Sylvia's Journal

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.

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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.

The operation is fading into the background, and the recovery visible on the horizon: next week I start with physical therapy, on May 8 I can permanently remove the sling and all its Velcro attachments that attach to everything. In mid-June I can start to lift more than a cup of coffee with my left arm. It is now a rare occasion that I look for pain relief; the only pill I take is a little yellow pill with a tiny heart embossed on it, a low dose aspirin to prevent blot clots, till May 6

We had a quick escapade to New York City on Wednesday and returned on Thursday. It is a lot of driving, all of which Axel had to do, for a very short visit. The occasion was an award bestowed by the St. Paul School’s Alumni Association on two of its members. One we knew well and was the reason we drove to New York, Ted Achilles who founded the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA) where Axel and I were volunteer teachers while we lived in Kabul. We saw some of our students and the entire Achilles clan which had flown in from all corners of the US to see Baba Ted honored.

After the festivities we joined Axel’s cousins for a meal in the West Village and then taxied to their home in Brooklyn. It is there that I realized that couch surfing two weeks post-op is not a good idea. Not only did I go to bed much too late, but sleeping on couch pillows on the ground turned out to be nearly impossible, considering that I have to sleep with my sling on.

Tired and a little irritable, we drove to New Haven the next morning to see a brilliant Whistler etching exhibit at the Yale Art Museum and then onward to Boston where we cashed in a gift certificate Sita and Jim gave us at Christmas for a delightful meal at a fancy restaurant (Troquet) on the Commons. Troquet, according to Sita who did the research, is, known for its excellent wine and wine pairings. I was happy with the 2 oz portions of wine which made it possible for me to partake in tasting some of their amazing wines to accompany the creative and delicious meal we were served. This ended our quick NYC trip and started the celebrations of our 35^th wedding anniversary (April 12, 1980) in which we will engage for the next few days.

The melting of the many feet of snow produces a kind of archeological dig. Newspapers wrapped ineffectively in blue or orange plastic surface with the dates of this or that snowstorm. Our neighbor’s exclaimed, “oh, that’s where our garbage can went!” It’s rather ugly, these debris from life before the snowstorms; each layer darkened by soot and black particles and then covered over by a new layer of white which then also became black.

Our garlic patch and our asparagus patch are finally free from snow and ice. The corner where Axel buried pots of tulips, to force to bloom in March, is now snow free. We hope to find them and bring them in the house. Still a large part of the yard has up to one foot of snow remaining. There are flattened remnants of early bulbs which came out too early and never got their coloring they were supposed to have.

I have started week two of my recovery. The last days have been hard, still too painful to get comfortable, rarely painful enough for the narcotics, and sleep constantly interrupted by a wrong move or pain breaking through. I tried twice to sleep in our bed, feeling lonely in my recliner, but both times I returned, frustrated, to my chair. I looked through my diary to read about my last experience of recovering from rotator cuff surgery, in August 2009. Then, I learned, I had made the transition back to my bed in a week; not this time.

Axel has been cooking as if he had been auditioning for a chef’s position. He has prepared the most wonderful meals, but I have little appetite and by the time the meal appears I am exhausted and ready to go to bed. He has been a great caretaker and I am like a toddler, saying, I can do this myself! This morning I showered and dressed on my own, a major milestone in my recovery.

I read in Wired magazine that boredom can be a good trigger for creative ideas. I have been bored but not felt very creative. My boredom and antsy-ness is relieved by my iPad, but it is temporary. After a while anything on a tablet or phone gets to be boring, even FB with its constant renewal of content. I must have seen all the videos posted or reposted over the last 3 days, most hardly worth my attention. And then, when I read in the same Wired the heartbreaking stories of the workers who produce our gadgets in China, I feel really annoyed about being bored and grasping for these tainted gadgets.

The real highlights of the last three days, aside from Axel’s exquisite meals, have been our walks; getting out and confirming that spring is coming makes me happy.

It is day 5 post-op. I am down to one pill a day, a low dose aspirin that keeps my blood from clotting. I have to take it till sometime in May, when I will also have shed the sling and there will be no obvious outward sign of my operation. I have showered and stopped icing. Progress, in other words. I can make my own breakfast and dress myself although the latter is still a little challenging.

I started to work a bit yesterday although it drained me and required a two hour nap. Take it easy, say people, but if you don’t, like I did, no one stops you. Once people know you have started to read email, all bets are off. Today I have my first phone-in meeting and some tasks to do that have a deadline of tomorrow, rotator cuff surgery or not. They are important tasks because they are about budgets. I want to be in that conversation as my ability to be billable full time is on the line.

I have been eyeing my knitting basket with the half-made finger puppets. Luckily I am missing critical colors of wool, otherwise I would have tried. I am anxious to find out whether I can knit with one arm at a 90 degree angle in a sling. My calculations say that I should be able to.

Axel has been a great caretaker, as always, stoking up the fire next to my recovery couch, cooking healthy meals and managing the pills in the early post op days; there were many and all at different times of the day. When it is bedtime, still early for me, he packs me in my recliner which we moved up to the bedroom. We call it my business class seat. If I could travel in that seat I could circle the world with ease. I am asking for a business class seat for my trip to Addis in two and a half week and hope the doctor will write exactly the right sentences so that our corporate benefits manager will give the thumbs up.

After 120 poor nights (I fell on 11/29/2014) this last one before surgery was the worst. I woke up after short bouts of sleep, sometimes as short as 10 minutes, from the pain in my arm/shoulder. Much of it is what the physical therapist call “deferred’ pain, going up and down my arm and back. I woke up a wreck.

Every time I woke up I was worried that I would accidentally take a sip of water or do something else that would result in a stern nurse saying, on my arrival at the hospital, “sorry, you shouldn’t have done that, we need to reschedule your surgery!” I am both looking forward to the surgery and dreading it, especially the aftermath. I am reminded of what I teach people about change when you want it, there is still a loss involved.

Yesterday at work I cleaned my desk in between 6 hours of meetings and then got on the road. It rained hard and I was in the worst fog I have ever seen here (but familiar from having lived half my life in the Low Lands). It was so bad that I crawled off the exit to Manchester’s Pine Street at a snail’s pace, not able to see more than 20 feet in front of me. That’s when the stripes on the road are to guide you, but most were hardly visible.

Axel had planned to go into Boston to take an evening class on web design but when I told him about the enormous puddles and traffic jams and fog he decided to skip class. He made us carnitas which we ate in front of the fireplace while watching two mysteries in a row. I tried to finish knitting at least one of the finger puppets from the Alice in Wonderland series, found on Etsy. The Wizard of Oz puppet designs were thrown in for good measure. I am curious when I can knit again as these are delightful little projects, assembled from tiny knitted pieces, sometimes as little as 3 stitches and 3 rows (the cherries on the bunny’s hat). You can get a lot done that way. The white bunny with the clock is nearly done and for Alice I am waiting for an order of tiny little skeins of wool in pastel colors.

For desert, something we rarely have, Axel had made a Dame Blanche, to celebrate that the day of surgery was upon us. The recliner was moved to the bedroom and my Audible bookshelf is being filled for long days of snoozing and waking of the less than alert kind. And now I will finish the new Hercule Poirot (the Monogram Murders) written by someone other than Agatha herself, in a style that has kept the old Hercule with us.

I was invited to teach meeting design and facilitation skills on the request of some young colleagues. After I figured out how to bill my time I said, yes, and let’s do it before my surgery, meaning it has to happen this week. In preparing for the sessions I pulled out a box with materials I had not looked at for a decade. It turned out to contain the sessions of a Leadership Course I did nearly 15 years ago. In the box I found two letters to self, something I used to do at the end of such courses. One was to a very senior official of the Eastern Cape in South Africa and the other to a young researcher in India. They were sealed but had a little notecard pinned to them indicating what I should ask them about when I would contact them some months after the course. I trust LinkedIn to find these people and then will send the letters.

As I went through the session files I realized I was feeling rather sad. The sessions were full of psychology, creativity and fun. I now teach according to something that was designed by others (or even myself) some time ago and that have to be delivered in a short time following a more or less pre-ordained structure. There no longer seem to be space for the things I used to do and loved to do.

It’s true that as you get older you look back on things with nostalgia; making things in the past appear rosier than they actually were. And although I do remember some of the more painful episodes in my tenure at MSH, when I think back on my nearly 30 years here I realize how blessed I have been, and continue to be, to first find and then follow my real calling and, all along, have a chance to rub it off on others who might find their calling resonant with mine. I am looking forward to the sessions, nearly as much as to my surgery, ha!

Never in my life have I visited a bridal shop. My first wedding dress I made myself and had family members embroider sections. It was a hippy dress, a kaftan with a Peruvian motif which was all the rage in 1980. My second wedding dress was an a regular summer dress I already had. Sita’s wedding dress we bought in Beirut when we vacationed there with the girls in the spring of 2010. We walked by a boutique off Hamra street and saw this exquisite dress made from cloth found in Central Asia. It was love at first sight. We walked around the block one time to take some distance, as the price was rather steep, but came back and Sita tried it on. We bought it right there and then. This was 6 months before her wedding. Problem solved.

But with Tessa, our one and only fashionista in the family, things were bound to be different. She researches things such as clothes, especially a piece of clothing as symbolically important as a wedding dress. She signed herself up for a wedding gown trunk sale at a small wedding dress boutique in upscale Beacon Hill in Boston and the invited her mom and sister to accompany her. A trunk sale, I later learned, is somewhat like a chain letter: you get the trunk, invite people to try out the dressed that are packed in the trunk, try to sell some and then pack everything up and send the trunk to the next wedding gown place.

And so we headed towards Boston in the snow. The bridal boutique is located on the top floor of an old brownstone, with industrial size roof windows and everything painted white. The snow outside, looking over one of Beacon Hill’s main streets complemented the indoor white nicely. The saleslady, understanding my concerns when I saw the three racks with fancy dresses, told me which racks were 2000 dollars and under (I don’t think there was anything under) and the rack where prices ran as high as 7000 dollars.

Tessa tried on about 8 dresses and modeled them to us as if she was a professional model. Sita and I accessorized her with various hair pieces we found in the display cases. I noticed one tiny little bejeweled hair comb for 250 dollars and hoped that Tessa would not be impulsive.

Of course she wasn’t. After the selection of dresses we liked was reduced to four we received the price list. Our favorite was 3000 and the other three were 2000. It’s funny how your perspective changes when you know dresses can be up to 7000 dollars. Suddenly the 2000 dollar dresses seemed like a bargain. Tessa now has a focus for her bargain hunting on the internet, something she is very good at. I don’t think we’ll be spending 2000 dollars on a wedding dress.

We said our goodbyes and told the sales lady we would think about the dresses, had a cup of coffee and then lunch at Life Alive in Cambridge, a very creative vegan restaurant that catered to all our wishes. It was a lovely girls outing and I feel so very blessed with these two remarkable women who entered our lives 29 and 34 years ago.

Since we returned there has been more snow, so much that this winter has now broken all records. It snowed last Sunday and it snowed last night again. All the grimy snow has been covered over by a thin layer of sparkly white snow. That’s the only redeeming factor of the storm last night.

That we have broken all records thanks to last Sunday’s storm is a small comfort. There is still about half a meter of snow covering our yard. The lookout bench by the cove is only now starting to appear. In the morning when I get up, just before dawn, I see wildlife, frantically searching for food – the foxes, the skunks have all woken up to their internal clock that says it is spring, but outside their dens it looks more like the middle of winter. The short-legged ones in particular have a hard time scurrying up the steep snowbanks.

I am thinking of the snowbells and bluebells and crocuses that must have come up, creating tiny caves underneath the icy compacted snow. They will remain white and may never show their colors this spring. It’s the stuff of children books I remember – the coloring that happens underground before the tiny flowers show off to the world. This would be a children’s book about frustrations and setback, the little white darlings returning to their home, throwing temper tantrums, and the color fairy trying to shush them.

The past week I was the chief facilitator of a virtual leadership program with teams from Madagascar, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina and the DRC. After about 5 weeks of getting used to the site and the concept of a blended (virtual and face to face) course, most teams have found their groove but it took a lot of handholding, checking multiple sites and constantly switching back and forth between French and the English of the rest of my work life. I would often start typing an email realizing it was full of ‘q’s’ and ‘z’s’ and punctuations at the wrong places. Why can’t we harmonize the keyboards across languages? As the day continued I would make more and more of these mistakes, a sign of my tiredness.

My nights remain problematic. I wake up many times with my shoulder the sorest in the early hours of the day; as a result I get up as I can’t find a position in bed that relieves the pain. Standing up is better, and if it is a weekday, I might as well start my workday, since Madagascar is 7 hours ahead and I can actually get some phone calls in.

Yesterday I had my pre-operation check in, the EKG, bloodwork and such, and was found to be fit for surgery a week from now. I told the nurse if she had found me unfit I would have thrown a fit, I can’t stand the pain any longer.

Our first day home was a workday for me. I worked from home by telephone and was able to be mildly productive. I took a nap in the afternoon and went to bed early. On Thursday I went in to work for a series of meetings that kept me occupied for a good part of the day but by 3 I started to fade, my eyes red. Still, I didn’t drive home until 5 after I had had a chance to say hello to our various country representatives who were in our office for a week of strategizing and connecting. They were in meetings all day long so I had to park myself ioutside their meeting room to get a chance to say just a quick hello.

Sita, Jim and Faro joined us at dinnertime where Axel showed off his cooking skills with a delicious Pad Thai. But always, when Axel cooks, we eat very late. I don’t know how I was able to stay awake till ten when the meal was finally cooked.

During our absence one of our plants died, the passion flower that is a bit of a Lazarus plant, having died a few times before but always coming back. It is an old plant that we rescued from Axel’s father’s greenhouse and has some sentimental value. We keep our fingers crossed that it will come back again this time.

In the meantime, Sita taught us that the leaves and the twigs are medicinal. She boiled the twigs and crumpled the dried up leaves. It helps with sleep, she told us, and isn’t addictive. Last night I made a cup of passion flower tea and fell asleep instantly, sleeping for four hours without interruption.

Since I fell and hurt my shoulder on November 30 I have not had a full night sleep as the shoulder is particularly painful at night. I often wake up every hour or two hours. So the passion flower-induced sleep is an improvement.

I was cleared by my family doctor for my shoulder surgery and have another clearance procedure next Friday at the hospital, and then it is countdown. I never thought I would look forward to surgery but now I do. I would like to get back to a good night sleep and be done with this constant low grade pain in my shoulder.