Standing out from all the rest was an old woman who reached out for my mother as my mother called her name.
"Elizabeth." And this name I knew well. And that of her son John.
My mother fell into this woman's arms. There was much crying and hugging as I was brought to her, and to her son, a boy of my age who never spoke a word.
Now as I said, I knew of Cousin Elizabeth, and I knew of many of the others because my mother had written many letters home from Egypt and received many from Judea and from Galilee too. I'd often been with her when she'd gone to the scribe of our district to dictate these letters. And when she had received letters, they had been much read and reread, and so the names had stories to them which I also knew.
I was much taken by Elizabeth as she had a very slow and pretty manner to her, and I thought her face pleasing in a way I couldn't put into words to myself. I often felt this way about old people, that the lines in their faces were very worth study, and that their eyes were bright in the folds of their skin.
But as I am trying to tell you this story from the point of view of the child that I was, I will leave it at that.
My cousin John, too, had about him this same manner as his mother, though he made me think of my own brother James. In fact, the two of them marked each other, just as I might have expected. John had the look of a boy of James' age, though he wasn't, and John's hair was very long.
John and Elizabeth were clothed in white garments that were very clean.
I knew from my mother and her talk of her cousin that John had been dedicated from his birth to the Lord. He would never cut his hair, and he would never share in the wine of supper.
All this I saw in a matter of moments, because there were greetings and tears and hugs, and commotion all around.
The roof couldn't hold any more people. Joseph was finding cousins, and as Joseph and Mary were cousins themselves of each other, that meant happiness for both of them, and at the same time, Cleopas was fussing that he wouldn't drink the water his wife had brought, and Little Symeon was crying, and then Baby Esther began to cry and Simon her father picked her up.
Zebedee and his wife were making room for our blanket to be put down, and then Little Salome tried to hold Little Esther. And Little Zoker got loose and tried to run. Little Mary was also wailing - and all in all so much happening around me - that it was hard to pay much attention to any one thing.
Before anyone knew it, I had grabbed Little Salome's hand and tugged her away, slipping under this person and that, and stepping over this person and that, and we were at the edge of the roof.
There was a little wall there, just high enough so we couldn't fall - .
I could see the Temple again! The crowded roofs of the city lay all in front of it, rising and dipping on the hills and coming up to the Temple's mighty walls.
There was music coming from the streets below, and I could hear people singing, and the smoke of cooking fires smelled good, and everywhere people chattered, below and on the roofs and it became like a holy chant.
"Our Temple," said Little Salome proudly to me, and I nodded. "The Lord who made Heaven and Earth dwells in the Temple," she said.
"The Lord is everywhere," I answered.
She looked at me.
"But He's in the Temple!" she said. "I know that the Lord is everywhere. But for now we should talk of his being in the Temple. We are here to go to the Temple."
"Yes," I said. I looked at the Temple.
"To dwell with his people, He's in the Temple," she said.
"Yes," I said. "And ...everywhere." I looked only at the Temple.
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. "You know that it's true. The Lord is with us, you and me, right now. The Lord is always with us."
She laughed and so did I.
The cooking fires made a mist in front of us, and all the noise was like a mist of another kind. It made my thoughts clearer. God is everywhere and God is in the Temple.
Tomorrow we would go to it. Tomorrow we would stand in the court inside its walls. Tomorrow, and then the men would go for the first sprinkling of the purification of the blood of the red heifer in preparation for the Feast of Passover which we would all eat together in Jerusalem to celebrate our coming out of Egypt long, long ago. I would be with the children and the women. But James would be with the men. We would watch from our place, but we would all be within the walls of the Temple. Nearer to the altar where the lambs of Passover would be sacrificed. Closer to the Sanctuary into which only the High Priest would go.
We had known about the Temple ever since we had known about anything. We had known about the Law ever since we had known anything. We had been taught at home by Joseph, and Alphaeus and Cleopas and then in school by the Teacher. We knew the Law by heart.
I felt a quiet inside myself in all the noise of Jerusalem. Little Salome seemed to feel that way too. We stood close to each other without talking or moving, and all the talking and laughter and crying babies, and even the music didn't touch us for a little while.