Dreaming of Chuck and Mary

 

A poem from our first years in Saudi:

I TRY TO IMAGINE RAIN

by me

We are scorched into our bed of sand

By the cloudless sky and pounding Arabian sun

“Its raining here, and still very cold”

Each week they write to us from home.

So I try to imagine “Rain” and “Cold”.

Did Heaven turn all its sprinklers on?

And, as for “cold”, - well, family,

Don’t just sit there shivering

Go and turn down the air-conditioning!

I dreamt about Chuck and Mary the other night.  In the dream Col had decided we were going back to Saudi to work and suddenly there we were, having supper with Chuck and Mary in their big hospitable house and Col was asking them to supper with us the next night. I was thinking that I must get out some of my old recipes - something with rice - and beginning to wonder how I was now going to cope with it all.

Whereupon I woke up. And it was quite sad as it had been such a vivid dream that it took me a few minutes to realise that Chuck and Mary are gone - have been gone for some time.  We never got to visit them in Texas.  Anyway, I chose this picture from Col's photo gallery of one of our winter camping trips.  Mary used to bring her excellent chile and cornbread and Col would build a fire and we would sit round it. The desert can be very cold at night. And its hard to eat in the desert until the sun goes down, as it doesn't matter how remote and empty the area is the moment you get any food out in daylight swarms of flies materialise from nowhere.

The time of Chuck and Mary is one of the memory layers of our expat life. We had many trips together - to the desert, to Bahrain, and even dove the Barrier Reef together - well me by submarine, they by scuba. And I saw more than they did.  And poor Mary was so cold. In Saudi, even the water from the "cold" tap was warm.

I don't know if they still run those min-sub trips or not as, fascinating though they were, I seem to remember that we did bump and scrape the reef a bit.  It was a long time ago of course, autre temps, autre moeurs (which I hope I have spelt right).

And of course, once the Kingdom of God is ruling over the earth, all will be brought back into the harmony it had in Eden - and we will be able to see and enjoy the reef without doing any harm. Nor will the critters of the reef harm us.

And of course I hope that Jehovah will wake Chuck and Mary from the dreamless sleep of death, and they will see this lovely earth, this splendid universe again.

Friday I had a late start, took me ages to get going. I moved on with my Bible reading - watching the introduction of the Book of Judges.  We learn so much from that book - for one, how patient Jehovah was with the Jews, when they were his chosen people - which is a patience all us damaged children of Adam badly need. I made a big veggie/lentil/curry stew for our lunch for the next couple of days. And we had a phone call from Bea and a letter from Kathryn. And, another plus, an email from Pen to say she had Zoomed to my small part in the school on Thursday and enjoyed it.

So another day, another good day, and it's all a bonus at my age.