After supper, Jesus and Daniel took a walk and again found themselves at the oasis. They sat down under a palm tree and Daniel asked Jesus if he planned to follow in his father’s footsteps.
Jesus turned to Daniel. “It will depend on where he would be going. I might not want to go there. If he invited me or asked that I go with him, of course I would follow.”
“Huh?” uttered a mystified Daniel, looking at Jesus with a slinky eye. “Oh, oh, I get it: follow your father’s footsteps! What that means is to do what he does to earn a living. Will you became a carpenter also?”
Nodding his head, Jesus said. “I understand now, and perhaps I will follow in my father’s footsteps for a time. How long? I do not know. Maybe I will become a fisherman.”
“You know what?” Daniel said. “The more we talk, the more I feel that we met before somehow, somewhere. I get this feeling that I may know more about you than you know about yourself at this time. Tell me about you. Where were you born? Tell me about Mary and Joseph. Why do I feel that I knew them, too, before Joseph brought me here? It’s weird but so cool too!”
“Daniel,” said Jesus. “I am absolutely certain that we never met prior to my father, Joseph, bringing you to our house. I will tell you about my father, my mother, and me. What I know anyway. I was born in Bethlehem.
“My father and mother went there because of a census. My father had to be there, and while my parents were there, I arrived. Later, when I was one or maybe two years old, we went to Egypt and we were there a short while before returning to Nazareth. Mother and father have been talking about going to Jerusalem for Passover, and they will take us all. You are here now, so you will go also.”
“OK,” Daniel said. “So what is this Passover? Pass over a bridge to get to the other side?”
“You are close, Dan. Passover is the annual celebration of when Egypt let my people go. They had been held there as slaves. When they left—after 430 years—they came to the Red Sea, and Moses parted the waters so the Israelite’s, my people, could Passover and continue on to our land. Passover is celebrated from the fifteenth to the twenty-second of Nisan (April) in Jerusalem. Will you go with us, Daniel?”
“Jerusalem, eh? So that is maybe why people from there are known as Jews? I think I have heard that word at one time or another, Jesus,” Daniel said.
“It very well might come to that, Dan. I do know that my people did come from a place that is known as Judea. There are Romans there.”
“You know what, Jesus? I do think we have met somewhere before. Every day that goes by, something is said that I think is poking at stuff in my head. Weird, huh?
Jesus looked at Daniel sideways and said, “Dan, what exactly does that word mean?”
“Huh?” Daniel grunted. “Which word you talking about, man? I must have yelped out fifteen or twenty.”
“Weird, Daniel. Weird! What does it mean, man?” Jesus said with a serious questing look all over his twelve-year-old face.
“Far out, Jesus! You said man just like you have always used it as you did, dude. You be da man!” Daniel cried out and smacked Jesus on one shoulder.
Jesus, with a smile on his lips, said, “Far out, dude! You are able to tell that I am not a girl.”
Daniel, with an astonished and pleased look stamped across his face, replied “Are you certain that you have not been someplace other than here, Jesus? Like where I am from?”
Jesus placed an arm across Daniel’s shoulders. “Where are you from, Daniel?” he asked.
“Beats me,” Daniel replied.
“I do not think that will be necessary, Dan. One day you will recall all.”
“You think?” Daniel said. “Do you really, really think so?”
“We shall see, dude,” said Jesus.
Jesus and Daniel turned to look when they heard voices. Abraham, Joshua, and Levi where headed toward them.
Several days had passed since Daniel’s arrival in Nazareth, and now he was apart of the in crowd. Levi carried a sack that contained balls, gloves, and the bat Jesus, with Daniel’s help, had fashioned in his father’s carpentry shop.
They poured everything out of the sack, and all the boys looked at and handled all of the items. They each tried on the gloves.
“Is it too late to throw a ball around?” Levi asked.
“If we were where I came from, streetlights would come on, and we could play,” Daniel told them. Every day, he remembered more of his life back where he lived. He was pretty sure he had known Jesus before he had awakened in Nazareth—maybe the other boys too. If he didn’t know them outright, Daniel felt he had heard all their names at sometime, somehow, and somewhere.
“Streetlights?” asked Abe. “Like torches?”
“Yeah, something like that but without fire,” Daniel said.
All the boys looked at each other.
Abraham said, “Right!