The ice cold and relentless wind made me look forward to Dubai. But first there is the appointment with the shipper and making sure everything we want in Kabul gets included. The only things we did not get was Scrabble and Pictionary, both standing as symbols for wholesome family fun when not too tired or not computering in our Kabul home.

We claimed out Christmas gift from Sita, two sets of warm lambskin slippers, and to hang out with DJ for a bit. For this we had to brave the even icier wind on the Rockport shore. We took a hot coffee/cocoa break before making it back to the car, to Manchester and various engagements.

We discussed Sita and Jim’s wedding, 9 months from now, over a lasagna dinner with both sets of Jim’s parents and one of his siblings; none the wiser were we even after the coconut cream pie was finished, but all in good spirits. Sita and Jim are mobilizing their friends to make it a low cost, green and memorable event. We have no worries about it – our Magnuson reunion tent, a few port-o-potties and Lobster Cove as a backdrop, how can we go wrong?

We will continue the conversation 6 months from now when we get back to Lobster Cove for our first Stateside R&R. That seems a long way off.

Departure is already in sight but there is much to do: family and friends to visit, more appointments for various body parts, shopping and getting our shipment ready for pick up by the shipping company on Wednesday morning, all the while trying to vacation with one more week to go.

This morning I got certified as a bona fide traveler who can enter the country by simply swiping one of my two passports in a kiosk. I should have had this during my intense travel schedule in and out of the US, travelling on my own; now Axel has to stand in line while I bypass the lines and then wait for him later.

I swung by the MSH office on the off chance of finding some colleagues and friends to wish them happy new year and found some indeed; a few pregnant, others ready to retire and the rest at the same place and in the same condition as I last saw them. It felt odd to be at the office which is no longer my place of work. There are no regrets.

The rest of the day was dreary and cold and bets used to take care of some last minute shopping, gifts for the guards back at our house in Kabul, some starter toys for the daycare center that may start soon at our office and the missing warm clothes for the remainder of Afghanistan’s cold winter.

Sita, who has become a vegetarian after Copenhagen, cooked us a wonderful veggie stir fry. She has also sworn never to use the dryer again and now our basement is draped with clothes that are trying to get dry. You have to duck a lot when walking around there.

We ended the day playing one of Tessa’s new games, something about apples, that kept us entertained for the remainder of the evening while Jim multi-tasked, cooking our evening meal for tomorrow with his family which will also be our goodbye dinner for the next 6 months.

I don’t live here anymore, I think, while cleaning up the kitchen early Sunday morning, putting things people have left where they last used them, into the places they belong. It is an odd experience being guest in your own house and a little unsettling. What used to be my office, and where I had expected to be making the piles for the shipper to pack up for Kabul, has been made into Tessa’s and Steve’s computer room. I don’t live there anymore.

Our room is the barn with all the space we need; actually it is perfect for making the piles I had in mind. We can take 1000 pounds which is, apparently about 25 boxes of stuff. I couldn’t imagine what I would fill 25 boxes with but now I am sweeping through the bookcases, the stacks of DVDs and the discarded kitchen equipment in the basement and the boxes are filling up. A wok would be nice; we have, for the first time in 20 years a gas stove and can actually use it – a new cook training project for Axel.

With everything that I put on the Kabul pile I ask myself, would I mind if I never saw that back again? It is one way of clearing your house of unnecessary stuff.

Outside the cove is churning with foam covered swells that hit the beach angrily. A warm winter storm is hitting us and melted most of the snow, revealing the dirt and mud of the septic system construction project; this is more familiar than the picture perfect white Christmas landscape that we found on arrival. This is more like Kabul.

We are snug in our camp space with our heating pad below us and the small stove flicking on and off to keep the temperature inside comfortable and even.

We are now midway in our stay here, as much ahead ad behind us and we have to think very judiciously how to use the remaining time well so that when we leave there are no regrets.

December 26 is, traditionally, leftover day. We shared our turkey leftovers with Anne and Chuck and Edith and Hugh who brought their own leftovers (salmon bisque and Christmas cookies). We sat around the table and caught up while nibbling at all the dishes set out before us, including Brazilian leftovers from yesterday’s spectacular spread at Steve’s brother who married into a family of Brazilian cooks. He is both lucky and it shows.

We visited Sula and Jacek whose parents lived in Kabul in the 1950s where he was helping to get Ariana airlines of the ground. They have hundreds of slides from that time, and a promise to show these to us one day. Not today as they were getting ready to leave for Scotland.

I have been knitting on an off. I bought several skeins of interesting yarn and knitting as much as I do is proof that i am really on vacation. I produced a third batch of baby booties that I can now knit in my sleep. Before I leave I have to show Sita how to make them so that she can stop making scarves, something she has been doing for years in spite of the multiple knitting books I have gifted her for Christmas. Her friends are starting to have babies so this would be a little more practical than scarves.

I am now walking around with a mindmap in my pocket of the things that we want to put in our shipment. They are, and have to be, objects that we won’t mind losing in the case of a quick exit/evacuation but that would add a little to our comfort while in Kabul.

The shipper comes on Tuesday to pack us up which means that sometime between now and then we have to make a trip to the shopping mall, a scary thought for someone who has managed to avoid the entire Christmas shopping season.

Things did come together, as they always seem to do and showing once more that traditions are hard to break. Our Christerklaas celebration started at midnight, as it always does. Axel took a four hour nap which made it possible to be up about half the night, while Sita and Jim had a Christmas dinner and Steve, Tessa and I worked on our poems and packaging of the gifts.

We were done around 3:30 in the morning and tumbled into a deep sleep on our preheated bed. Christmas morning, later, we continued with what was left under the tree before tackling the task of cooking our Christmas dinner, together. Tessa and Steve had planned the meal: turkey cooked under cover of maple soaked bacon, cranberry compote made from the cranberries that Axel picked in October, just before heading out to Kabul, creamed onions, mashed potatoes, ginger almond green beans, carrots and squash.

For desert Tessa had brought a Buche de Noel from the fancy bakery near her old job – it tasted as perfect as it looked. We missed Sita and Jim for our Christmas dinner because of yet another family engagement – both our daughters have found men who come from families that split up which multiplies the number of dinners that require their presence.

And now we are off for a late after dinner Christmas celebration in central Massachusetts where Steve’s mom and sister are visiting his brother and his family. So Christmas is not quite over.

Between the two of us we had many maintenance and repair appointments for our first 48 hours home: shoulder, teeth, blood work, hair and stomach, the first appointment only hours after we landed. There will be more after the holidays are over and before we head on to our next stop on this short vacation, Holland. But first there has to be Christmas.

Each appointment required waiting in rooms with piped in Christmas music – bad luck meant that the consultation rooms were also exposed to the music. I am glad that after tomorrow this will be over. In fact, I noticed the stores have already moved on the Valentine’s Day; the red and green being replaced by red in pink.

It’s strange to be home but to be there as a guest. We are now staying in the barn across the driveway. Sita and Jim lived there for a year after our accident, then Tessa and Steve, for a year and some months and now us. Our house is no longer our house. Tessa now makes the rules, which includes ‘shoes off’ just like in Kabul.

Her present to us is the newly painted bathrooms: orange gold downstairs and a bright new coat of kelly green upstairs. It will be a nice home to come back to, whenever that will be.

We sleep on a mattress on the floor of a structure that isn’t meant for sleeping in the winter. There is only our mattress and a think wooden floor between us and the cold winter air underneath. Before we went to bed we ventured out into the crowded shopping mall to get an electric pad to preheat the bed; this was easier than buying a bed frame on the day before Christmas, and it did the job, I hardly remember going to bed except that it was warm.

Walking outside and taking the car to drive wherever we want is an untold freedom, a luxury that we took for granted before moving to Afghanistan. After 3 months of being chauffeured around, driving myself is fun and familiar, as if I haven’t been away that long.

Sita and Jim drove halfway home to Western Massachusetts to celebrate Christmas with his sister and husband. We were supposed to come along but that plan turned out to be entirely unrealistic as Axel is taking a nap and I am struggling to make the Christerklaas rhymes for our celebration that is supposed to start at midnight. I am not at all sure how everything will come together in time, the muse has not arrived yet and it doesn’t feel anything like Sinterklaas or Christmas. But it is surely nice to be home.

I slept from Dubai till Belorus, and then again from Riga till the Norwegian coast and finally from Iceland till Montreal.

Axel was sitting someplace else in the plane and did not sleep much; he had slept in our fancy Dubai hotel after a delicious Japanese dinner and, unlike me, did not board the plane in a state of half sleep.

He had also made the mistake of eating some of the very spicy Indian food that was served in the Delta lounge. I think his gurgling stomach kept him awake; probably not a bad thing I was sitting someplace else.

The last three hours of the ride were the longest. Doing the long 16 hour flight only makes sense if you can get an upgrade to the business class pods. When we return we will fly via Holland, this breaks the trip into more manageable segments.

I gave my upgrade for the last leg of the trip to Axel as an early Christmas present since he did not emerge from the Dubai flight quite as rested as I did and was suffering from back pain.

I am posting this high up in the sky, on the Atlanta to Boston plane thanks to Delta’s wifi campaign that is trying to get me hooked on staying connected all the time, now for free but later for a fee. I think I can live without it but it is nice to read all the emails from Kabul and knowing I don’t have to respond to any. I am on vacation and deleted most of them.

Enjoying our newly acquired freedom of simply walking around on the streets we spent hours exploring Dubai’s souks: the spice souk, the gold souk, the fabric souk, the pashmina souk, the electronic souk and the just-stuff souk.

We watched the stuff being loaded and unloaded along the creek on or from gigantic and rickety looking dhows, some with their center of gravity precariously high. We hope they either unload or don’t encounter rough seas. We surprised the Iranian crew of one of the dhows by addressing them in our halting Farsi once we knew their nationality.

We marveled at the mild weather of Dubai. It reminded me of the temperatures of my childhood summers in Holland, a pleasant 70 degrees. This was definitely a whole lot better than the 110 degrees during our July visit which made walking around an act of insanity.

We ate fried shrimp and fish in a small outdoor cafe along the creek, enjoying our first seafood in months, and sipped our fresh mango and coconut juices. Today was truly a first day of vacation.

We’ll treat ourselves to a nice dinner before heading to the airport to settle into our cramped quarters in the back of the plane for our 16 hour flight to Atlanta.

All the loose ends are tied up, except one about our return trip. We had to fix a reservation error via Skype with Holland where a deep freeze only days before Christmas is causing massive delays in telephone traffic. I was put on hold for the longest time, praying the electricity wouldn’t quit on me while listening to the most atrocious and loud Christmas music. Eventually we sorted things out, a Skype miscommunication that cost us dearly, 50000 miles and 100 euro more for what was supposed a free trip for Axel from Boston to Amsterdam. We discovered the trip had already happened on November 30th and not, as we thought we had booked, on December 30th. There is a lesson in there of checking reservations carefully.

I have handed the baton to one of my staff, a new experience since in the past when I went on leave there was no one to hand the baton to and I just kept checking my email. I am planning to do that only for social reasons. We do have an arrangement with my co-directors: only emails that have URGENT in the subject line are to be looked at (with a promise to have none or very few of those).

During my last trip to and from the ministry of watched the traffic around me more intently than usual and realized that there is something profoundly different about traffic here and in the US or Holland. People may complain that my two home countries are over-regulated, but compared to the non regulation here, such (over) regulation is a heck of a lot better.

People and animals cross the road or what’s available of the road whenever and wherever they want. The road is sometimes not much of a road. Everywhere, probably part of some big road project, drainage ditches are being hacked in the road and piles of rock and dirt continue to accumulate on the remaining surface. Some of these are small side roads, but many are main arteries in and out of town.

Participating in traffic is based on the premise that everyone is on his own, and that there is no collective responsibility to make things work on the roads. Red and green lights, pedestrian crossing, traffic rules are really collective commitments to give everyone a fair chance at moving ahead.

I marvel at the ability of Afghan drivers to get themselves into a total jam, everyone occupying every empty inch of the road and even sidewalks, and as soon as an inch opens, someone jerks into the new space further jamming up the works. Occasionally I have seen someone get out and create rules on the spot, like ‘you there, stay where you are, and you there, move!’ But only once in my three months here.

The same principles of immediate satisfaction, impulsivity, and unenlightened self interest are at work when uncles or fathers ask for compensation from those who offer to educate their girls, or when employees steal money that has been made available to rebuild a piece of this country, their country, or that was to provide medicines, food, schools, anything for the poor. All during the ride I wanted to jump out of the car and grab people by their shoulders and shake them saying ‘don’t you get it? We are all in this together, you lose, I lose, you win, we all lose…But how do you get that across when that’s what life has been like for most people here.

And now we are getting ready for our long (road/air/road/air/road) trip back to Manchester by the say. Departure at 5 :30 AM tomorrow morning. We can’t wait.

I went through the day with only a fraction of my usual energy, the skin between my nose and lips raw from blowing my nose too much. Not surprisingly, I felt very unaccomplished by the end of the day. I quit at the time that everyone else leaves in the many little buses that drive people to all four corners of Kabul. That is usually the time I start emptying my mailbox and get my thinking and writing done, but not today.

Sunday is the day of our weekly touchbase meetings that cascade up from the bottom to the top of the stairs but the stair part didn’t happen because the boss was called out to see the minister and such requests cannot be ignored. I declined to accompany him, feeling too miserable to handle the one hour trip each way.

Axel came over for lunch which was a nice break in the day. He had come to get his MSH identity card to hang around his neck as our compound is instigating increasingly stringent security measures. We now have brick lookout towers, which make me think of Rapunzel each time I pass by them. Such towers were missing at the UN guesthouse. When the guard opened the little sliding door to see who was outside he found a gun in his face, the last thing he saw.

Our walls have been raised, bricked up, by some 3 feet after the surface of the street outside was raised by 3 feet. No one understands why but for the seller of crushed stone it was a good deal no doubt. On top of the new layer of bricks are sharp metal spikes and the front gate is closed. We will have what is called a ‘vapor’ lock and that’s apparently where you need a badge of one sort of another. So Axel now counts, badge-wise, as staff.

When I arrived home Axel was just saying goodbye to two people from a small NGO called SOLA a group he had just contacted by email in the morning. When the founder of the NGO showed up it turned out our housekeeper was his one time and so the visit was a nice reunion.

After they left we visited a Finnish woman who lives around the corner and sells embroidery that is made by Afghan widows and girls to make ends meet. We did our last Christmas shopping there and have now emptied our wallets and finished our shopping.

We had dinner in front of the TV watching Al Jazeera and then the BBC and then Euro News, all of them showing long queues of people waiting at airports (eastern US snowstorms) or train stations (Euro Star mishap in the tunnel). It made you say “I will never travel anywhere for Christmas,” two days before we get on the road ourselves. It’s a long leap of faith.