Christmas Spirit

As most of you know I was in a singing group in Utah before we moved. We performed mostly at Christmastime. It was a lot of fun for me and I have missed the Singin' Ladies tremendously and have missed performing at this time of year.

However, I did get the opportunity to perform a bit this year. Well, perform as a background musician anyway. I am perfectly happy blending in with the background noise yet adding to the Spirit of Christmas.

The Ambassador to Jordan happens to be LDS. He isn't able to attend most church meetings for security reasons but his wife, Anne and her children come every week. So Anne knows I play the piano. As the wife of the Ambassador she does a lot of hosting/entertaining. This year she hosted Christmas parties for the American Women of Jordan, the Embassy High School students and their parents, and for the Embassy Middle School Students and their parents. She asked if I would come and play the piano for some background Christmas music. It was perfect for me. I didn't have to practice that much since people weren't really paying close attention yet it gave me a chance to pull out the dusty piano books and limber up my fingers a bit. I played for about 6 hours in two days. I don't think I've done that since college.

She was so kind to me as well. I told her she didn't have to pay me as it was good for me to play again like that. She did pay me though with 12 cans of Hershey's Chocolate Milk Mix. She knows that's my favorite and the only place I know of to get it in the entire country of Jordan is from the store in the Embassy. Since we don't have Embassy privileges she bought it for me.

Thursday morning I played for the American Women then I was going to come back that night for the high school party. I had never met her husband until that day. Before I left that morning she was giving me a tour of the Ambassadors residence and while she was doing this her husband came up very concerned about some rolls that were supposed to be raising and what should the next step be. He seemed a bit perturbed that she wasn't as concerned about these rolls as he was. Keep in mind they don't just have a housekeeper. They have a full time staff of cooks, laundress, housekeeper, etc. Nevertheless he was very much concerned about the rolls turning out perfectly. I asked her if the rolls were for the party later that night and she said that the King and Queen of Jordan were coming over for a belated Thanksgiving dinner that afternoon and her husband wanted the dinner to be perfect. I just thought I'm so glad they're normal and they're concerned just like everyone else about the rolls turning out just right. Even if the rest of us don't have a King and Queen coming over to eat them.

Then after the party the next day she offered some of the leftovers to us. Turns out they had had several Thanksgiving dinners and were very tired of eating all the leftovers. I did end up taking home some Pecan pie that only had one piece taken from it. So the way I look at it, we got to eat the King and Queen's leftovers. That's probably the closest I'll get to a King and Queen is eating their scraps but hey, it's almost like we ate dinner with them.