Home Bored with a Cold

Christmas- the luxury of noticing what one misses about home

I knew it was coming! What a marvelous trip through Qatar and then to Jordan; still I knew it was coming. I felt that scratchy throat; the thick head and the pressured feeling in the eyes. When we go home with an over night flight from Doha to the new Khomeini airport I knew I had lost the battle. So, here I am with a headache and the other accoutrements of a cold. In my pained and bored state of mind I decided to make a list of what I missed most about home. Now do not get me wrong; there are many things that I could say I missed about Iran when in the States last summer. With the holiday season about to begin and the busiest shopping day of the year just past I am noticing my what I took for granted in the dear old Martinsville of Virginia.

The most obvious thing I miss is being able to jump into the car and drive to visit one of our children. Thanksgiving saw all of them together in Miami without us. Family comes first on the “what I miss list.” I need not elaborate since this is obvious to most of us. What is not so obvious is the comment by one of our children that something is wrong with a holiday when your parents grow up and move away from home.

Next on my list is missing the comics in the daily newspaper. I picked up a copy of the International Herald Tribune from the Doha airport and read the comics. They had Calvin and Hobbs, Blondie, (no Zits though), Beattle Bailey, Doonsbury, etc. I laughed my way through them and as an extrovert had to read them to Linda. I miss the comic strips.

I miss the rituals of Christmas. It really starts with Thanksgiving and then the Hanging of the Green in church and proceeds through the events of Christmas (where I usually get a cold)! I was thinking about coming out of the church on Christmas Eve. The night is cold and often rainy in Southside Virginia. The street lights remind me of my vision of Christmas in London. The time is right to go home and open one present from under the Christmas tree. I miss the rituals of Christmas.

I miss the recreational activity of eating food. When we were in Jordan we spent several days at a hot springs. MCC had gotten quite a deal at a very nice Dead Sea hotel. (They told us not to get used to it. That is what Quakers and Methodists would have said also!) Each meal was a recreational activity of sampling wonderful middle eastern food. I ate too much and even found the eggplant quite tasty!

I miss watching basketball on TV and keeping up on my Sports Illustrated. I promise myself that when I get back to the US I wlll take off the remote every channel that is not sports or news. That way I will not waste time surfing.

When the language in the country you live is not your native one, you are unable to fully enjoy a number of its cultural events. I suspect in Tehran there are enough cultural events that do not need a working knowledge of Farsi. What I miss is live theatre. Our copies of “Law and Order” are great (I wish I had purchased “House”). What I miss is the Christmas productions at church and the civic productions in town. I promise to get seasons tickets when I get back into the states.

What I notice is that in the busyness of life in the US I do not take time to enjoy what is the most nurturing. I miss the following; sitting around the table and having a good laugh with friends; having a good theological discussion with colleagues; greeting friends in the grocery store; shopping for books in Greensboro at Barnes and Noble; and eating at Mi Ranchito and seeing someone I have not seen for a while (while enjoying that California Burritto).

I miss listening to NPR on the radio; most often as I travel through out the city of Martinsville and then hearing a colleague or friend asking if I heard thus and such.

I miss spice tea and Christmas treats; I miss visiting in the homes of church friends and neighbors. I miss phone calls from our young friends around the country (though we have wonderful calls from young friends here in Qom).

When we were in the Amman airport we found a Cinnabon and indulged in a Starbucks coffee (the Christmas blend.)

I do not want to leave you with the idea that we have not developed meaningful rituals in Iran. We certainly have! I very much enjoy our evening coffee or chocolate ice cream bar. I enjoy hearing the calls to prayer throughout the day. I enjoy the call of the peddlers and the recylers as they make their rounds through out the day. I enjoy listening to Christmas carols on the ipod. I enjoy the sound of children playing soccer in the courtyard outside our window. I enjoy hearing the chirp of small children in the apartment above. I enjoy visiting in the homes of professors and Armenian friends and the rituals of the tea, rice and meat dishes and the fruit that starts and ends a meal. I very much enjoy the new web sites I have been introduced to in the Middle East whether from Arabic news or Russian news sources, to mention only a few.

Two things are going on in our lives, at least; one, we are in the stage of our tenure overseas where the newness has worn off and we miss home; two, we are able to step away from our life in the US and see what is life giving; things we were unable to see when caught up in the day to day activities of life. I miss the interaction with people that I had at work in the hospital. I recently emailed my successor at the hospital and realized that I although care about the work I did as a chaplain, some of the things I cared about then have little interest now. What I care about now is the way I touched peoples lives and how I enjoyed the way people touched my life. The things I listed above that I missed are linked to people and rituals of life. Without them life has little meaning. I have been blessed with a richness that I sometimes take for granted. I am learning that in other societies lives also center around the joy of relationships and rituals. Mental health in Iran is strong because of this reliance on family, friends and the rituals of life. They may have all the variety of choices we have, but life is not centered around the things of life but the appreciation for life shared together.