Father's Day

I was exceptionally protective of my parent’s marriage as a kid. Exceptionally. There was a blind old beggar woman who sat outside the grocery store where we shopped growing up. She was shriveled and bald, usually dressed in threadbare kangas and led around by a grandkid. She was the image of pity. But even as the kid who bawled every time Fivel Moskawitz got separated from his family on the ship to America (every time), that old lady couldn’t touch my heart of stone. In fact, I couldn’t stand her. Why? Because she called my father her husband. Hobbling towards us with hand outstretched she would speak to my father in Kigiriama and say something like, “Oh my husband, my husband how can you let your wife go without food today?” And my dad would greet her respectfully and ask about her aches and pains and family while I tried to discreetly maneuver our shopping basket between them, and then he would pass her some spare change or a loaf of bread. We would go into the store and after turning back from shooting a blind beggar dirty looks, to my dismay I would always glance up to see my mother smiling.   

Sometimes, after kissing us goodnight and tucking the mosquito net around our bunk beds, my dad would pause at the bedroom door, say goodnight one more time and tell us he loved us. And occasionally one of my sisters or I would pipe up and say something funny like, “Do you love us move than DJ?” (DJ was our much-loved wart infested mongrel dog). And Papa would say yes, he loved us more than DJ. The next question, would up the ante a little. “Do you love us more than Rehema?” (Our ayah who sometimes helped out with laundry.)

“Yes, I love you more than Rehema.”

“Do you love us more than Caleb and Nathan?” (Best friends down the street.)

“Yes.”

“More than Aunt Sharon?”

“More than Aunt Sharon.”

“More than Granny?”

“Even more than Granny.”

This would go on for a while, measuring his love for us against all sorts of people and things we weren’t really concerned about. And then would come the fateful question, the real heart of the matter, slipped in at the end almost like a trick. “Do you love us more than Mama?”

Papa was always standing in the doorframe so I could never really see his face when he answered, just his form silhouetted against light from the living room. But his answer never failed, never even hesitated.

“Nope. Not more than Mama. I love her more than anyone in the world.”

And that was the end of it.

I don’t really remember any follow-up questions or explanations. We just cuddled happily under our sheets, Papa said I love you one more time and we fell asleep, secure in our little world as number two.

I don’t take for granted the immeasurable blessing of growing up as number two in my father’s life. That place has shaped my life and relationships for good in more ways than I can even imagine. On Father’s Day, after sending him a text across the world to let him know I was thinking of him I sat and cried remembering a dear friend whose father’s reckless decisions continue to break her heart wide open. I am blessed beyond measure. And I know it. I am so thankful, because in loving me second to my mother, my father gave me the key to my own first place. And from it I now look at my cherished daughter and dream of the man who will someday love her more than anyone in the world.   

Happy Father's Day Papa. And thank you for everything.

Kindred

It’s not my first memory of Teizeen, we had been friends for a year or so by this point, but I think it might be my favorite. I wish so badly I had a picture of it because I know we took one that night but in all my digging through old boxes and albums I can’t find one. We were barefoot and swathed from head to toe in glittering saris. Mine was coppery toned, if I remember correctly, and borrowed from another classmate. Hers was shades of teal. Droplets of bendi adorned our foreheads and several slinky’s-worth of bangles clattered on each of our four arms. We were sweaty from dancing at the Navratri celebration, clacking our dandiya sticks against fellow dancers’ as we wove through the columns of the Hindu temple. The air was thick with incense. I tried to mimic the graceful movements of a Hindu friend from school as we danced. But when a priest rose to clang a heavy bell and direct our attention towards a marble deity on the wall, it was Teizeen who I followed as we slipped outside. I think my parents probably only let me go because they knew she would be there. We sat on the temple steps in the cool night air, and listened to the worship inside – two girls, a Christian from America and a Muslim from Indian, both of us growing up in Kenya. I don’t remember what we talked about in those moments while we waited. Probably upcoming exams or whether or not a certain boy would show up. I know it wasn’t faith or religion. But I remember feeling safe that night, whether or not I ever said it. Like I was in the company of a deeply kindred spirit.

Teizeen’s family immigrated to Washington State when we were sixteen, and other than one quick meal in Nairobi three years ago, we haven’t seen each other in over a decade. We’ve moved in opposite directions around the world, finished college and grad school, gotten married and become aunts with little more than sporadic emails and the rare long-distance phone call. But this weekend Teizeen flew in for a visit that I think could technically be counted as our first sleep-over. To be honest, I was a little nervous. Three full days with someone whose life you’ve only kept up with through Facebook and email is a bit intimidating. But as it turned out I had no reason to be concerned. I still felt in the company of a kindred spirit.

We talked about Mrs. Monserat and dreading her tirades in geography class. We talked about sailing camp and O-levels and inter-house sports days. We talked about old friends, how so-and-so has had a baby, finished medical school, moved back home, or lost a ton of weight. And how little we’ve kept in touch with any of them.

We also talked about things we never really have before. About growing up in sectarian branches of our respective faiths and coming to resist petty things, like having an ethnic religious leader choose your baby’s name or worry that God is only pleased with non-instrumental worship. We talked about how we have grown to embrace deeper truths of our faith, things like love, justice, and community. We talked about our liberal politics and what it’s like to be a Muslim in a Christian nation. It turns out it’s a lot like being a Christian in a Muslim nation. Go figure. Convincing people you are not a terrorist is not so different from convincing people you are not an immoral war-monger. We talked about fasting, about the mysteries of holy scripture.

And when we finished talking about these things we talked about how many kids we hope to have, the adventure of in-laws, the joy of sisters, the blessing or marriage. About the Bampf Mountain Film festival and Paul Farmer and climbing Kilimanjaro. We talked like old friends.

I’m not really sure exactly why this friendship has lasted as long as it has when so many others are gathering rust in the recesses of my memory. The paths of our lives seem so far apart these days, and are full of so many other people and responsibilities and activities. It would be so easy to drift apart. But we haven’t and I’m grateful for that. And I think part of why we haven’t is because we both recognize that our friendship represents something bigger than just us. Underneath the shared memories of a little British school in Mombasa, which are precious, we share something else that is even more valuable. Something genuine that in the culture wars of our world today is worth hanging on to.

It was good to see Teizeen this weekend. 

Prayer

In 2005 I travelled to North Africa for the first time in my life. I went with a group of graduate students and professors from my university, including the lanky sad-eyed boy I was dating at the time. We saw a lot of things on that trip but the one that left the deepest imprints on my heart was a visit we made to a makeshift orphanage in the middle of almost nowhere. About fifty children from age three to sixteen lived behind sandbag and barbwire walls guarded by soldiers weighed down with heavy weaponry. They had been rescued by these soldiers and the half-crazy preacher/commando who lead them when they snatched them from the clutches of Joseph Kony and his sadistic followers. I remember feeling paralyzed with helplessness as we led the group of children in silly songs and games. Every frail body we held had been sexually assaulted. Every pair of eyes we looked into had seen murder. Every limp hand in ours had been forced to do God knows what. I smiled through several hand-waving verses of “Father Abraham” all the while concentrating on not throwing up.

I came back from that trip having suffered no more than a few blisters and some sunburn. But I felt like my heart was carrying someone else’s scars. I remember kneeling to pray in a quiet prayer room somewhere on my Christian university campus. An air-conditioned place with soft lamp light and a small decorative fountain trickling somewhere in the background. And I felt paralyzed again. I had no words. For the first time in my life I felt in the presence of someone less … comfortable, than I had always known him to be. I was broken-hearted and enraged by the small sip of injustice and suffering I had tasted. The emotion that must well up inside the one I worshipped made me tremble. That trip was the catalyst for questions I had never asked before.

I have felt that way again this week.

I’m not entirely sure why. I don’t know if it just a delayed processing of our experiences and those of our friends in North Africa. I don’t know if motherhood is making me soft. I don’t know if praying for the heart of God is happening. And that terrifies me. What a dangerous thing to pray for…

I read the news from around the world, from some places so far away I can hardly imagine them and others frighteningly familiar, and my heart freezes. Syria. Italy. Somalia. The United States. Unspeakable suffering is happening around the world constantly. And if I let myself dwell on it, I just feel completely overwhelmed.

That lanky sad-eyed boy I married took a Trauma Healing training course last week. He received tools for helping people cope with trauma that we hope will be a blessing to many of the refugees we plan to work with soon. A couple nights ago, when I was pouring out my soul to him in the dark, hours after we had turned out the light he mentioned that questioning God’s goodness, God’s trust-worthiness is one of the biggest things people who have been through trauma wrestle with. And when he said that I burst into tears.

I don’t necessarily feel like those are my questions. They are not ones I have a right to. But there are people I love who do. So the questions are closer than they used to be. They are no longer cliché. For reasons I don’t fully understand they are the ones that make me cry.

Sometimes I feel like all I really have is metaphor. It’s how I understand the world. It’s often the only thing that really makes sense to me. It’s also the only thing I feel like I have to describe where I am, what I feel and believe. I told Bryan a couple nights ago that I feel like I am in a dark room, not scary dark, but comforting and safe. In the room is a carved piece of stone that I am holding onto. It is a part of a wall or a column maybe. I have been here in this room for a long time. I know every groove in the rock, every shape it traces under my hands. It is worn smooth from years of my touch. I know it well and I love it. But something has pushed me forward in the dark and as I reach out to steady myself, my hands have brushed against more rock and more carvings. With a thrill of fear and wonder I realize that the stone I have clung to in the dark is only a fraction of all that there is, only a part of a much bigger design. I feel new patterns and texture under my fingertips and I know it stretches on forever. I am realizing that the room is enormous, bigger than I ever dreamed it could be.

That’s where I am right now, gathering the courage to keep moving forward, not just to cling to the beauty I know, but to seek all that it is a part of.  

Mother's Day

Several people asked me on Sunday if this was my first Mother’s Day. I told them it wasn’t. Last year Annabelle was a couple weeks old and we all went out to eat a fancy meal in Nairobi after church. She was still wrinkled and blurry-eyed and I was still puffy and severely sleep-deprived. But in the pictures you can tell we are all so happy.

This Mother’s Day was only the second of what I hope will be years and years of celebrating. But I have to admit, this year was one for the books. If you know me at all you know I can hardly ever keep my own secrets to myself. And this space, though public, feels an awful lot like journaling to me sometimes. So I apologize if the following post strikes you as a little premature, a little too intimate, a little too much of me. If a big ol’ slice of the raw inside of my heart is not what you are looking for this morning, you should read something else.

On Sunday morning I sat down in my pajamas to a big cup of coffee. It had the perfect amount of thick vanilla cream swirled though (at least a third of the cup) and was steaming perfectly. Bryan was on the phone with his dad who had just called to wish him a happy birthday and Annabelle was playing with her singing teapot in the living room. I was just about to take a big delicious sip of my morning brew when a thought crossed my mind that made me pause. It was a highly unlikely thought. I came really close to shrugging it off and drinking my coffee down. But it left just enough residue of doubt in my mind, just enough “What if..” that I sat my warm mug down and went to the bathroom.  

I pulled out the box of “just-in-case” pregnancy tests and opened it without looking at the instructions. In my mind this was just a quick act to give me peace of mind. The ticket to another month of guilt-free caramel macchiatos and sushi. I gave the test a cursory glance – no sign of changes – and started to put on deodorant. I piddled around for a couple of minutes and then glanced back down at the test as I started out the door. When I saw that faint blue line I nearly passed out.  

Let me first just say this is exactly what I wanted to happen (sorta). Last time we did this I spent six months paying attention to every little twinge of my body, peeing on sticks and crying at disappointments. In a world where six months to wait for a baby is shamelessly misplaced emotion, I was a tad bit dramatic. And I didn’t want to do that this time. I wanted to be open to possibilities and free from anxiety. Whatever happens will happen in its own time. No great hopes or great fears. Just…whatever, whenever. Well, the first month we were ahem, “open to possibilities” whatever happens will happen happened.

I ushered Bryan into the bathroom mumbling something about needing a second opinion. He was grumbling thinking I was worried that some new dress made me look fat (as if that has ever happened). But when I showed him the test, he was quiet for a moment and then, to my intense relief and joy, he started laughing. Then he kissed me. How I love that man…

I am thrilled. Sobered perhaps by having children less than two years apart, but ridiculously happy. You can’t think of new life and not just be overwhelmed with joy! I am guarded. This is all still very early. I am not too naïve to realize that things could still happen. I feel a little guilty, though I know that’s silly. I have so many dear friends and family members I have who are struggling with waiting (we’re talking years, not months), trying, miscarriages, failed adoptions, and loss.    

Most of all I think I am just grateful. I can’t stop thinking “Thank you so much!” I feel like I have been given such a gift. One that I know I don’t deserve. There is something about bearing a miracle in your own body that is incredibly centering. The future is complicated, daunting and a bit overwhelming sometimes. But today I am a Mama. Today, by God’s Grace, I am a keeper of life whether by washing sticky fingers or taking a prenatal vitamin or praying for help to do it all well.

This Mother’s Day was not at all what I was expecting. But it held surprising joy. I am still reveling in the precious gift I have received.

Mother's Day 2011 

Mother's Day 2012

Farm

I am writing this from a wide brick house in the middle of a cotton field in West Texas. Well, I say cotton even though that won’t be growing outside for several months. Right now it's just a field. I see cows lumbering by in the dusty distance and a deep green machines resting on the side of the barn. A long sprinkler system stretches lanky metal arms across the field. Rabbits twitch in the back yard. When I sit out there in the afternoon, listening to wind chimes play in the background and feeling sharp grass underfoot, I feel happy someplace deep down that only smiles for very special occasions.

Though I’ve been coming to this house of my father’s oldest sister for as long as I can remember, I still know precious little about farming other than it can be stressful. This week alone my uncle has been hard at work plowing, mending fences, spraying weeds and swathing alfalfa so it will be ready for baling. The walls of the house are coated in decades of prayers for rain. And yet this farm has always been a haven of peace for me. I sit on the back porch swing and breathe in the smell of dirt and grass and cows, and muscles I didn’t even know were tight start to let go.

Yesterday I was driving to town and got hit by a dust-devil boiling across the road like it was a column of dirt leading a nation of tumble-weeds through the desert. It passed and I watched it trudge across the flatness towards the perfectly rounded horizon. I was surprised to realize in that moment how much like home this feels. Or a home, anyway. My Georgia-bred husband looks around and asks where all the trees are. He says he never knew people actually wore cowboy hats outside of October 31^st until he met my cousins. I look around and marvel at how safe this bizarrely barren world makes me feel. As though my own wandering body recognizes its birthplace.

I didn’t feel that way as a kid. But now, in a season of transience, I feel a thirst for roots that this place slakes. I am surprised by this feeling, but not unpleased. Perhaps in a life spent seeking out strangely beautiful pockets of the world, it is nice to know I have one of my own. In some ways equally unfamiliar, but a place to be from. We need those places. I need those places.   

Mouse

I am sooooo……sleeeeepy.

We didn’t sleep very well last night. Lately Bryan and I have gotten into a bad habit of starting into deep discussions about the direction of our lives around 10:15 at night. Our recently weaned one year old is newly insecure about the world and wakes up at six in the morning hollering for company. But the reason we didn’t sleep well last night has nothing to do with either of these things, and is in fact an altogether much smaller reason.

We have a mouse in our room.

I had seen suggestive evidence of such a creature in our room earlier this week but had brushed it off with a rather naïve hangover from my childhood: “It can’t be a mouse. This is America.” But of course last night, right after we had finally wrapped up our thoughts on facing the future with courage, I heard an unnerving scratching under the bed. I flipped on the lamp and sure enough, a brown ball of fuzz scurried under the bedside table.

I nearly had a heart attack.

   

We spent the next 30 minutes trying to whack it with shoe then scrounged up a trap out of the garage and planted it strategically on the floor in the corner, all the while terrified that Annabelle would somehow miraculously climb out of her crib in the night, open her closed door, walk into our room and step on the trap. I went back to bed cramped with the suspense of waiting for the trap to spring shut (Did it get my baby?) and deeply angry at the tiny rodent in our house. How dare a mouse come into my bedroom!

I have distinct memories of rodents in our house in North Africa that could carry this little guy here around in their mouths. One of the first nights there we were sleeping in a mud tukul when we heard the jaws-of-death trap that Bryan was always afraid would take his arm off every time he set it up snap shut with a crack like a gunshot on the other side of the room. We laid there in the dark for a moment and then recoiled in horror as we heard metal being dragged slowly across the cement floor. Another time, our cat Nimir brought a rat almost as big as he was into our living room and then let it go at the feet of our horrified American guests. The maimed animal scurried and bled all across our house with our sadistic cat chasing and batted at it while I uselessly ran after him trying to shoo them both outside. It was terrible. But on both of these occasions, and many others in between (I won’t mention the rat in the toilet incident), I remember laughing. Yes, of course, it was disgusting and irritating, but it didn’t really upset me. It just seemed to come with the territory. It was just part of the deal. But last night I was downright mad.

Expectations, I am learning, are everything. Realistic or otherwise, they have incredible power to shape your perspective. Expect a few rats and you get free entertainment. Expect a pristine home and you get a sleepless night and a headache the next morning.

I would do well to remember this. It seems like sometimes I forget that trying to live faithfully, to make a difference, to carve out a life of compassion, to try and live to our fullest human potential – whatever you want to call it, living well, is going to cost us sometimes. It will put us around a few rats from time to time, whether they are situations, or feelings, or people or…well, rats. But somehow knowing that going into it all helps me so much. They honestly don’t seem so bad when you know they are coming. In fact, sometimes their nasty little presence helps remind me that maybe I’m in the right place after all.

I’ve spent too much time being mad at mice lately. I’m ready to laugh at rats again.          

                                        (I'm sorry, I had to.)

Journal

I rarely go back and read journal entries from earlier seasons in my life though I have been filling up notebooks since I was nine years old. There are trunks of my daydreams, prayers and poor attempts at poetry scattered in attics and back-bedroom closets around the world. My best friend got a journal for a birthday and just like I refused to ever let him out-run, out-climb, out-karate me, (at least not without some competition) I wasn’t about to let a boy out-write me. I am pretty sure he gave it up after a day or two. He runs Ironmen for fun now while my skinny jeans have long-been relegated to the bottom drawer. But I’m still writing.

Of course, to be fair, long seasons of my life are represented only by blank pages. When I am my happiest I can’t seem to find time to write, or perhaps the need. Other than a few emails or stray blogs, I have no written account of my fist kiss, my wedding, the birth of my daughter. If you picked up my journals it would be easy to mistake me for depressed woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But then you would look up and see that there are long months, sometimes years between the dates.    

So I’m not sure why I started thumbing through my most recent journal the other day. But I did and stumbled over May 28^th of last year. We were sitting in Nairobi a few weeks after Annabelle’s birth, agonizing over whether we should return to our home in North Africa while rumors and reports of approaching conflict were spiraling out of control. And now almost exactly a year later, I am sitting in Dallas, TX as we listen to the rumbles of new war from a thousand miles away and wonder what this will mean for us and our future. A year ago I wrote…

I am remembering the day they found the landmine on our compound right now. I am remembering sitting on the porch while Bryan was out talking to the UN or something, and feeling a torrent of emotions. I remember writing that morning and using pen and paper to sort through my emotions, trying to identify each one and arrange them in some kind of order. I feel like that right now. I need to write in order to organize my emotions and give appropriate attention to each…

…I sit here with my baby on my lap and laugh for feeling so worked up about the most predictable thing in the world. I knew we were going to have a baby. I knew politics in S were going to get messy. And yet here I am pulling emotions off the shelf like I never knew I was going to need them. So how am I feeling?

Well, scared for one. The thought of covering Annabelle’s head while we lie in a ditch because the North is shelling K makes me sick to my stomach. All this new motherly instinct is coursing through my veins making me think, “Are you freaking out of your mind?” Coupled with the fear is a bit of guilt. Am I being unfair for taking my daughter into this mess? Am I a bad mother? Plenty of people would think so.

And then I’m feeling impatient. We’ve been away from S for so long. I feel so disconnected from people, language and daily life. I feel anxious to get back, to get involved, to catch up and plug back in. The thought of being delayed, even for the most legitimate reason imaginable makes me sad.

And then, to my shame, I feel excited. The thought of lying in a ditch covering Annabelle’s head because the North is shelling K makes me sick to my stomach – in a tingly sort of way. What an adventure. What a story to tell. This is the kind of life I have always dreamed of…

We did go back to North Africa a few days after I wrote those words. Months later we were on the last plane out, minutes before bombs fell on the dirt airstrip where we had just stood. Was going back wise? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. But those last days there were some that I can still feel the most vividly. The oppressive cloud of war that hung over all of us made each handshake, each sip of tea feel so present that even all this time later I can still taste them. I savor those rich memories.

Today I have felt myself pulling down those jars of emotions that we all knew we would need to use but that still somehow seem unexpected all over again. They are the same. Fear. Guilt. Impatience. Excitement. They are still exhausting. But in a world where none of us escape the weight of heavy things, I choose these. This is still the life I have always dreamed of.

I need to remind myself of this sometimes.