Sylvia's Journal

Before this momentous event we drove up with Monsieur Joseph at the wheel to one of the few remaining spots with cedars in Lebanon. The road was winding and scary at times and made Tessa sick. I am sure the sickness was exacerbated by Monsieur Joseph’s broken French and English and the way his thumbs drummed on the steering wheel. We also had to ask him not to light up, a bad Lebanese habit that, although slightly diminished in the last 30 years, still kept astounding us: drivers behind the wheel, salesladies behind the cash register and tough looking guys in places that say ‘No Smoking.’

When we finally arrived at the Cedars National park we found it covered in snow and locked – no one there. Shivering (wrong clothes) and with snow falling on our heads, we hiked up the road to find an opening in the rusty barbed wire fence. Only Sita, Jim and I ventured through the hole and worked our way down a slippery hill to the oldest cedar in Lebanon, one that was somehow overlooked when the Great Temple was built in Jerusalem.

According to the small sign that that Rotarians of the Chouf put up it was 3000 years old (or 10000 or 1000 or 30000 – someone had altered the printed plate); old, in any case, with a circumference of 16 meters.

Eventually the main gate was opened when a lady of some import arrived with her South American visitors and called the right guy. We sent Monsieur Joseph to retrieve Tessa and Axel who were already walking down the road so that they too could see the old cedar. Everyone hugged the tree to catch some of its life force for longevity and then everyone went inside the small hut and hovered around the, for us familiar, diesel stove with a cup of hot mint tea, complements of the Lebanese Park Service.

To the great disappointment of Monsieur Joseph we declined to see the palaces on the way down to the coast. One of those, Beiteddine, used to be an obligatory stop when people came to visit us here all these years ago. When I left Lebanon I swore I would never stop at the place again. Sita had already seen it during her short visit to Lebanon last year it and the rest was OK skipping the sight as the hours towards departure ticked away; there was some last minute shopping to do. ‘Oh,’ sighed Monsieur Joseph, ‘shopping, why?’

We had him drop us off at our place, unloaded our picnic implements (we had had this fantasy of spreading a blanket under one of the cedars and have our French bread with Camembert and white wine while looking out over the faraway Mediterranean Sea); instead we ‘picnicked’ in the car on the way home.

Just around the corner from Bliss Street it happened: Sita met her wedding dress. It stood in the window of a store called Elissar and Other Stories and was made from fabric from Central Asia: Uzbek, Chinese and Turkman. It cost more than my entire collection of dresses ever owned but the two had fallen in love. She tried it on and the battle was lost. It’s on its way to Haydenville now and we all agreed it was spectacular; one of a kind and, most importantly, Jim liked it.

Tessa bought a narguileh (shisha, hubbly-bubbly, water pipe) that was not made in China – not easy to find – for her Steve and everyone carried at least one shopping bag with stuff to take away from Lebanon. We went back to the Wellington bar in the Mayflower Hotel to toast to the best family vacation ever, and to three couples, us celebrating our 30th anniversary in a few weeks, Sita and Jim to their upcoming wedding and Steve and Tessa to many more good years to come and a more understanding employer.

We had our last dinner with Birgit and Alistair who were all packed to go on their ski vacation in France. And then we said goodbye to the kids, all teary and sad. They should be in Frankfurt now drinking large steins of beer and eating sausages while looking wistfully at the photos and the dress.

For us, the vacation isn’t quite over yet. We have one more morning in Beirut that may include a massage to relax our muscles that are sore from walking so much. After that, we too will hop in a taxi and head for the airport to fly in the opposite direction from Haydenville.