The End of Christmas

Sunday, January 7, 2007

And so they had made it home. And the stories began to flood in – everything from Carrie being given several camel offers (i.e. twelve camels in exchange for wife-hood), particularly because she was a pale blond, a rare sight in Egypt even among tourists, to Rose’s hands still being covered in a rash from the rascally Egyptian insects.

Rose had purchased a small hand-carved alabaster statue of a cat for the family. And there were pyramid fragments, silk scarves, scarabs, packages of spices (from “shady” dealers) and many many tales of places and experiences and exotic peoples. It was a good thing that both girls had kept their own detailed memoirs to give better accounts of their travels.

And Collette had forgotten that foreign travel seemed to change peoples’ lives; it was something that one didn’t recover from very quickly, if at all. It was the sort of change that made them not want to come back just yet, and to travel more. Once again, she was brought back to that one warm summer evening she had stepped off the plane herself. Sometimes it still didn’t feel so long ago.

Meanwhile, back in news from the home front, Dad began teaching the entire junior high Sunday School class that morning. Collette was pleased to hear that Dad had decided to take on the position. Discipline and order was strongly needed, a good firm hand to keep fifteen semi-obnoxious eleven, twelve, and thirteen year-olds under control, and Dad was certainly the one for the job.

Collette wore one of the silk scarves to church that morning – a deep red-orange-pink and gold, fringed at the ends – like a sunrise.

Rose slept through church that morning, not surprisingly. But by the afternoon she broke from her siesta to participate in lunch where she and Carrie-Bri read their journals to everyone there gathered, minus OLeif who was helping lead the senior high guys’ discipleship group at Simple Simon’s. Their accounts were quite hilarious, as could be expected. Then Carrie joined Elizabeth for a chat over at the coffee house and returned shortly later.

Later, when OLeif and Augustus joined them before youth, Carrie and Rose talked them through the slide show of some great pictures that Rose had put together on the computer. First, Rose, who had been napping again, threw on her new Abo Treika soccer jersey (a famous Egyptian soccer player).

Then OLeif, Collette, Augustus, and Rose left for youth as the sun was setting.

“So my New Years’ stunk,” Rose was saying. “I was sitting there all by myself on the Nile until midnight. And I was cold, so this Canadian model gave me a shoulder massage and a hug. He asked if I was warm after that. I said “no” and I went to bed.”

The rest of the car was laughing for the next minute or so.

At youth that night, the wind suddenly began to blow hard and cold. Inside, there were sub sandwiches where Ben-Hur, Augustus, Rose, Molly, Sunrise, and Nacchianti were gathered together. There seemed to be an excessive amount of laughter and crazy stories that night around the couches while Nacchianti worked on downing a jug of very yellow lemonade. In the end, it was one of those evenings that basically made the discussion time a wash. But sometimes there were evenings like that.