Sylvia's Journal

Today I went to work. Not that there was a whole lot of work to go to, maybe more of a day of ‘work hunting.’ I went in to talk with people about how I could make myself useful and earn a living. I also went in to collect my access card to the building, find a space to sit, drop off books and Africana no longer needed back home and have lunch with a colleague not really seen/spoken to for a long time. And finally I also dropped my computer off for a thorough checkup which lasted through the day.

Having a space to sit lifted my spirits. I felt adrift before, not having a place to call my own – I can’t imagine what homeless people go through –and I was only missing a work home. I also will soon be part of a team, as we prepare for a proposal, so I don’t feel as much like a retiree. A space and a team is all I need – I was never so aware of the importance of these two things. Oh, and my computer back of course – being unplugged all day is risky as everyone here assumes you are plugged in all the time.

It was Tessa’s Steve’s birthday today and so we drove to Lanesville to join them for his birthday dinner. We ate a sinfully rich lasagna from the plates that Tessa remembers from her childhood, now hers to keep. Just as we are finally feeling settled into our house, they have nearly completed their nesting. Their little dollhouse is snug and lovely with everything carefully put in its place. It’s wonderful to have kids all grown up who prepare meals for you, serve you wine and then do the dishes.

I am losing count of the number of lobsters Axel is catching. Yesterday he came with the biggest catch ever, a two-and-a-half-pounder. After it had been given a hot bath we discovered a whole colony of tiny mussels that had settled on the inside of the giant’s tail – infant mussels. We hope this is a good sign that mussels are coming back. There have been no mussels in the cover for several years now.

Steve came to pick up his stuff, we brought the boxes to the dump and then I cleaned up the barn that has been used as a staging area for too many things. With winter coming Axel is moving indoors and has been spending the entire week to get his inside office organized with shelves and places to put the 100s of records that are occupying every existing horizontal space.

I did a project that took the entire morning and that ended exactly where it had started with us none the wiser. Being home is a lot of work.

We rewarded ourselves after this day of toil with the tail and claw of the giant lobster, a stiff drink and an evening of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves for entertainment. We’ve got to learn to say ‘no’ to projects.

I have three widgets on my desktop. Only one is still really relevant: the one that tells me how many days until we will celebrate my 60th birthday on an island on the far north-eastern tip of Holland. The other two I keep out of a sense of nostalgia: what the exchange rate is for Indian Rupees and what day it is today on the solar calendar (which uses the signs of the zodiac). Today it is the 9th day of mizan (‘scales’ or libra) in Afghanistan, while here we have arrived at the last day of September.

As it was the last day of the US government’s fiscal year it was now or never for some awards we have been waiting for. Some 11 months after we put in our bid MSH was notified today that the Sustainability, Leadership, Management and Governance project, the 6th incarnation of the project I started my MSH career with, was ours.

This is good news for many people at MSH whose job was tied to winning this project. As for me, I am not sure how this will affect me. I am not listed as permanent staff on this proposal and I am not entirely sure what the work will be. But at least I won’t looking for work in an environment that doesn’t have enough to go around for everyone currently on the payroll.

Sita pointed me to Freecycle.org – a localized website that tries to reduce what we put in landfills by providing a (virtual) marketplace for giving and taking without money changing hands. It’s a brilliant idea that I am discovering much too late. I joined just in time to advertise the availability of enormous amounts of packing paper, bubblewrap and Afghan moving boxes – wares that were immediately picked up by three different families who needed exactly that. What a concept!

Axel interpreted my very vivid dreams from last night as anxiety dreams. After three weeks at home I’ve come to the realization that this is what forced retirement must be like: one moment you are fully engaged with work and with the world and then, from one day to another, you are not.

My anxiety comes from being completely disconnected from everything I have been involved in over the past two years, or even the past 25 years at MSH. My homecoming was wonderful and sweet but it was also incomplete as there was no re-entry into my former professional world. Vacation is not really a vacation if you don’t know what happens after it is over.

Although I am considered 100% employed (billable we call it), I don’t have a desk, an entry card to the building, or a place to sit and call my own other than what I have at home. At first I thought this was a good thing but now I recognize it is not.

When I went to the last week I parked in one of the parking spaces assigned to my company. For this I had to sign in a book, much like I used to before I left for Kabul. I was told I had to pay 15 dollars if I was going to stay longer than 2 hours. I responded, “I am here for a meeting,” to which our receptionist responded, “but you are an MSH employee, are you not?” Employees have to pay for parking. I realized that I was indeed an employee but I didn’t feel like one, more like a stranger coming in for a visit. That exchange was a turning point.

This feeling of disconnection has only intensified since then. And so this morning I called in and asked for an entrance card and a space to sit. Once I have those I will discipline myself to come in three days every week, like I used to, and re-insert myself physically and psychologically, so I can feel like being part of something again.

Everything was unpacked today. The only things that did not emerge were my 20 colorful kites. I suspect they were at the bottom of one of the wooden packing crates and, because of their lightness and thinness, overlooked by the moving guys. It is such a shame as kites don’t transport that well any other way but at least I have the pictures to admire.

Most of our stuff has been slotted into existing spaces and our house has now a bit of an Afghan feel to it, replacing the pronounced African feel it had before. All the African stuff is packed up and ready to go to people who are into African things.

Axel has been busy re-installing himself in his winter (which means inside) office so we don’t have to heat the barn all the time. This is turning out to be a very time consuming task.
We realized that this is the first time since July 21st 2007 that we are living all by ourselves in our house again – so this is really a move back into our own.

I have booked my ticket to Holland at the end of November. I will be visiting my brother for a few days before picking up Axel and friends whose departure dates are still under discussion – before we all head out to the island in the north where I will enter my next decade.

Our shipment came in today, not our ship, the one Axel has been waiting for for so long, but the stuff packed up on September 5 in Kabul. All 3000 pounds were taken by two beefy men into our empty barn which is no longer empty. The night before I had not slept well, waking up every few hours agonizing about where all the stuff was going to go.

We had a big living room in Kabul, much bigger than here in Manchester. Some of the items that came out of the container are rather out of place here, like the small 4-inch high tables and stools that are meant to be next to Afghanistan’s traditional seating arrangements, the tushaks. These low to the ground pieces of furniture are of no use here where all our furniture is high off the ground. We don’t know what to do with them other than store them or give them away.

Despite our lack of absorptive capacity We are complete again, gone full circle from two years ago. Everything is here now except for things I left in Kabul – things I expect to need/use during a visit to Kabul in the future, if there is to be one. Now with the new twist in the (public) PAK-USA relations it seems all bets are off.

In between the unpacking of the 18 boxes I skyped with old friends and my future co-facilitator, fourteen timezones away, about the upcoming gig in Japan, one of my two pieces of work for the fall. I did accept the proposal writing offer because it was thrown into my lap. I have never done such a job before but people think I can do it.

M. called me from Kabul to say that the third leadership workshop with the midwives had gone very well. It had left everyone inspired, including the facilitators, and produced more confidence all around. If this is my only legacy in Kabul I would be very pleased indeed.

Today we ate lobster number 10 and 11. Axel is having a steady record of catching two lobsters every two days with the increasingly smelly haring bait.

While he was providing sustenance for the family I went to Quaker Meeting, on my bike, trying to re-establish a routine that I had before I left for Afghanistan. Sitting an hour in silent expectancy of communion with God I found my head all but silent – my thought racing around my head remarking that this needed to be done and that, and that, and that. Whole to-do lists emerged while I was trying so hard to meditate and be silent. At the end someone said that the silence had been wonderful. Oh, how I wished…
But the bike ride to and from is also meditative, in a different sort of way, as one has to be careful about traffic and follow the rules. Feeling the warm wind on my arms, neck, face is an untold luxury, still; not having to be all wrapped up such a thrill.

While I continued to adjust to my new life of freedom and complexity and abundance, my two mentees did the third workshop with the Afghan midwife association chapters from several provinces. The first workshop I sat in the back, the second I was in India and so they were on their own – this had not been the plan but postponements had led to this. The third workshop, which was also supposed to happen with me still around also got postponed and so they were once again on their own. I have been thinking about them all weekend and am anxiously awaiting pictures and a report.

Two weeks after I landed I have back my house, mostly, minus things that I have outgrown and things that have outgrown me. We had given Tessa and Steve our couch, partially because it had suffered from bunnies, dogs and other living things over the last 17 years and partially because we had this fantasy of getting a nice new clean couch.

But after shopping around for a new couch we realized that, without a guaranteed income, and certainly without post differential and danger pay, and a costly trip to Holland in the near future, we better not spend our money on a new couch. And so we bought the one we had looked at in the second hand store near our house. With the cushions coming in from Afghanistan it will look great – in fact it already looks so natural that our best friends didn’t even noticed the new old couch.

We spent the evening with our friends who were baysitting their grandchild, something they highly recommended. While baby Otto was asleep we plotted our trip through Holland later this fall. We put before them many difficult choices that require at least a two week vacation which they can’t afford – we probably cannot either but we will sort that out later. Planning a vacation is half the fun of having it.

I have decided I need an office outside our home simply to park all my African and other collections of stuff collected over the last 25 years. I don’t want all of it in my home anymore because it collects dust and Ali Ghulam is no longer there to keep things dust free. Visiting colleagues at MSH this week I realized how many knick-knacks that people buy, or that are gifted, are parked in their offices. I even recognized knick-knacks I had given away when I left two years ago.

They fill 100s of yards of shelves and every horizontal surface. I was wondering whether I could slip some things in, like my collection of African toy planes that I have outgrown, without anyone noticing.

I went into the big city for the second time this week, to catch up on two years with my longtime (but no longer) squash partner Annie, then have a wonderful Thai lunch (much better than the kind of Thai we would get in Kabul – so much better that I practically licked the plates clean) with people from Boston University’s School of Public Health, and then back, through excruciating slow traffic to MSH for a discussion about a chunk of work that needs to be done and for which I was considered a good candidate.

Since I will be running out of vacation time in the next couple of weeks – and was starting to get a little nervous – this was good news. I went home with some papers to study and accept or decline early next week.

I talked with M in Kabul, who was at home because the traffic is all tied up in condolence events for the recently slain leader of the peace process. I think that since the start of Ramazan in early August there has not been an entire work week, what with attacks, holidays, and traffic chaos. The phone call was to let her know that I may be far away but there is still that piece of my heart that is over there. M. says she will be hiding it so that I have to keep on coming back, over and over, to find it.

I do miss my team. Here I am not on any team at the moment and I realize that I need to work with a team to feel complete. If I accept the job given to me today I will be on a team with people I can learn much from. I have also made contact with my co-teacher for the Japan assignment in early November. In the meantime I am on my husband’s team as we move back into our home.

The moving back in, which went so fast when I just got home, is running into some snags, mostly mildew-related snags, exacerbated by the recent water main break – but not entirely. And so my neatly arranged office is in disarray again with stuff and books piled up on every horizontal surface, the smell of bleach and piles of books I am discarding but don’t know where to discard to.

Only a month ago I in my Kabul home with piles everywhere. Now I am back amidst different piles and the removal of these piles is so much more complicated because most people don’t want my stuff but I can’t throw it out. What a luxury problem to have – abundance!

All the dog hair has been removed from the car – nearly all. I found a few stray ones to the great consternation of Andrew the car detailing man who had promised I would be totally satisfied.

While Andrew was detailing our car I visited a friend who hired me 25 years ago as a family planning counselor at Planned Parenthood. Our contact has been spotty but we never entirely lost sight of each other. Now her son is a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lesotho. It was fun looking over the map of Lesotho and hearing the stories about his new life there.

I spent the remaining hours enjoying the freedom of walking around on my own in Gloucester on this warm fall day, had a nice lunch and some wicked good espresso. And while I was doing this Axel and Joe drove to western Massachusetts to take care of some Joe business and have the company of each other during the five hour round trip.

Our shipments have cleared customs, 250 pounds in Minneapolis and the remaining 2500 pounds in Boston. There is now more urgency to rid our house of unnecessary pounds to make room for the new stuff. All of the new pounds are expected to arrive at our door step any time now.