Rome or Home?

These last two weeks have flown by…many blog-worthy moments now seem a bit, as Margaret Mitchell once sighed, gone with the wind. But let’s have a little catch-up. One of the reasons that the two weeks have sped by is that for one of those weeks in the last two weeks I enjoyed a whirlwind trip to the United States. This trip was not on the horizon for very long. No, I have not been fired, nor am I chasing down my 401K. An unexpected little poof of serendipity landed me at JFK nearly two weeks ago for an embrace of nature’s fall palette.

Let me back up about four weeks ago. What was expected was a vacation from November 16-20. That was the projected date of the Eid break that is two moons after the end of the holy month of Ramadan. If you recall from other blogs from other years, Islamic holidays are not as easy to predict as many other holidays. These holidays are lunar and when exactly they commence is not a science. One can never be certain that the Eid holiday will begin on a certain day—one may guess, but it comes down to when an imam, or sometimes a government, “calls” the holiday. Imagine how difficult it may be when you are an international student, or teacher, and you try and nail down plane tickets on a given day and time with a holiday that is a little bit unpredictable.

What was certain is that mid-November would bring the first break in the school calendar. Where should I spend this break? This was the shortest Eid holiday planned yet in the four years of the school’s history, but a break is still a welcome chance to travel somewhere and partake in some relaxation. Let me see, in the past years, I have gone on some very nice brief vacations during one of the two Eid holidays every year. I have gone to Kenya, Budapest, the Dead Sea, the Red Sea, and twice to the United States, one to a Denison Singers reunion, and one surprising my family last Thanksgiving. Where to go from November 16-20? As I pondered it in October, I began to teach the art of Rome, and decided, yep, that’s it—I will go to Rome for the Eid holiday! I hadn’t gone to the “Eternal City” since 2001, and why not try and find that perfect risotto about a hundred yards from the Pantheon or get lost in the Vatican Museum or the Villa Borghese.

Around the first of November there were rumblings that the cycle of the moon wasn’t exactly on target. I never did really understand it, but was the moon going through its phases faster??? What? People started talking about the fact that Eid would be called sooner than the projected date. There was lot of hand-wringing over what the school should do—do you wait until the holiday is called to know what is going to happen? What about the families of students who live beyond Jordan’s borders? If we try and have school will anyone show up? So, let’s see, the rumor circulated that the government was going to call the holiday early. If that is the case, we would fall in line, and that would leave us with potentially a one-day school week. Hmmm…how many students would show up, after a weekend, for one day of wonderful instruction? Or would the most dutiful simply be “punished” while others lapped up a longer holiday? So the decision was made, and enthusiastically accepted by the student body that the holiday would be early, and students got three bonus days of vacation, and that meant that people could leave after Thursday’s classes and come back the following Sunday. Or should faculty have a professional development day on that Sunday—it wasn’t a planned holiday anyway—no one had flights anywhere yet. Think of all the things that must be weighed!

Ultimately, the faculty and the student body received the dispensation for what would amount to a 9 day holiday.

Then I ran out of Edge Shaving Gel.

Oh, hmmm…I thought I had enough Edge until the Christmas holidays 40 days later. Oh, well, it’s not that Edge Shaving Gel is not available in Jordan. It is, in many of the fine stores in Amman. It’s just, well, if you know me, spendthrift is not my middle name, and Edge Shaving Gel costs between $6 and $7 in Amman. And you know, it’s on sale for $1.99 pretty regularly at Walgreen’s in the United States. Maybe I should re-think the travel plans. I mean, I need the Edge Gel. I liked the idea of Rome—but maybe I should just go home instead…

I think I blame my colleague Arthur as well for changing my mind. He said, “Surely you are going to the United States in the break.” No, Arthur, I had meant to indulge my love for Caravaggio and Bernini in Rome…but Home was pretty appealing. I mean, the Shaving Gel is a good bargain at Walgreen’s. Cereal is also much cheaper in the United States. Grape Nuts runs you about $8 in Amman, but again, that magic $1.99 price at Walgreen’s is a pretty standard sale item.

I checked with a couple people and thought, well, for my two standard destinations, New York and Cincinnati, the major players are going to be in town and between major projects. And there was the prospect of seeing autumn leaves for the first time in years (late November last year doesn’t count—they were tired of their colorful parade and most had fallen forlornly on the ground). Remember just a few weeks ago I extolled the wonderful Margot for remembering to send me the papery Maple leaves again.

Hmmm…I might go to New York for a few days and then jet home to Cincinnati, doing both of my home bases in the 9 day break. Yep! Let’s do it before I realize I won’t be traipsing around the Colosseum or the Arch of Constantine as expected!

It turns out my colleague Tristan and I were on the same flights going and coming, both stealing this quick trip to the US to fortify us for the coming exam season. When we got to the airport we soon felt like we were at a cattle call for Central Casting for an old Cecil B. DeMille Bible extravaganza. The normally sedate airport in Amman was teeming with old people, and not just old people dressed in what looked like Bible-story costumes, but the kind with the veristic faces you see in the art of the Roman Republic (second guessing my decision??) with the most weary, time-worn, creased faces you could imagine! What in the world? We remembered…this was the beginning of the Hajj season. This Eid holiday signals the optimum time for the faithful to journey to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, for the longed-for pilgrimage of every faithful Muslim. We landed at the airport with what seemed like every octogenarian in all of the Hashemite Kingdom traveling for the first time. Tristan surmised that many of them had never flown before and did not quite know what to do in the airport. Well, they might not have known what to do, but many of these wizened women felt compelled to try and cut in front of us in every line. I know, it shouldn’t matter, but you know my oddly competitive self felt compelled to outwit them in their cut-in-line schemes! We were forever in the line to check bags—there felt like 75,000 people in line—and this one diminutive woman who looked like Anne Bancroft at age 195 in The Greatest Story Ever Told—simply sat on my suitcase for about 15 minutes. I wasn’t sure if I was going to have roll it/her away to suggest she move.

Anyway, I digress. Tristan and I were on that great Delta flight that leaves at midnight in Jordan and arrives at dawn in New York. How can you not sense the drama of the impending trip with dawn rising as dramatically as God can muster!!

New York is always rewarding—both the city and my friends. I spent time with Anne in Westchester and we dove into doing the New York-y things I love: plays, walking, eating, and museum-going. I had lunch with the inimitable Kate, met up with super-hero Harrison, and simply reveled in the beauty of Central Park. It had been since the fall of 2006 that I could walk through the autumnal majesty around the pond on the Upper West Side. I was struck by the juxtaposition of two facts: one, all I could see in any direction was a dense canopy of red maple, oak and hickory treetops, the leaves fanning out in autumn’s golden regalia; two, I was in Manhattan!

Among memorable meals (quick run up to Saigon Grill for the Papaya Beef Salad, get a pizza at Patsy’s and marvel at the perfect olive oil, savor the steak at the Post House, and thank Kate for the glorious pork chop at The National) I also got to see excellent theater. The Pitmen Painters tells a true story of English miners who stumble onto an art class and how it changes their lives. And The Scottsboro Boys offers a musical, a rather dangerous musical, about the injustice in 1930s Jim Crow Alabama known as The Scottsboro Boys. As I entered the theater I made my way past loud protesters pleading with patrons not to see such a racist show. You see, the famous composing team of Kander and Ebb (heard of Cabaret? Chicago?) decided to tell this story via the device of the old-fashioned, and now derided, infamous minstrel show. Hmm…Theater as a provocateur! The extraordinarily talented cast of 11 wows you…wait, did I just applaud a number that is essentially a shuck-and-jive number??? But the show is not a betrayal of the young men at all—the sheer audacity and farce of the minstrel show makes you think anew about the farce of the trials these 9 young men endured. The audacity of the minstrelsy is subversive—and the show, and the boys’ story is a discomfiting, blunt-force thrill.

So I get to Cincinnati, enjoy the fam, going to the diner, going to Emma’s soccer game, picking them up from school, and don’t forget to go and get the holy grails of cheap Edge Shaving Gel and Grape Nuts.

The only hitch in this 9 day reverie home was the delay for the flight back to Jordan at JFK. Seems there was a leak in the fuel line—not the best thing for the thousands of miles we will travel—and so we endured a 15-hour delay. Oh, and one of my two suitcases has not been located yet…you’ll never guess which one. The suitcase that Delta cannot find yet has in it the sought-after Edge Shaving Gel and Grape Nuts! Mamma Mia!