Author: Jackie Semmens

I’m excited to share that I have a piece up on Mamalode today. I usually find taking two kids to the grocery store something just short of terrifying, but usually there are one or two people there willing to help you out. I hope you check it out! 

She catches you staring, and smiles. “It gets easier,” she promises, looking bemused and relieved that her children no longer throw tantrums and wear diapers. You believe her, and hold on to that truth when moments later your toddler starts climbing on top of the car and your baby insists he wants to nurse right now and latches on while still seated in the cart. You wonder if she ever misses this; you wonder if you will.

The Women Who Smile at You at the Grocery Store on Mamalode. 

For the last four years, my body has not been my own. I have been its landlord, renting it out to temporary tenants who needed a place to start their lives. I have held babies in my belly as they grew and in my arms as they nursed, every day for the last four years. For nearly fifteen hundred days, I have awoken to the cry of someone thirsting for milk, or fallen asleep as they nestled next to the beating of my heart. I have been their first home.

When I was younger, I was neither particularly displeased nor pleased  with my body. I was, however, always most comfortable when the cool breeze of fall meant I could wrap myself in jeans and sweaters. I have never fully outgrown the feeling that I was all knees and elbows, topped with a mess of red hair. The exposure of that southern summers necessitated seemed to amplify this feeling. The freckles that danced on my pale Irish skin were emboldened by any hint of sunlight, and the shorts and sandals, to me at least, highlighted my awkward adolescent legs. I was always glad when Semptember, and long sleeves, returned.

Nowadays, I have little need, nor ability to cover myself. I often joke that there are few people in the state of Montana who haven’t see my breasts. I have nursed while hiking in the park, during Sunday mass, in the Capitol building before giving testimony, while the dentist cleaned my son’s teeth. Hiding my body now seems like a silly inconvenience. My legs have turned into a lap to be sat on, my hair has been twirled by sticky fingers, my freckled cheeks have been kissed by little lips. For the last four years, my body has been loved.

It is a funny thing, now that I consider my body as something to be useful, rather than something to be beautiful, it has become a bit more of both.

Spring is not the season of new life. It is the season of death.

I was reminded of this yesterday while I spent the day working in the garden. Rather than ushering new seedlings into being, I was elbow deep in the detritus that filled our yard. My husband removed an old cherry tree that had not survived winters before. I tore out weeds and the remains of the flowers we loved last year. We were surrounded by things that had once lived and died.

Every April, this truth is apparent.

I was a junior in college, eating lunch with a friend. She asked if I had heard the news, that someone had been shot that morning at the school where her fiancé attended. The school whose football team I had always rooted for, the one where nearly all of my high school friends attended, the one in the town where I had gone to church. While we spoke, bullets had already torn through bodies and through the community. Blood had flown and the tears did as well. They would not stop for days, for weeks, for lifetimes. It was enough to water all of the gardens that had been planted in only hope weeks before.

We parted and I called my mother to ask if she had heard the news. “Eight.” She said. “Eight people have been shot.” We hung up, and I began to cry. Standing in the middle of the student center, staring at the TVs that showed the news, listening to a reporter confirm one death and a possible second at the university in Blacksburg, I cried. People stopped to watch, turning from the TVs to me and back again. I tried to explain through the tears. A stranger stopped, and put her arm around me, offering me a tissue. She stood with me, watching as the news report changed, and the numbers on the screen began to tick upwards.

The bathroom offered sanctuary, and I collected myself in there, listening to another girl sob in the bathroom stall. She kept telling the person on the other end of the phone call she loved her. She came out, and we hugged as she told me her sister had been working on campus. Mine had been as well that day, I learned later that night.

A friend took me in, and we watched the news. Ten. Twenty two. Thirty. The numbers no longer mattered. I texted friends from home, learning one by one they were safe. Thirty two. My body shook until it hurt, until the pain felt good because it was real.

I waited for the list. It came, and I knew one of the names on it, a former classmate whom I had run into on campus the last time I was home a few months earlier. He had smiled and we chatted; he waved goodbye. My sisters knew others.

Mistakenly, I attended class the next day. The professor placed a test in front of me, a test I had forgotten about. I turned it in blank. I did not attend school for the rest of the week. For the rest of that spring, I sat in my own French class staring at the door, wondering what would happen if evil walked in.

A hometown should remain as it does in one’s childhood memories. Immune to new construction that draws its face unrecognizable. Immune to tragedies. When I drove home later that spring, it looked much the same, except there were more flowers this time. The flowers were strung into wreaths, laid against stones, resting by candles. The town shone with flowers.

Spring is not the season of new life. It is the season of struggle, of a battle between life and the force that continually attempts to conquer it.         

Now I live on the other side of the country, in a state where people know the school’s name because of football and because of the massacre, although they only ever mention the first. I live in mountains where the storms of winter do not cease in spring. Occasionally a cold and cruel snow will fall down, temporarily halting the birth of the world.

Life will eventually win, it is true. Life persists, it insists upon that. Eventually the tumult of April will pass and the world will bloom in full. The cycle will not end there, cold will come again and spring will eventually emerge victorious once more. Life struggles through pain. Children are born to the sound of their mother’s screams; flowers burst out of a land that once was frozen.

Pain never ends. Neither does life.

When you are young, and in love, you talk about yourself. How you like beer and hot wings, the sound of running water, taking naps outside, the treehouse you had growing up, the time your basketball team won the tournament, that your favorite books include Les Miserables and a Prayer for Owen Meany. You tell each other about the things, the food, the trips, the memories, the scars, that have made you.

When you are dating, and in love, you talk about big ideas. About politics, the problems and solutions which are ever changing the world. You play each other your favorite songs and tell each other why you love them. You aren’t talking about the songs. You talk about the problems with the NCAA and climate change. You stay up all hours of the night discussing what you believe in, the moon and stars circling above as you wonder aloud about the heavens.

When you have both agreed that you are, in fact, in love, you talk about the future. About traveling to Greece and Australia. You walk down the street and point out houses you would like to buy if you had more than ten dollars to your name. Green ones with large wooden pillars outside the front door and a porch with rocking chairs. You talk about careers and where you will hang your diploma after it’s framed. You check the forecast and talk about how you might be getting a cold and what basketball game is on tonight. You ask each other how many bedrooms that green house you walked by once has and if there would be children to fill it, and if so, how many.

When the future has arrived, and you are still in love, you talk about your day. About how work was, and whether or not you are out of milk. You talk about deductibles and humidifiers. You wonder where your child learned the phrase poopy head. You talk about how lucky you are and whose turn it is to sweep the kitchen. One of you reminds each other about the lunar eclipse tonight. You ask could you please turn the volume up on the TV as you snuggle in closer. You talk about fears and what you would like for dinner. You describe the way your kid smiles in more detail than is necessary.

You still talk about the other things too, the big ideas and the future. When you are out on dates, kids tucked safely into bed while grandparents watch them, you talk about politics and trips to Argentina, how you still need to get your diplomas framed and the books you are reading.

But you no longer talk about yourself as much. There is no need. You are known. You are loved.

1. Conquer the mountain of laundry.
2. Wonder if there is a way to keep clothes permanently clean.
3. Research disposable children’s clothing.
4. Step on a minimum of two hot wheels and/or Legos.
5. Plan interesting educational sensory activities for children.
6. Decide said children really need more alone time to develop independence. Spend next thirty minutes trying to evade them while getting dressed.
7. Spend next twenty minutes cleaning up alone time induced messes.
8. Take children on a walk. Spend ten minutes packing up various snacks and drinks for them on the walk, even though you will be the only one exercising.
9. Read at least three parenting articles that will make you feel guilty about your parenting.
10. Feel guilty that you spend so much time feeling guilty.
11. Create a sub to-do list of things you will accomplish during children’s naptime: mopping floors, folding laundry, finish that book, send e-mails.
12. Feed children lunch, put them down for their naps.
13. Collapse in a heap of exhaustion on couch and wonder how you ever thought you were going to get something done during naptime.
14. FaceTime with your mother when one child wakes up early from his nap. Marvel at how she raised three successful daughters.
15. Forget to tell her. Complain about amount of laundry instead.
16. Explain the rotation of the earth and inner workings of the solar system to an inquisitive three year old who asked why it is daytime. Realize he just meant why is daddy not home yet.
17. Mentally spend tax return on new spring wardrobe.
18. Remember that you have yet to file tax return. Think that maybe you should do that during naptime tomorrow. Realize that would jinx said naptime, ensuring no one sleeps. Mentally return spring wardrobe to the store.
19. Show off your latest acquired skill: reading children’s books with your eyes closed.
20. Remind children of house rules: Tackle gently. Ask before tackling. No tackling from behind. If he’s crying, no more tackling. Okay, no more tackling. Please stop tackling. I’m serious NO TACKLING.
21. Decide you want spaghetti for dinner.
22. Check the pantry for spaghetti.
23. Check the cupboard for spaghetti.
24. Check the pantry for spaghetti.
25. Realize husband could pick it up on way home from work. Debate which you want more: spaghetti for dinner, or your husband to come home twenty minutes sooner.
26. Decide eggs for dinner sounds just fine.
27. Brag to Facebook that you managed to cross every item off of your to-do list today. Bask in success.