couple.

In the evening we attended Verdi’s Requiem, a wonderful performance by the Chorus North Shore and the Festival Orchestra. Once again we had to brave pouring rains. I parked the car while Axel bought the tickets. This was a bad division of labor as I had to park practically in the next town over and then struggled with a defective umbrella as I walked the long way to the church where the performance was held.

The umbrella struggle may well have restarted my rotator cuff tendinitis. I arrived in the church in a bad mood, with puddles of water in my boots and an aching shoulder – the music improved my mood but the shoulder is still in bad shape the morning after. Will it ever get better I wonder?

I am feeling re-integrated into parts of MSH that I was so very disconnected from since I returned from Kabul now nearly 9 months ago. The two days we spent talking about the integration of governance and gender into the management and leadership curriculum that we developed and fine-tuned over the last 10 years. I met new colleagues who I had only seen on TV screens during teleconferences and some I had never met at all; and then there were my old buddies and our new partners (from Yale). It was a good experience for that reason alone. It was odd to be a participant with no facilitation duties – it felt like a free ride. And baby Bliss gracefully let me complete the two days.

For 50 dollars I bought myself an earlier flight home – an expense I would usually not allow myself but baby Bliss changes everything.

A Bangla taxi-driver brought me to the airport, a most entertaining ride during which I learned much about the American spirit that he fully embraced. It is a spirit from some time ago (sacrifice all for the education of the children), which he claimed is evaporating now in a society he has made his own and which he loves and hates.

After we talked a bit about the politics in Bangladesh (such conversations are always about corrupt politicians) and the strikes I encountered in April, we returned to the safer topic of him and this future. He told me is going to retire from taxi driving and return to his ancestral village in Bangladesh. He will probably leave behind his grown up son and daughter. This (the US) is their homeland. But they do speak, read and write Bangla, he saw to that, so they can return to their ancestral lands if they ever feel moved to do so. They got education, they got good degrees and now jobs in HR and accounting – portable skill sets. I think he hopes secretly that they will eventually return to Bangladesh; like him.

When I paid him for the ride and verified that I had giving him enough he said that sometimes the money doesn’t matter and the conversation and company was worth more than any tip I could have given him. My benefit was that I never noticed the rush hour traffic we encountered.

Back in Boston, as I drove out of the airport parking I noticed a small note tucked under my windshield wiper. I pulled over and worried that it was from someone who had scratched my car but it turned out to be a note from someone (a man suspect) who responded with great vehemence to the sticker on my car for Elizabeth Warren and John Tierney.  In poor handwriting the note read:  GRANNY WARREN + tHAt crook TIERNEY? ARE YOU SERIOUS. GRANNY stolE somEBODY’s JOB + SHE’s pART OF tHE ONE PERCENT!! WHAT A PHONY BITCH!

The juxtaposition of granny and bitch struck me as odd though it is a combination that is common in fairytales (bitch becomes witch).  I am of course very partial to the granny part now. Let’s vote for granny!

Although I know the answer to my annual question – why do we have to frame war as a honorable endeavor, call killings ‘the ultimate sacrifice,’ – it popped up again as we watched the annual Memorial day ritual – the speeches, the invocation of God (always on our side), even the rainbow speech of the (first) female commandant of the American Legion post in Manchester.

For Axel it is mostly a social event. He can’t walk a straight line from one end of the cemetery to the other because he either knows someone or he has to stop at a grave. It takes a long time to cover any distance. It is also the annual handshaking with people Axel knows but I don’t; old classmates, football mates, relatives. This is his hometown after all.

After the ceremony we walked over to inspect the graves we had prettied up only two days ago. It hasn’t been always like this- there have been years we have been remiss in our duties and the graves were decorated with weeds. Not this year.

We walked home past the house of Sita’s in laws where we made our daily check in call to the expectant mom. No activity there yet. They don’t go to the ceremonies – he knows the nasty side of war and is not interested. If there wasn’t a social aspect I would stay home too.

The rest of the day was devoted to gardening and cleaning up rampant ivy, left untouched for the last 3 years. I was merciless in my cutting back as it had nearly strangled a hydrangea bush and was working on another. I put it back in its place.

Tessa and Steve stopped by from their rare day off together, dropping off a pint of ice-cream from the ice-cream stand run by a former class mate’s mom. Axel demonstrated the utility of my mother’s day present, the outdoor fireplace, and cooked our dinner on it. He had gone out with his fishing rod to bring home dinner but the fish thought otherwise – and so we had frozen shrimp, a standby just in case – with roasted asparagus (our own), a micro greens salad (our own) and homemade potato crisps. The latter are not our own as the potatoes still have a way to go. We sat by the fire until the mosquitoes chased us inside.

We have completed our ancestral duties for Memorial Day and planted the geraniums at the graves of Penny and Herm, Phil and Paul. Diane had joined us; a quick walk from her backyard to the graveyard. Instead of vodka we sprinkled Dutch gin on the graves, a slight evolution – the taste suits us better.

After the work was done we plopped down on the grass and talked for a long time before returning to sunny lobster cove. Axel took out his kayak to check whether he could still use it with his torn rotator cuff (he could). As soon as he left I decided I too should check out whether I could still row in my Alden shell.

Getting it out into the water was a bit of a challenge, but once on the water I was fine. It was a beautiful late afternoon and the water was mostly flat with long slow lazy swells carrying me forward.  Outside the cove I saw Axel kayaking further out. We met up and continued together which is a bit of a challenge because (a) Axel doesn’t have his hearing aid in so we can’t really communicate and (b) he looks forward and I look backwards and (c) I go much faster with my long oars.

We returned back to the cove just when the wedding party next door was picking up steam. We had not been invited to the wedding of our longtime neighbor’s youngest son. I didn’t mind but Axel was a little peeved.  I treasured not having to be anywhere, not having to dress up and being able to do this outing on the water.

We cooked our dinner on the outdoor fire pit that Axel has bought me for mother’s day (alongside with my meditation bench). We tend to give each other presents that we need or that we like ourselves.  The meditation bench I use every morning. The fire pit we will be using every evening throughout the summer I predict.

Sunday was another leisurely day that include Quaker Meeting and my bike ride to and fro, hilling the potatoes, attending the official re-dedication of the newly restored rotunda at Tucks Point – a whole town event with much appreciation for all the people who had made this historical restoration possible. Axel was one of them.

We skipped a cookout on Plum Island because Axel felt punky. He is still feeling punky but watching Sherlock Holmes distracts him while it chased me upstairs. I am not very receptive to modern Sherlock’s antics and franticness late in the day.

We have seen the future….it sounds like the start of a commencement speech but it was actually the ultrasound to check on baby Bliss. He looked straight into the camera with one eye, rubbing the other with his tiny hand. Was that a wink? Is he teasing us?

Sita certainly is ready to hold her baby on the outside. The continued high blood pressure was enough concern to get the ultrasound done. But the little fellow is fine, floating in enough fluids, weighing 8 pounds and something. He looked ready to my untrained eye. We are all ready to meet him and, I was told, his new home is no thoroughly cleaned by a team of professionals so he can move in.

Now, when we are invited, we always have to accept using the ‘tentative’ option, as one would in Outlook. But then I have to remind myself that there is usually plenty of time between the start of the first contractions and the actual birth.

Axel has bought the pink geraniums for the Magnuson graves. It is part of our Memorial Day tradition to plant them at the grave and then pour some vodka to the memory of his ancestors.