I do try to remember of Joseph (and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat), ups and downs, highs and lows. This morning I read a picture book about Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt. It comes in many volumes. The neighbours who landed it to me didn’t have the one about the story of Joseph. I remember the conclusion very well what was intended to be negative (Joseph’s brothers selling him as a slave), God turned it into positive (making Joseph Pharaoh`s governor).
It can be seen as crazy having to write at least 25.000 words for a master`s thesis and I am reading the Bible in picture books. Defeat always eats time away whilst fading away. I do feel defeated about the arrangements that seem to slip out from my hands once again, because I am financially not stable enough. Being defeated because of finances should only be a secular phenomenon…
Anyway, enough of the bitterness. We had splendid lunch at mum`s: peach soup with cream, `Finom Fozelek` vegetable sauce and egg stew. How delicious! Tomorrow is `Bucsu` a traditional saint`s-day celebration. We are going to have fried fattened duck and steamed-fried cabbage, my favourites.
I just got back from mums. She broke her shoulder on Sunday and now I help her out daily, washing up the big milk-cans, the milking- machine and the milking-clothes. This gives a funny rhythm to my days. Every time I stand in front of the kitchen sink repeating the well-practised movements I remember my childhood and later my teenage years, when I had dreams of becoming `someone`. I believed one day I would go to university, study and become a well-respected person with a relatively good wage. And now after finishing my first degree and doing a master`s, I feel emptier towards success than ever. But I did become `someone`. I became `me`. It is like doing a 360 and realising at the end that not much changed, but almost everything. Years gone by and we ask the same question `what for`? We realise little things that when we set off on that journey did not count or we didn’t want to waste time on them, but marching towards our goals. Sometimes, how petty those goals can be as we look back after achieving them. I look at everything with a different eye now in the kitchen. The memories, that crop up both good and bad whisper the word `home`. I am standing in front of that kitchen sink and see what an important witness of our lives it has been. It can tell stories not only about our family as a whole but about every single one of as an individual. It has listened to many laughs, arguments, grief, silent tears that no one else heard, silent sighs that nobody else realised even though the one who took that breath wasn`t on its own. That kitchen sink smelled many delicious food, hundreds times the spirit glasses were washed up in it and the milk cans twice a day for almost 20 years. That makes 14.600 washing ups a day. And I haven’t counted those times for cooking yet. And how different all of our thoughts were as we turned towards to the kitchen sink, mum having to cram everything in the day she had to do and deciding on what to cook, me day-dreaming all the time, dad wanting to do everything very quickly or even not to do it to be able to go and watch football on TV.
How different our frustrations must have been, mum having enough of having to cook every day and spending half a day in front of the hob, dad thinking about the match, wanting to find a reason to go to the pub, getting frustrated with the little farm and the perpetual workload on it and me not knowing which way to go, where to start, what direction to take. The same questions came to me today as I was doing the washing up. After living in England for 11 years, I am back to square one: `What`s next?` `What am I here for?` `How am I going to make a living?`
Of course I know from experience once the questions feasted enough in me, answers will come. But I need to start to believe first that there will be answers at all.
…“What is impossible with man is possible with God.” Luke 18:27 I hang onto this verse. There are possibilities. There is plan A and there is plan B. I am hoping to know what His answer will be by the end of tomorrow. I have to give answers by then.
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