Sylvia's Journal

Last night was full of dreams again. But when I woke up, just minutes before the alarm went off, the dreams popped like soap bubbles. I tried grasping at them for awhile but my mind could not retrieve the images; all I could register were some vague feelings that, much like the film of soap that remains after the bubble pops, have little to do with the shape and colors of the real thing.

Last night I went to bed after a long non stop workday that started at about 5 in the morning and finished at 9:30 at night. It is the mixed blessing of those virtual events. I used to say what a wonderful invention it was because you could be a facilitator in your pijamas. It is great to do if there is nothing else going on and the image of me sitting in my pijamas gives it an aura of leisure. But now, with a full plate during the day, getting ready to leave for a trip, the virtual events end up being relegated to the evening, while our participants in Africa, Asia and the Middle East are asleep and I can prepare the ‘classroom’ for the next day without anyone looking in. Both events have three days to go and then I will go myself, taking a break from this extreme multi-tasking. The trip allows for a few days of rest in Holland and then the focus shifts to Ethiopia.

After work I drove to Beverly, had dinner in the parking lot of the supermarket and had my hair cut by Bonny. I was reminded of the haircuts she gave Axel and me, a few months after the crash, while we were sitting outside looking out over the cove. I am sure that the hair snipped off then is now serving as bedding for baby birds, squirrels or chipmunks with animal mothers vowing never to do without this new luxury.

When I came home I found Axel busy with his (and Sita’s) beer project, now in its final stage of bottling. It is a lot of work, as is the whole process. But judging from his mood I could tell that he enjoyed it and is looking forward to the first tasting.

The countdown to my next departure has started and with it the long list of things to be completed. This includes two sets of virtual facilitation responsibilities, one of which is shared with two other people and thus requires phonecalls, drafts and approvals. Another is teaching a class at Harvard’s School of Public Health which was cooked up when I met Marc in Dar es Salaam, two months ago. April the 24th seemed far away in the future then but now, with only two days to go, this proposal requires some serious attention.

It is Earth day today and I learned to my great dismay that I am a very bad person in the book of conservers. I lead a wasteful life (commuting by car and plane and being a private pilot for fun) that produces about 54 tons of carbon dioxide and very little to offset it. In my dreams last night I was rowing, using my own energy to propel myself, but it did not count for much in the Earth Day Carbon Footprint calculator.

I did try out my new Alden shell yesterday. I wore Axel’s olive green wellies so that I did not have to get my feet wet before stepping into the boat. Compared to the dory or the kayaks this new boat is fast: it takes me about 10 seconds to cross the cove at mid-tide. The real rowing will have to happen out on the bay. A flat sea is preferable over the usually choppy waters so I may need to wait until after this trip. In the meantime Axel insists on re-doing the woodwork (seat, oars, footrest) with real marine-grade varnish, brightwork, so that the boat looks presentable again. He is also making a case for waxing the fiberglass with something that keeps it from deteriorating in the sunlight. Of course all these chemicals will probably cancel out whatever ecological benefit this boat will bring to this household.

We ended Boston’s Marathon day with a dinner at Edith’s to celebrate the marathon victors. Edith has run the marathon some ten years ago and knows, deep in her cells, what such a last minute sprint means that brought Ethiopia’s fastest woman runner first to the finish line. I celebrated the Kenyan and Ehtiopian victories by sending congratulatory emails to my Ethiopian and Kenyan friends, one a namesake of the men’s race winner. I marvel at how one part of Africa can so dominate long distance running. But nothing beats the Japanese in the over 70 category. Imagine that, running after 70, after flying halfway around the world. It must be the noodle diet.

It is nice when you have an illustrator in the family because the notes you find in the morning on the counter are so much fun. Sita returned from a week in New York, finished off with a weekend in Northampton while we were on the Cape.

Yesterday morning was another glorious day in North Truro. We went for a walk along the beach in Wellfleet, Atlantic side, where a 19th century shipwreck had washed up on the shore in a January storm. It was our first serious walk on a sandy beach since July. Before then we had taken such walks for granted but now we realize they are hard on the body; sturdy shoes helped and we kept the walk short, much too short as far as Abby was concerned. We also wanted to be back before a memorial service, set up on top of the dune, would start so we did not have to walk across the aisle in the middle of the service. On the beach below several shrines were set up for the fallen friend. We could tell from the items in the shrine that he was a surfer, a pirate, liked roses and used lipbalm. By the time we had climbed back onto the dune the parking lot had flled up with a large crowd of mourners.

We went to the Lighthouse café in Wellfleet to have a second, more substantive breakfast and then parted ways. On the long way home Axel finally succumbed to the allergy medication, taken as a preventive measure for dealing with seasonal and animal-induced allergies. He drifted in and out of sleep while I kept myself awake listening to Cervantes’ storytelling about chivalry and damsels in distress, some 400 years ago in Spain (we women have come a long way!). In the background was the loud and rythmic humming of the wind streaming by the boat on our carroof.

Although I would have loved to put the boat into the water, the low tide and choppy ocean conspired against me. I also have to solve the issue of how to get into the boat without getting my feet wet as we have no nice dock like the rowing club has. And the water is still very cold

I prepared dinner while on the phone with Ankie from Brussels, catching up on the things not written in my blog. We will be seeing each other soon and often, as distances do not seem to matter much these days. We will meet at a reunion of my maternal grandmother’s family on Saturday in a place in Holland that is full of childhood memories.

On Mondays and Fridays I work from home and therefore don’t have to set the alarm for 4:30 AM. This means I wake up naturally on these days, because of the light (or sun) streaming into our bedroom. One effect of this is that the dreams slip away before I can grasp them. They hang for a moment in this in between space where images become untranslatable into words, like feelings sometimes are, slightly out of reach but still present.

On these days I am also witness to how painful waking up is for Axel. He went on a bike yesterday, to the Manchester Club, and went to bed with some trepidation about the effects of this move. His waking up required an emergency heat pad intervention. The heatpad sleeps between us, and has been every night since he broke out of his plastic corset last September. It is permanently plugged-in, mostly used by him although I occasionally use it at night for my shoulders and neck, which remain stiff and sore at the end of the day. Axel needs to do about an hour of exercises after the first pain and stiffness is gone. This is a hard routine to follow when there is so much else to do in the morning.

Yesterday we had our quarterly MSH staff meeting. This means people from all over the world tune in via their computers and we try to be One MSH. I like these meetings. Back in September or October I was able to be part of such a meeting from home and I had not realized how important it was to be connected like that. In the back of the room is a large piece of red cloth and our IT staff puts on the names of countries that are online for the meeting, Afghanistan, Malawi, Haiti, but also some American states where MSHers live, like Florida. I still think it is amazing that we can do this. We heard about work in family planning worldwide, and then about integrated primary health care from a colleague in South Africa, not as easy to follow between the quality of the sound and the accent of the speaker, but I sort of got the drift.

I finished the last pickings from our hambone. There is a saying I learned yesterday: Eternity is a ham and two people. I think the end of eternity is in sight. That this was nearly true on my latest flight out of Kabul earned me a few more hugs from colleagues yesterday who I had not seen. Some people understand better than others what ‘stalling over high mountains’ really means. One of our travel agents is a pilot himself; he gets it and I get his compassion. All this helps. Today I am seeing EMDR Ruth again to help me with some effects of this latest mishap and other stresses in my life.

On my way home I picked up several meals for Fatou and visited her back in her home in Lynn. I also brought her a bottle of wine because of its medicinal properties. We hang out and talked about the US elections, her family and how scary hospitals are. We compared scars and then I got to use her footmassager which felt wonderful on both my good and my bad foot.

It was another early night, affter this first week back at work. My cold is still there and my energy is pretty much gone by 9 PM.