My dad recently left for Sudan. My mother told me he received instructions to bring food with him, since food there is sparse or nonexistent. . .so he took a big bag of trail mix. How long will this last him, I wonder?

Even in his remote location, he has access to e-mail, so he sent my mother a message that there is food though not much and the residents eat very small portions. I think he may lose quite a few pounds preChristmas. (It wouldn't surprise me if he gave away his trail mix--there's a family tradition of this. When she visited a refugee camp in Uganda, my sister boarded a UN plane back home wrapped in a tablecloth after leaving all her clothes behind. My mother has been known to slide curtains off the rod on the spot to gift them to a visitor who admired them. Keep an easy hold on things, my mother always taught us.)

Sudan gives me a bit of perspective; today, when I said, there's nothing for lunch, our refrigerator was full, our freezers packed. Our pantry overflows with cereal, cans, snacks, grains and pasta. We could survive for several months at least and eat heartily every day. What I meant this morning was, there's nothing prepared for lunch, as if making myself a pbj was a hardship. Or boiling noodles, or making soup, or defrosting a chicken.

On a lighter note, my mother just sent me this e-mail:
Your dad has been given a name by a group of Dinka women that is evidently a highly favored black and white bull, and they proceeded to teach him how to dance the bull dance. Sorry I missed that!

Maybe, she wrote in closing, he'll perform it for us this Christmas. Is that something we really want to see? My father, who has little inherent sense of rhythm, performing The Bull Dance?

Absolutely.