Sylvia's Journal

Since Sita is too pregnant to travel comfortable for hours in a car we headed out west to Easthampton and celebrate Mother’s Day on Saturday. Tessa joined us as well. It was a beautiful day. We sat in the yard while Jim was working in the garden and Faro entertained himself under the sprinkler and by jumping on one or the other of his grandparents who were trying to take a nap in the hammock. Now liberated from my sling I found it hard not to activate my left arm. Not surprisingly I was rather sore by the end of the day.

We finished the afternoon with an outdoor Mexican meal at a lovely small restaurant in Easthampton after which Faro went to bed and Tessa, Axel and I headed out east to Tessa and Steve’s NH home. The distance from our house to Sita’s and from Sita’s to Tessa is exactly the same, 124 miles, but going to Sita and Jim is a straight shot along highways. From there to Tessa is mostly along secondary roads that parade as highways. Axel drove and I slept, claiming my recovery from surgery status (still).

Tessa and Steve’s house is nestled in the woods. I was up early and enjoyed looking over their pond, watching the wild life and seeing the peaceful part of their new neighborhood. Doing it from inside the house was great but once I stepped outside I realized that there are some drawbacks to living so close to nature. There are black flies and ticks (not so great), beavers (it depends) and porcupines (if you are Oona, not so good). I had to put on some strong chemicals, multiple times, to keep the flies away. The ticks I discovered later, and Oona encountered the porcupine with not such a good outcome (an emergency visit to the vet).

Wen not pestered by all these critters, the peace and quiet is periodically interrupted by motor bikes, target shooting (we are in NH where people live free and die if they want to), and lawn movers. One cannot get away from those. Only Faro likes these hard sounds.

I admired the new chicklets that will provide them (and us sometimes) with a steady stream of eggs Tessa promised. There are twelve (still), all with the baby feathers still visible but clearly starting to drop them and develop their adult feather coat. Tessa and Steve have done an amazing job getting the two species used to each other. Still, I tensed up when the two dogs were let into the chicken house. I could tell that Chicha had a hard time reconciling her hunting instincts with Tessa’s reminders to be nice. She couldn’t help herd the tiny little birds into a corner where they squeaked up a storm. Oona just wanted to lick them – but few were interested.

Our afternoon walk produced the porcupine encounter, a rush trip to the vet to liberate Oona from the quills, costing several hundred dollars, poison ivy on my hands and ticks appearing in spite of several tick checks. We should have gone to the mall – I would have gotten my exercise without the poison ivy and ticks and Tessa and Steve would have saved themselves several hundred dollars, even if we’d had bought stuff. By the end of the day all these not so great encounters with the great outdoors were forgotten thanks to a lovely asparagus dinner on their deck and some excellent boutique ice cream.

Exactly 6 weeks ago I stood at the portal to this long road to recovery and sighed at the length of time before me. Then, six weeks seemed an eternity; a one-armed journey with a bulky sling, awkward nights, back sleeping for a side sleeper. Not to speak of the first few weeks when I was sore, and dreaded encounters with people slapping me on the shoulder and giving bear hugs, while gingerly avoiding my lower arm and hand in the sling. And then the last weeks (true still) where the tendinitis and pain in the other upper arm and shoulder worsened considerably, due to double duty no doubt.

But, as they always do, the last day of these 6 weeks arrived yesterday. I took the sling off and forgot about it. It is not that I am out of the woods. “Nothing heavier than a coffee cup,” said the surgeon, although he did not specify whether the cup should be empty or full. Physical therapy will continue for 6 more weeks and then months of strength training. Six months to one year until full recovery, some people say.

I returned Thursday night from DC and had planned, as I do frequently, to take Friday off. But a series of meetings on Thursday had produced many responses to questions regarding the design of a large technical summit for my pharmacist colleagues, late June. My head was spinning as I glanced over the (poorly organized) notes I had taken. I figured that I had to rely on memory, and if I didn’t work on Friday, on Monday my insights and memories would be gone. So the planned day off became a 10 hour workday. But when I closed my computer, exactly at 6 PM yesterday, there was nothing to remember as all was put to paper.

Last night we attended another Zoe Lewis concert, may be our fourth or fifth, at Passim. We invited friends and found several colleagues and ex-colleagues there, making up about one third of the audience. It was a perfect ending to a day of slogging. Zoe’s energy and talent, was, as usual, sky high. She was accompanied by our friend Marc who is a clarinet virtuoso and young Ben who is defending his thesis next week but took some time off to complement Zoe and Marc with his jazzy harmonica sounds. When we got home it was long beyond my bedtime. I had forgotten all about the 10 hours of work.

Something like spring, with an occasional whiff of summer arrived this weekend. About 10 asparagus are poking their heads through the ground. We mulched and fertilized and cow-manured to make sure they have everything they need to grow into healthy stalks. I suspect in a few days we can have our first asparagus meal. Unfortunately I will be in DC.

The annual ritual of cleaning of the sticky residue that covers our indoor plants after a long winter with aphids has begun. Axel will have to do this alone since I remain one-armed. Although I am not supposed to liberate my arm until Friday, I stopped sleeping with the sling and when working on my computer. I do my exercises faithfully, passively stretching the unused muscles and tendons.

After May, with a couple of trips to DC, June and July have me travel to Uganda, Madagascar and Ethiopia or Togo. All trips require much prep work. I welcome the lonely evenings in my hotel room in DC (sorry DC friends, no visits), giving me several more hours to do what I can’t do during the day. Later in June Axel and I will drive to DC where I have a week-long conference but Axel is planning to play.

My trip in June to Uganda gives me 24 hours in Holland. I rented wheels so I don’t have to put up with the Dutch train system’s Sunday repairs, complicating otherwise simple trips. The 24 hours give me enough time to see my youngest brother in Amersfoort where he will turn his partnership of 16+ years into a marriage and visit a very ill friend near Leiden. But I am running ahead of myself. Asparagus first!

Today is week 5 post-op. I have one more week in my sling. According to my physical therapist I am doing well. I am on track and exactly where I should be in terms of degrees of sideway and forward movement of my arm, stretching the now stiff muscles around my shoulder. It’s a 6 months process and I am still in the passive movement phase, probably until later this month.

I cheated last night, taking the sling off to sleep better; I am not sure it worked as I still wake up several times during the night. I look forward to sleeping through the night, something I haven’t done since late November when I fell.

Axel is responsible for the spring chores as I cannot handle a rake. It’s frustrating as I actually like to get the beds ready for planting and prune the bushes. All I could do was fertilize the garlic and asparagus beds and brush away the debris to liberate the tops of about five asparagus breaking through the surface. I can also do most everything else with one hand, including the laundry, shopping and cooking. Tonight I will try to pick up the knitting of the finger puppets.

I returned home from Ethiopia on Sunday. On Monday Axel came back from his two week Europe trip, a week’s conference in Munich and a week of visiting relatives and friends in Holland. I had hoped to return via Holland and share in the fun but the business class trip was expensive enough as it was going straight through Frankfurt both ways. We talked on Skype while we were both in Germany, a separation of about 200 miles.

While Holland and Germany were far advanced in Spring, coming home to bare trees and even still some piles of dirty snow was discouraging. But the sun of the last few days has awakened everything and everybody, and so there is hope. A few asparagus tips are visible. We will eat our own asparagus next week!

I had hoped to take it easy and rest on Monday but such was not the case; several tasks had lined up to keep me busy and Monday became a regular workday. I am lucky in the sense that there are many assignments stacked in front of me, no dull moments or times without work, stretching into September, with a few occasions to catch my breath: a week in June when my sister visits, a week after Sita gives birth in August and two weeks in Maine at the end of August and the first week of September. It’s strange to think that far ahead to the end of the summer when we have just barely entered into spring.

When I left Ethiopia the earthquake hit in Kathmandu. I got in touch with my friends, wide and far, who are connected to my experiences in Nepal. All are safe but some have lost much. Not able to do much other than giving money, I support ICA-Nepal in their courageous efforts to alleviate suffering and contribute what they can. My thoughts and prayers are with all of the people of Nepal.

Such catastrophes put things in perspectives, including my occasional sighs about my recovering left shoulder which is till immobilized in a sling until May 8 (although I am cheating a bit).

Ethiopia is in mourning because of the killing of Ethiopians in Libya and South Africa. For three days music and dance is banned. This also means the music I play in the conference room, just as I was having fun with my Congolese music and seeing the reaction from the DRC team. We had proposed an outing to a cultural restaurant with all our participants but now I don’t think it makes much sense. Most of our participants don’t seem to care much about the Ethiopian food, they’d go for the dancers and music. We were also told to stay in the hotel because of large scale manifestations not far from our hotel. I was seeing them on TV, which goes to show that lots can go on around you without you even knowing it.

Watching TV, which I rarely do had at home, is truly soul sucking with disasters, man-made and other all around us, both on this continent and adjacent continents.

We are entering day 3 of what we call module I of the senior leadership program. We have teams from Chad, Madagascar, Togo, Burundi, Niger and the DRC. Each team is made up differently and some are more homogeneous than others (as in only men). We are getting to know people and learning their ways. The facilitators from ICRC are becoming good friends and everyone is learning.

We are up against cultural, economic, political forces that can be hard to understand by people who don’t know these countries, yet I see small sparks of hope and possibilities in some people. I am fanning these sparks like crazy.

Our teaching team is small so the work is intense. We are trying to be receptive and adaptive, which makes for long days, stretching in the night, especially when the internet works and our inboxes deliver more tasks as the next assignments are stacking up like planes on a runway ready for takeoff.

Axel is having a wonderful time in Holland, eating white asparagus and enjoying the bulbs and, hopefully, getting a boost of his Dutch, as there is nothing like total immersion. He is doing the rounds of family and friends, with the latest spotting of him in Amsterdam.

I am counting the weeks, three done, three more to go before I can drop the sling. I have started physical therapy. Given the tenodesis, a new word I learned which meant my biceps got essentially cut off the bone, repaired and re-attached, my PT treatment is conservative with the biceps part the most delicate of the repaired tendons. I am leaving tomorrow for Ethiopia with instructions for 3 exercises that require very little movement and all of it passive. It is a bit scary.

Axel left on Monday for Munich and this left me on my own. I can do pretty much everything except drying myself with a towel (I dry in my bathrobe) and making the bed. I will find my bed just as I left it tomorrow when I return on the 26^th.

I worked mostly from home this week, which was nice since driving an hour into Boston with one arm in a sling is not ideal. Only on Wednesday did I drive in because of a face to face meeting I didn’t want to postpone.

It has been a lovely week, weatherwise and the earth around our house is breathing green after the long white winter. The little colored perching birds are flocking to the feeders with the nettle seeds that the squirrels don’t like. They, in their turn, are frantically digging up the yard for the nuts they hid in the fall. There are little holes everywhere.

Axel is having a good time in Munich, not surprising since he is in good company and in beerland, but most of all among kindred spirits from the Valueweb, a group that Sita has been very active for years. There is perfect harmony in this undertaking: Axel leading Sita into the new world of graphic scribing and then facilitating, and then Sita bring Axel back into that world.

And while I am leading a senior leadership program for 6 teams from, respectively, Chad, Niger, Madagascar, Burundi, Togo and DRC, laying the rails in front of the moving train (and all of this with one hand), Axel will enjoy the company of my Dutch relatives and our friends, crisscrossing Holland next week when the work in Munich is done.

Thirty-five years ago, Axel and I stood in the town hall of Dakar before an important looking municipal official with a big orange sash. Couple number 4 out of 16, he soon pronounced us husband and wife, with a check mark in the box ‘option monogamique’ on our now yellowed marriage certificate. It was hand typed, with some letters not as clear as others and, of course, two stamps, a tax stamp and a rubber stamp.

.

Sita was in my belly, a third of the way towards babyhood, and I was sick most of the time; so sick that we did not attend our wedding party and our best man and woman standing in as the bride and groom. The next morning they came to tell us all about the party and brought what was left over of the traditional French profiterole wedding cake with the plastic bride and groom still standing tall. They have moved around the world with us and are languishing somewhere in a junk drawer, most of their paint peeled..

I think we have made up for the missed party by having, every spring, a gathering of friends to celebrate the new beginnings and promises that come with spring, as well as our falling in love (37 years ago in Beirut) and our marriage (35 years ago in Dakar).

I had worried about being slapped on the shoulder and hugged and squeezed with people avoiding the arm in the sling, not realizing that the surgery was on the shoulder and thus the body part to be left alone. Tessa had pinned the blossom of a hydrangea on my shoulder, a trick that work fairly well when people arrived. They gingerly avoided pressing down on the flower, and thus my shoulder. But by the time of goodbyes, with the flower rather flat and tired, the tight hugs returned and I cringed a bit when people approached me with arms wide.

Axel had invited some 100 people, some I didn’t really know as he is the one with the social life while I am travelling around the world. Sometimes I had to have one guest introduce me to another. And then there is a hard core of friends who have been coming for decades. I looked at pictures of previous gatherings and noticed the people who are no longer with us and how we are aging together. Some of the kids from then are now coming with their own kids. This included Faro of course who had a ball, sneaking jelly beans and other candy that he usually doesn’t get at home.

We were blessed with great weather, albeit a bit windy, and most of the remaining snow disappeared. More sun and less snow predicted for today.