Sylvia's Journal

On Saturday we picked up a recliner that was sitting on the sidewalk with a sign that said ‘free.’ We made a U-turn and loaded the chair in the car. At soon as we got home I started to remove the dog-haired upholstery – a major job that gave me blisters and a sore shoulder from pulling thousands of staples pounded into crappy wood. I dismantled the recliner mechanism to get at the tucked away corners. I took a course at least 2 decades ago and re-upholstered a couch and an armchair under the watchful eye of an upholstery master at a local vocational school. I had forgotten that the biggest part of re-upholstery is removing the old stuff. I have no idea whether I will be able to actually do the upholstery and put the chair back to together – it would need to be ready in 6 weeks.

Why? Because I have finally taken the step to schedule surgery (6 weeks from now) and have chosen for fusion over total ankle replacement. What got me off the fence were phone calls with three people who had considered both options and decided for fusion. All three said they wished they’d decided this earlier. They could walk again without pain. That clinched the deal for me. November 20 is the day that my talus and tibia bones will be fused together, forever. I feel as if a weight has lifted off my shoulder. When every step up or down the stairs or even down the driveway is painful I now know it is not forever. Light at the end of the tunnel – assuming the surgery goes well.

Faro and his parents came over for the weekend. When Faro is at our house our living room turns into a playpen – all the furniture is moved to barricade something he is not allowed to get into or touch. Plastic containers are strewn across the kitchen. We have started to teach him that he can only open two drawers in the kitchen and not the one with the measuring cups, the wooden spoons and definitely not the knives (he can just stretch that far up). He walks up to the drawer and lightly touches the forbidden ones while looking at us, waiting for the ‘nee.’ That is one word in Dutch he knows well and copies. He shakes his head and says, nay, nay, nay. Other Dutch words he knows are ‘vliegtuig’ (plane), ‘appel’ and ‘auto.’

At Faro’s toddler school they have a ramp. He has discovered ramps and cars zooming down them. Axel’s wedge, which is supposed to help him sleep without getting acid reflux, turns out to be a great ramp, as does Axel’s Achilles tendon stretcher, a smaller version but still a ramp. It is amazing that toy manufacturers manage to sell us all these kids toys when our houses are already full of things that can be repurposed without much effort into the most amazing playthings.

I am getting up in the dark again, and most of my morning commute is in the dark again. It’s fall and getting colder in the morning and evening. I have used the remote starter already once. But during the day it is Indian Summer time – one of my favorite times of the year.

I missed the staff outing to check out our new offices, a place further north, where we will move in January. I have heard mostly complaints about the move as it is inconvenient for many of my colleagues who live in Boston or in the southern and western suburbs. But for me it means I won’t have to put up with the Tobin Bridge, its traffic jams and its tolls. Since I joined MSH in 1986, the office has been slowly moving in my direction.

Today we are celebrating Steve’s 30th birthday. He is entering a decade that is about settling down and moving into middle age – ha, he doesn’t like to think about that I am sure. I think it was Jung who declared that this is the decade that bridges the first half of life with the second; a decade of shifting priorities and developing other parts of oneself. That certainly was true for me.

Steve’s favorite food is pierogies; it is convenient that he lives in Dorchester’s polish triangle. The place is awash in sausages, pickles and pierogies. It is not quite our WeightWatcher’s fare but we’ll join in on the fun anyways.

It is that day again, departure day. There is stuff strewn across my office, an open suitcase and a nagging feeling that I have forgotten something important. Even lists can’t help. Years ago I made packing lists. I had one for every country I traveled to because each has special requirements. Like malaria prophylaxis for countries around the Bay of Benin but not for Afghanistan; winter clothes for Afghanistan but not for any of the other countries I usually travel to; electrical plug types etc.

The lists were made in the early 2000s and show how much the technology has changed our lives. On my lists featured items such as a phone-flashlight-music player- handheld (remember the Ipaq?) – camera, with different charging devices for each; now a tablet or smart phone will do all of that and so much more. We also had paper tickets which sometimes made for some exciting last minutes, waiting for a DHL or Fedex envelop with either my ticket or my passport with visa stamp, or both. Now, except for the visa part, these days are far behind us. Today I crossed off all these superfluous things; I happily crossed off theTampax as well, I am way beyond that now.

Travel was relatively simple then. There were three classes, First, Business and Economy, with Business only a few hundred dollars more than economy. Our travel policy included a rule that allowed B-class for trips longer than 14 hours. Alas, these days are long gone yet my trips are often closer to 24 hours. I am ecstatic if I get an Economy Comfort seat but by the time my ticket is purchased these are usually long gone.

I also used to travel with toys, gadgets to entertain people or give away as prizes, stacks of quotes printed on large colored papers, poems and what not. All this filled half my suitcase – I brought very few clothes and without all that stuff could have travelled with hand luggage only. I invested a huge amount of effort and energy in creating a ‘space for learning.’ It is not that I don’t think this is important but I am lacking the energy and create the learning space psychologically only.

After a flurry of activities, compressed into a three day week full of meetings, inbox assaults, deadlines met and not met, I activated my out-of-the-office message for Friday and headed out to Marlborough for the third and last 30 hour face-to-face workshop in my coaching training that is nearing its end. Not counting the time spent writing reports and filling in worksheets and reading required books, this will complete 200 hours of study. It seemed daunting at the time I started back in February, and it is still a little daunting since there is an exam still to be taking, but I do feel a sense of accomplishments and feeling tremendously enriched.

We learned some new techniques today and I applied one to the question whether I wanted to be a vegetarian or a mixed animal/vegetable eater. The tool probes for pain and gain (or costs and benefits) of change versus status quo. The answer was quite clear at the end of the exercise: I will remain a combo eater, light on the animal side but not without. This turned out to be a good choice: I was invited along to dine in a Brazilian diner where, had I made the other choice, I would not have been able to eat.

Back at home Fall is approaching. Tonight Axel had a fire going again, barely three months after the last spring fire in June. Our summers are short indeed, but our apres-summer is one of the best seasons of the year.

The vegetable garden is full and ripe. I pulled up the leek and braised them as suggested by Julia Child; the last fingerlings were consumed tonight by Axel – we have been eating those for weeks now. The beans keep producing as if there is no tomorrow and the kale keeps coming back after we cut it bare. The Sungold cherrie tomatoes also keep producing but their skins are more and more fragile and burst before we can even get to them – burst or not burst, they are still delicious. We are in a state of vegetal abundance.

And in the cove there is marine abundance. With a little bit of luck we will be able to harvest oysters in the not too distant future; the mussels are indeed reproducing, and the sea urchins are coming back. We have been a bit lax with the lobster traps, leaving them baitless in the waters where they fill up with the red invasive seaweed, an abundance we are less happy about.

The return to the grid meant an avalanche of emails. I noticed my sense of despair mounting as the emails kept coming in. All this stuff I need to read and many to act on in the next 10 days made me a little nervous, yet I didn’t want to cut my vacation short by getting a head start. All would have to wait until Tuesday.

This week and the next will be short weeks. On Friday I am off to Marlborough for the last of my three coaching face-to-face intensives, 30 hours in 3 days. And then, on September 11 I resume my travel, with Entebbe as a first stop and Jo’burg the next. By the time I come back it is fall; that too depresses me.

All this anticipation drains me and so I am trying as hard as I can to live in the present. This is something I am learning from my grandson, who is so very much present to each moment. His future, at least in his mind, does not yet exist (he’s right on that account) and his past extends only minutes back. Oh, to be able to wander around the world like he does, being enchanted by everything he finds on his way: a leaf, a rock, a puppy, a sea gull, even sea gull poop.

After we said goodbye yesterday we re-arranged the furniture that had been used as a barrier to the non baby-proofed places in our living room and moved all the baby paraphernalia upstairs. Axel cleaned the Small Point mussels and I read the Sunday NY Times, nearly from cover to cover.

In the evening we motored in and out of Gloucester Harbor on a sunset and evening cruise to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of friends. We calculated that we have 17 more years to go before we get to celebrate our 50th. Our friends told us happily they plan to be there. They will be close to a 100, which will be, by then, the new ‘old age.’ And so we think they will.

And now Labor Day is upon us. It is morning and everything is possible still, leaving me with so many delicious choices: knit, read, bake, a harvesting trip into the garden? We are now awash in produce and fruits, the blackberry bush heavy with juicy black fruit and the garden full of red tomatoes and greens that call out ‘harvest us please!’ It rains, making for an easier easing in and one less chore, the watering of the garden.

On our last full vacation day we visited our friends at Small Point which has the biggest sandy beach Faro has ever seen. He could dribble anywhere he wanted, including into the tiny waves that rolled for miles over just inches of depth. By the time we loaded him into the car he was covered head-to-toe with the fine grains of sand, mica and shale. It made a nice contrast with his pale skin and his blond baby hairs.

Saturday was packing up and cleaning up day. We squeezed in a last breakfast, an art show before cleaning the house and then drove back to Lobster Cove. As we entered Manchester Axel and I pretended we were going to a new B&B called Lobster Cove B&B, commenting on the cute town and all the things it had to offer and what we’d be doing in this town. When we arrived at our home we found Faro already in bed, Sita selecting a good mystery to watch and Jim off to get pizzas.

I woke up on Sunday morning with that in-the-pit-of-my-stomach-knowing that all good things must come to an end, combining the end of vacation-feeling with the end-of summer feeling that makes Labor Day weekend a little melancholic. We squeezed in a few more vacation activities. Starting with Zumi’s lattes we headed off to Todd’s Farm in Ipswich, a place where people come to buy and sell stuff, some of which I didn’t even know was worth anything. It is a place where the contents of our basement would not be out of place; we are also painfully reminded of all the stuff we threw out when Penny died, and things we are periodically throwing out when all our stuff creeps up on us.

The first buyers show up, according to Sita, at 5:30 AM. By the time we got there closer to 10 some were already packing up as dark clouds were gathering. We were much too late to chance upon the kind of treasures featured at Antiques Roadshow. I nearly managed to leave the place without buying more stuff except I couldn’t leave without getting a set of starched linen dishtowels and a trivet that we call in Dutch ‘asbestos-plaatje’ which is probably illegal these days. It was the Dutch scene that clinched the deal, a boy and girl in traditional Dutch dress, tulips, clogs and windmills. All for three dollars and 50 cents.

I had one last time with Faro on the beach while Sita and Jim took advantage of having two free and willing babysitters at home. And then they drove off to their Easthampton home, leaving us sad and teary eyed waving as the car turned the corner. I think the old set up of intergenerational living in the extended family compound had something going for it with its built-in care for the very old and the very young. We could start a compound here at Lobster Cove.