Dearest Rachel –
It would seem that the conventional wisdom, the rule of thumb, is more accurate than I had considered giving it credit for. Daniel and I have been waking up at ridiculous hours throughout the entirety of the past week since arriving back home, including today. I can’t speak for so much for him, but I do try for my part to roll over and go back to sleep; it’s just that I’m not very successful at it.
Then again, given that it’s Saturday morning, and the guys are meeting at the usual time (albeit for breakfast rather than Bible study this week), it’s just as well that I’m up so early. Curiously, Jeff seems to have reacclimatized himself to Central Standard Time, unlike Daniel and me. Go figure.
There is other unfinished business that I have yet to attend to since returning home. I haven’t emptied out our suitcases, for example, and sorted out between souvenirs and laundry. Needless to say, I haven’t done the laundry, either. I have every intention of taking care of that – or at least, a load or two of it – before I report to my assignment in the booth at church this evening.
However, for all that hasn’t yet been taken care of, I’ve already had to deal with that fact that not everything we left with came back home with us. And I’m not talking about obvious consumables, like the gum for keeping our ears popped, or the gingersnaps to snack on if we were to get hungry (neither of which came anywhere close to being fully consumed in that week and a half). No, I mean stuff that, despite being what I assumed to be reasonably careful about it, got left behind and lost throughout the course of our travels.
It’s the sort of thing that just happens from time to time. If the old saw about the losses incurred from one move to another being roughly equivalent to one-third that of a house fire, one can expect losses in these more limited travels, and you pack up from one hotel and relocate to the next. You do this four times in the course of a trip – especially considering that I relied on you to ensure that we had everything we started with – and this sort of thing is almost inevitable. Thankfully, they also tend to be fairly small-scale, as we did try to pack lightly.
Even as we were in the midst of it all, I noticed certain things were not always where I expected them to be. As we were packing up on the last night, in preparation for our departure from Jerusalem (and the Holy Land in general), I found myself digging around in my suitcase to look for my swim trucks. I hadn’t remembered seeing them since wearing them in the Dead Sea – the last I had seen them, they had been drying on the balcony of the hotel there with our towels and Daniel’s trunks. Still, all of those were accounted for, so… why couldn’t I find them in my suitcase?
Well, it turned out that, since they had still been damp when we made to leave the Dead Sea hotel, I was carrying them around separately in a sling bag given to each of us by the tour group. So, I had them with me. I just never realized it until I started looking for them.
While that search ended happily, the same can’t be said for the items I purchased barely a month ago, specifically for this trip (and, theoretically, for our next one in April, since that will involve another long-haul flight and several weeks of separation from my medicine bottles). Somewhere along the line, I seem to have separated a week’s worth of pills from the rest of the month, and only that week managed to return with me. The larger box, with the other three week’s worth of daily compartments, may well have been left behind in Nazareth, of all places.
Similarly, the allegedly (I never could get it to work for me, to be honest) bluetooth-enabled sleep mask disappeared after that first flight to Istanbul. It may have made it onto the flight to Tel Aviv, but at that point, I had no need of – or at least, no use for – it, and I didn’t bother to check my backpack to see that it was with me.
Once upon a time, I might well have been utterly heartbroken about this; I still recall having had a bit of a meltdown on a trip for having set down a camera in a shop, only to turn around and find it stolen minutes later. But that was more for the loss of the pictures and the memories that went with it; the camera was replaceable. And so are these items. Indeed, if I recall correctly, I actually paid for these in credit card points; thus, they effectively cost me virtually nothing at all, and might explain why I was so cavalier about keeping track of them.
After all, these are just possessions. If I really need something like either of them, I can buy them again – and I might just do that, to be honest. I realize I need to be more careful about knowing where my stuff is from time to time to minimize the risk of this happening, since I can no longer rely upon you, but when the inevitable happens, I can afford to maintain my cool about whatever I might lose along the way.
Because, after all, while I may lose this or that little trinket, and it may cost me something to replace it (it may even cost me dearly – sometimes, experience charges a hefty tuition fee in order to ensure that I absorb its lessons properly), none of them can compare with the one loss I’ve suffered that I can’t replace; you. After that, and after having to come to grips with that loss, anything else I might leave behind anywhere else along the way is inconsequential in comparison.
I feel like there’s more for me to say about this topic, but I’ve got to deal with the laundry now, before I have to leave. So I’ll let you go for the time being – both in terms of writing you now, and realizing that I need to wait for the end of time until I get to see you again.
Until next time, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 