In the beginning of his service for the CIA, just after training, but before an actual assignment, Reese temporarily covers various Embassy posts around the world. His first Christmas away from the comforts of the Colorado and the orderliness of the military, is at the post office based in the embassy of a little known, tiny African country. He works the desk, filling in for an Embassy employee home for Christmas break, handing out packages to government workers and any Americans that had somehow found themselves in this corner of the world at Christmastime.
It was the aid workers arriving in droves to collect Christmas packages that affected Reese the most. The woman who cried finding rats have gotten into her mother's homemade Rice Krispie bars. Cries which had quickly turned happy after she found a stack of untouched photos, bound together with rubber-bands. Photos of babies and couples geting married, a Christmas card thrown in the mix, her family she had said through sobs. The man, who had been so cheered by a pair of socks his mother had carefully packed along with a solar light. Such small things, Reese had thought.
The aid workers seemed to work at the height of their emotions. The city life already overwhelming them as they stumbled in from far-flung villages, happy to come together for the holidays, to converse with friends who spoke their language, who knew their references and didn't judge their "city" fashions (the shorts and uncovered hair of the women, the long hair of the men) and yet sadness at the periphery, the acknowledging of a missed holiday amongst kin. You could almost watch these thoughts pushed aside as the aid workers, dizzy with their new hauls of American snack food and homesick, reminded each other of the hot showers and clean air-conditioned rooms that awaited them, the bars they could crowd into without judgement, the next week of frivolity ahead before a return to village life. He had watched their departure with envy and for a moment, wished he might have a package amongst the small pile on the shelf behind him.
Reese had enlisted in the army just after high school, not entirely by choice, but his mother had still been proud of him. His father's service still a model of manhood or there was at least the hope that service would teach him the merits of adulthood. He had received a care package or two while at boot camp and a few after and he remembered the deep homesickness and happiness that had sunk into him each time. He had never wanted to open the package, never wanted to disturb his mother's script, the address so carefully handwritten on the cardboard, and would often delay for a day or even once a week, the actual careful opening of the package. They had been a small family, after Reese's father had died, it had just been him and his mom, so the photos had been sparse but his mother's cards had been descriptive and wonderful to read, even if she was just talking about the day to day gossip of his hometown. He would read them over and over, remembering each word. Even now, long after his final package had arrived, he can quote small passages. Along with the letters, homemade ginger cookies carefully arranged inside a holiday tin. As a boy, he'd watched her make sheet upon sheet of these cookies, and even now, the taste of ginger sends him back to boyhood.
After she'd died, there'd been no more packages, no more gossip, no more cookies to hoard, the taste of ginger a bitter reminder of what had been lost. He hated how often it featured in the cuisine of these postings, an almost constant reminder that he was alone.
This particular Christmas at the post office was one of singular loneliness, a waiting for purpose sunk so deep into Reese he had been weeks into his first real assignment before being able to brush it off. Following Christmases had had much less meaning, an excuse to drink heavily with Mark and Kara but not much else.
It was mid-life with Team Machine that he had first remembered the boy he had once been, courtesy of a cookie handed to him by Carter. "Ginger" she had said, "like my grandmother used to make" and then she'd smiled and he had felt for a brief moment at home.
Notes: So I know this is very early, but it's been stuck in my head for a long time. I'm one of those aid workers John meets and I cannot tell you the power of care packages at Christmas. My mom and I were talking about her sending me Cheez-its (& white chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter cups ahh!) for Christmas last night so I felt like writing this. Hope you liked it!