Author: Jackie Semmens

My youngest son is the quintessential baby. The kind that makes your ovaries hurt just looking at his smile. The smile that bursts through his plump cheeks. Cheeks that are dimpled, just like his round knees. His head is covered in ringlet curls that make me occasionally wish we had named his something like Gabriel to fit his cherub-esque appearance. He is chubby; he is friendly; he is darling. If his sleeping skills weren’t on par with that of an insomniac who had just consumed ten cups of coffee and then went to a rave, he would be the baby that soon-to-be parents picture when they close their eyes.

He is as outgoing as he is cute. In the grocery store, he will yell, “Hi! Hi! Hi!” to every passerby, growing only louder if they ignore his first greeting. The older women, the ones who have seen their children have children, and their grandchildren as well, melt at the sight of it. “He said hi to me!” they beam, touching my arm and placing their hand over their heart as they walk past. The men in dirty Carhartts, picking up a six pack on their way home from work, are always slower on the uptake, but never fail to return a hello, as by this point he is bouncing up and down and waving both arms in an effort to elicit a smile.

In any crowd, he has learned how to command attention through cuteness. He holds court, gathering his subjects around and bestowing kisses and high fives to any who are willing to offer him a smile. I stand nearby, a proud mama, thinking how my children are assuredly the cutest and most wonderful, and knowing every parent has the same thought. Not that these moments aren’t countered by wondering if I have bred the worst sleepers on the face of the earth, or if it was possible my children have a hidden stash of Jolt Soda somewhere in the house that could account for their unstoppable energy. In addition to wondering why this is all so hard, and if I am doing any of it right. But these moments of perfect sweetness I wish I could concentrate and bottle and save for a time when I am the old woman in a grocery store, waving at strangers’ babies.

I might need it sooner than that. I know that my perfect boys will turn into teenagers, with heads that smell like Axe hair gel, and not the legendary newborn scent. They will no longer be innocent angels with adoring crowds. I know this because I have seen baby pictures of myself, and can attest that three year old me with chubby cheeks and curly hair was significantly cuter with more fans, than thirteen year old me, who sported braces, glasses and some really unfortunate bangs.

I worry that as they grow, the world will forget the sweet babies with the darling smiles that I know was their beginning. I know this will happen, because when I look at the jerk who rolled his eyes at me in the grocery store or the cold faces staring back at me on the evening news, I do not see babies who once gave their mothers their first smile. I do not see chubby cheeks or tiny fingers that wrapped around their father’s littlest finger.

Growing up is an involuntary bite out of Eden’s apple, trading the innocence of youth for the heavy and beautiful reality of life. I might dread their growth, but I never regret it. The newborn smell is gone, but it is replaced first steps, first words, and other amazing milestones. They are becoming who they are. They will grow into a greater existence, but one not without flaws.

Their baby years are forever etched in my own memory, and I wish I could implore the world to always see them as they once were. When they are gangly, surly teenagers, or adults who make grievous mistakes. They will not always be the babies who can win favor by simply smiling and blowing kisses. Now they are loved and appreciated so easily, but their value will not change.

It has not changed for any of us.

The first Christmas I spent away from home I was working at a homeless shelter, and spending more time than I am proud of feeling sorry for myself. I was far away from family, my housemates were also working, the weather was dreary and I spent the afternoon alone. And not the kind of alone spent wrapped in a warm blanket, drinking tea and contemplating the wonders of the universe. I was alone, and lonely.

The next I spent with my in-laws, awkwardly adjusting to holiday traditions that were familiar, but not quite my own.

The third Christmas away from my family, I pushed myself back from the table, my swollen belly rivaling that of St. Nick’s. That year, the last twelve days of my pregnancy aligned with the twelve days of Christmas. I spent more time than I am proud of wondering why Mary got to have her baby already and mine was still nestled snug in his bed.

Now, I am away from the home I grew up in, but spending Christmas in my own home. It is an awkward transition. Christmas is no longer a time of reliving memories, telling stories, doing things just as we have done before. What little “before” we have is still fresh, the ink not yet dried on the family journals. I long to recreate the Christmas Eves of my childhood – eating shrimp scampi by candlelight, opening gifts from the siblings, curling our hair and dressing in fancy dresses before heading into the chilly night to light candles and sing Silent Night in a small brick church. It won’t be the same, and I know that. The schedules of young children create necessary adjustments, the allergies that plague our family change the menu. The goal of Christmas Eve tonight will not be creating a perfect evening, but getting the kids through mass with as few tears and possible and to bed because Santa still has some toy assembly to do in his workshop.

Our meager collection of ornaments on the Christmas tree in our living room is growing slowly each year. There is the collection of handmade ones from the year with the swollen belly when my husband and I couldn’t afford to buy real ones. There are baby’s first Christmas ones being added, and ones exchanged on Christmas Eve.

Decorating the tree as growing up, I would unwrap each ornament, and remember the story I had heard behind it. The one my sister made in preschool. The one I painted in third grade.  The one my mom was given in nursing school. The ones my grandmother had brought with her when she moved in. Hanging them on the tree, we were crafting a story, each ornament a paragraph in the tale of our family.

I do not have the same sentimentality for the ones on our tree. They are too new, none are missing parts, and the only ones that have gotten broken are the unbreakable ones I purchased from Target. Our family is just beginning its story, still in the opening paragraphs. The freshness can feel momentous and exciting, but it is also raw. It is the leaving behind of the worlds we have come from, with the edict to create anew, while still weaving in the memories of the past.

My boys do not remember last Christmas. And next year, it is likely they won’t remember this one. I am thankful for the grace in that, to give us time to adjust to the transition of becoming parents. I wonder which ornaments on our tree now will become their favorites, which traditions we are creating now will become their own.

I will eventually lose count of the Christmases spent away from home, until home begins to mean the place where my children have grown up.

Snowflakes are lucky creatures. Except the ones that fall in the midst of blackest night, rarely do they land without being greeted by the cheers of young children. Snow and children were created for one another. I can appreciate the transformative beauty of a snow fall – the trees draped in heavy white sweaters, the earth smoothed over and imperfections forgiven, the small birds with black heads highlighted against the cool white. But to children, the transformation is more than  visual, it is an invitation for exploration, discovery, and movement. It is a gift of joy.

I watch as my oldest child roams through the snow, our simple front yard now holding his attention much longer than it would have had it been bare. His joy is palpable as he throws his body down onto the soft drifts, his smile reverberating through the trees, shaking more snow down on top of his sweet head. I wonder when I lost the joy of simply moving through and dancing in snow, when the idea of skiing, snowshoeing and other sports became more enticing than simply playing. I briefly consider throwing myself down as well, then remember that six inches of snow provides much more ample cushion for someone 36 inches tall than it does for someone five foot six.

My children beg for movement just as I long for stillness. An opportunity to sit, to rest, to enjoy the quiet snowfall. I wonder if the Saint Paul had thought about this when he advised his readers of the sins of the flesh. Now, in a perpetual state of parental exhaustion, the classic temptations of drunkenness and debauchery are less seductive to me than my couch. After the good nights are said and bedroom doors are shut, the couch calls, enticing me with Netflix sitcoms and other delicious evils. Laundry goes unfolded, and the guilt piles up next to it. Creative projects go unfinished, and the list of what I would like to do, had I only the time, or rather, the energy, grows longer.

Guilt might be an overstatement. I fully believe that a certain amount of Friends reruns and popcorn are not only forgivable, but I would postulate, good for the soul. It is not this that nags at me. It is the question of when I lost the joy of playing in the snow. When challenges were to be danced through, not avoided.

This year, my children have begun to take an interest in Christmas carols. Silent Night, of course, is an old favorite, and on snowy mornings, the house hums with the images of a peaceful woman and a sleeping child. After becoming a mother, the song always brings a wry smile to my face. There was no silent night. There were tears, there was screaming pain, there was blood. There was a man, who doubtlessly did not understand the delicate process of childbirth, whose feet ached and body begged for sleep. There was a baby, beautiful yet raw, and certainly not silent.

And still there was peace. Within the noise, the fear, the confusion, the joy, there was peace. It is the peace rather than the rest that makes the best fodder for songs, but the peace was born from the wild.

Perhaps I have it wrong. My search for a little peace should not come from the quiet still moments at the end of the day, although I will not stop treasuring those. The peace is in the midst of the wild energy that swirls through my boys. They look at the softly falling snow and see nothing but a blank canvas for adventure. I look at them, and see the peace of living with wild abandon.

It was a few days before Christmas, and I was working at the front desk of a transitional housing facility, a home for families regaining their footing after a stint of homelessness. It was the weekend, and the place was quiet. I answered a few misguided phone calls of people looking for an animal shelter. A mom came in to see if we had any band-aids for her daughter. The snow fell silently outside, and I listened to Christmas carols on a scratchy radio.

And then a man walked in. He was tall, wearing a large black coat, but his voice was quiet, apologetic. I knew what he was going to ask. “Is there anywhere here we can stay here? We don’t have a place to go.” I looked out the window. A woman sat in the front seat of the car, holding a baby wrapped in pink blankets. The snow kept falling.

I tried weakly to explain that we didn’t have any emergency shelter, that prospective residents had to fill out an application. I reluctantly informed him there were, in fact, no shelters in town took children and families. He looked down. He knew this already, but they had nothing else to do that day but try.

His “thank you” was unbearable, and my throat closed as they drove away. I was the innkeeper, and there was no room for them.

Years have passed. Now different children seek refuge from me. They bury runny noses between my legs and look up at me, begging for another cracker, for me to read them a story, for just a moment with their mother. I turn them down. There are dishes to clean, floors to sweep, e-mails to answer. There are blessed moments when I can turn the legs they have been clinging to into a lap, a place for them to land. It is in these moments that they quickly remember there is a toy on the other side of the room that has not been played with yet today, and scamper away. They do not need me as much as they need to know I am there. I occasionally wonder, when the day concludes, if there were enough “yesses” to make up for the multitude of “not right nows.”

It’s Christmastime again now, and the news is covered in images of children and families staring out across a sea, wondering if they will ever be enough for a country that won’t accept them. A country that says there is no room, because the words they pray are in a language unfamiliar, because the holidays they celebrate fall on a different day.

I still wonder about that family in search of shelter. I wonder if they found a church that had enough money to put them in a hotel for a few nights. Or if they spent the night in the car, turning the engine on for a few minutes at a time in an effort to stay warm. And I wonder about the answers I gave them. Was it enough? Did I do enough?

I know the answers to that question. The social work answer reminds me that there are limits to our ability to help. The sociological answer places the blame with structural oppression. The theological answer begins to sermonize that “enough” is only born of grace.

There are answers, but even with them, the question remains. Is it enough?

The real answer, of course, is to a different question. It matters less what I do than what is done. Whether or not I was able to help is of less consequence than if the family was able to find a warm place to sleep, a home to rest in.

But what I can do is be a home for two wild, cookie crumb covered children. To find their missing loveys and wipe tears. To feed them, to teach them, to love them. They are the part of the world to which I can grant harbor. I know it is not enough, that there is more the world needs. The answers and the questions do not always agree.

The land is laid bare.

The earth is cast in silver, and snow stays behind curtains of clouds, awaiting its cue to come and create the world anew. Trees display their stark branches, no ornaments or robes to hide behind. Waving grasses have slowed their dance and flowers have ceased their song. The world is quiet and dark and honest.

Today is the day of our imperfections.

Today, we have no pretense. We hope for no certain weather to adorn the view from our windows, we need no gifts to replace our words. We make foolhardy attempts at excellence and laugh as we fall gloriously short. We know that no one had ever made the perfect pie crust, except for in the fictional world of our memories. We know our turkey will be too dry, and our stuffing too wet. Our football team will lose and someone else will eat the last piece of pumpkin pie. Our great aunt will voice an unfavorable opinion that causes the rest of us to avert our eyes while we sip our wine. Today, we relish our imperfections and rest in the grace of our honesty.

In house after house, bread is broken. Families gather. Unapologetic grandfathers will give babies their first tastes of pumpkin pies. Dinners will be left uneaten on cold hospital trays, and men and women will stand in line in shelters, scooping mashed potatoes from large, steaming bowls. Chairs that should be filled will sit empty, surrounded by loved ones with heavy hearts. Announcements will be shared of new lives beginning, and crackly phone calls will be made, the words traversing the country, flying over the heads of people eating their supper. I love you. I miss you.

Like bread, we are broken and shared.

Our gratitude grows out of our imperfections, not inspite of it. The realization of our failures makes us cherish our triumphs. Our losses implore us to hold tight our gains. We are thankful for our blessings, for the trials we have been spared, and for the ones that we have been given.

The earth rests, naked in its honesty. The colors have long faded, and the wind is all that moves. And we are grateful for the air in our lungs.

I come from oak trees and apple butter. I come from a land of blue rolling mountains, weighed down by the weight of generations. A world where grand abandoned farmhouses dot the hillsides, and red brick churches line the roads.

I come from the Appalachians.

Growing up, my sisters and I swung on grape vines in the forest that grew wild behind our house, fruitlessly dared each other to explore dark caves, and sledded down the neighbors’ hill when they weren’t home. My mother pointed out magnolia leaves that had dried into tight rolls and told us that is where the fairies slept, and we collected acorn hats for elves to use as bowls. When black walnut trees took over the land near the road, my Nana and I cracked their hard green shells and baked black walnut blondies. We were the only two  in our family who enjoyed their sweet bitterness, and we held that in common.

Winters were mercifully short yet snow filled. When the blizzard of ’93 hit, we danced for joy; it only took one glance out of the window to realize school would be out for weeks. We piled on layers of socks and undergarments, threw on pink snow suits, and ran outside to dig, sled, and play for hours. We bounced back, sopping wet, and ate Campbell’s soup and saltine crackers while we waited for our noses to thaw. When our power went out, my parents drove us to our grandparents in North Carolina. A week later we returned to find our house still dark and ice cold, and so my father lit a fire in the living room where we slept, huddled together in sleeping bags. The electricity came on the next morning, in a surge that burnt my neighbor’s trailer down. The firetrucks stood watch helplessly, the water frozen in their hoses, and no fire hydrants for miles.

Appalachian summers stretched long and gloriously, filled with fairs to attend. We would buy jars of homemade jam and fairy crowns, and in election years, seek out every candidate’s booth for the free balloons and popcorn. Quieter summer days were reserved for running through sprinklers until we were matted in grass clippings and making Kool-aid on the deck. Once every summer, twice in good years, we would pick blueberries at a local farm; the sound of the plunking berries falling into my coffee can is one etched permanently into my memory.

In the fall, the hills were ablaze with the fire of maples, oaks, and sassafras showing off their true selves. Pumpkin butter topped toast, and we bobbed for apples at the church’s Halloween party.

Of course, no time or place is as perfect as the picture memory creates. A struggling economy plagued the hills and brought the expected problems along with it – poverty, drug abuse, and the like. As I grew, I longed to leave. I pictured the hills replaced by skyscrapers and envisioned myself surrounded by culture and diversity, eating at restaurants where I couldn’t pronounce the names of the dishes I ordered, walking streets where I found new discoveries instead of familiar faces.

It is one thing to realize you love the place you are from. It is another to realize you love it only after you have already left.

Every time I go home, I realize I have traveled a little further away. The streets are slightly less familiar, and the faces are growing older or moving away. One summer visit home, I was surprised to learn my toddlers were scared of the cricket’s endless song and the call of the coal train, sounds that had comforted me when I couldn’t fall asleep on hot summer nights. They are growing up in a different world, and their home is not my home.

I will cook the boys apple butter, and teach them about the oak trees that do not grow on this side of the country. I do not regret my decision to leave, having found a home and grown a family in a different range of a mountains.

When my oldest boy developed croup, the raking cough that torments young children in their sleep and is best treated by cold night air, on our last night visiting home, I wrapped him in warm blankets and sat outside with his Papa on their patio. His crying ceased instantly when he saw the stars stretching over us. “Stars!” he hoarsely called out. I had missed the Virginia stars, so easily found in the quiet darkness of our empty hillsides, and forgotten how stunning they were.  He is little, and will not remember the stars, just as I did not remember, just as none of us can remember the homes of our youth with perfect impartiality. We filter out the trivial and the painful, making room instead for pails full of blueberries and star filled summer nights, oak trees and apple butter.

Today, there was a coffee pot in my youngest’s crib, and a box of tampons in my living room. I agreed to the current placement of neither of those things. There were crumbs in my couch and stains on my carpet. I did not consent to those either.

Today, it was cold and we played outside while wind swept through down jackets and wool mittens. I wondered if I could survive another Montana winter and researched base layers for toddlers. I thought about skiing and wondered if the kids would enjoy following behind in a sled, blankets tucked next to rosy cheeks.

I watched the boys play with friends and wondered how I was doing. Were they kind enough? Did I yell too much? I thought about my husband’s cousin who met his future wife before he had even learned all his letters, and I wondered who would be the friends that stay in my children’s lives forever, and who would move  along with the winds of time.

Today, I discussed the plot holes of a book with my husband, debating why a frog would be driving an already anthropomorphized  truck. I played paleontologist. I made bread. I ate the bread with excessive amounts of butter, like I always do. I forgot to feed the kids a single vegetable.

Today, the tiredness ached through my body and  I wondered when it will get easier. I thought of the mothers fleeing Syria and wondered what right I have to feel tired at all.

I folded two baskets of laundry and watched half an episode of a show I don’t really like before my little one needed to be rocked back to sleep in the middle of nap time. He dozed on me and I scrolled through the Internet, wondering how I could teach my children to be more than kind – to be just. I cried over the anger, hate, and fear I saw poured out towards people who needed love. I put the laundry away.

Today, I listened to the steady heartbeat of our rocking chair as my husband convinced the little one to sleep. I thought of my oldest asking his brother, “are you okay?” every time he cried and thought of the little one’s subsequent squeals of laughter, and I wondered how I could be so lucky.

Today was neither a good day nor a bad day. It was another day of mess, of tears, of joy, of frustration, of fun. Today was a day just to be.

Today, we were simply and magnificently alive.

It is the mothers who never stop crying.

The tears flow from one generation into the next and bleed new life into being. Hopes and dreams, gratitudes and fears pour from mothers’ eyes, gracing milk covered cheeks. First steps are taken and drops of love and pride wet the footsteps left behind.

The mothers stand on both sides of the river holding babes in arms and in hearts. Prayers stream out. Be safe. Grow strong. Do not be killed. Do not kill. The tears fall more urgently for some.

It is the mothers who never stop crying.

It is the mothers who rock their little ones, wondering, “what if it had been mine?” Their tears water the flowers that burst up from the graves. Their tears salt the oceans that wash ashore on foreign lands.

The tears are the same, though the faces unfamiliar and unlike our own. It is the universal language of motherhood, spoken with the eyes. In every land, scraped knee children press their tear stroked cheeks into their mothers’ chests. The tears are absorbed and released at graduations and weddings, bedsides and hospitals.

It is the mothers who never stop crying.

Mothers hide the tears that fall silently in the footprints of children walking continents to safety. They hide the tears as sons and daughters go off to school and off to war. The tears stream down, carving new and greater caverns to cross.

It is the mothers who never stop crying.

The rivers flow to far reaches and past every end. They preside over death and life, hope and fear. They are our prayers without words. The tears form an ocean, and the mothers beg us to lay deep an anchor and calm the storm.

It is the the mothers who never stop crying.

It is their tears that flow through us all.

“Bless us, O Lord.”

His eyes are bright and smiling, staring directly at me. Hands are clasped together, and held high in front of him. Dinner sits hot in front of us, the steam rising along with our prayer. Heads are not bowed, eyes are not closed. Instead they stare at the little ones. One says the words, the other bobs his head along to the rhythm.

“And these thy gifts,”

He speaks slowly and carefully, in a way I do not. I pray while motioning for my husband to grab the ketchup. I pray while falling asleep. I pray when I stare at their sleeping faces, unable to conjure words and pleading hope instead. I have said these words ten thousand times, over holiday feasts and bowls of ramen noodles. I have said them awkwardly in restaurants; I have said them with my mouth full of food.

I am not sure if he knows what we are doing. Why we gather nightly to speak some words in concert, but he knows that we do. The rhythm of the words beats inside of him. Understanding is not necessary.

“Which we are about to receive,”

I wonder if it is possible to be thankful for something you’ve never been without. This table has never lacked food, the way so many others have. It has never lacked companions or warmth. It has been covered in bills that were able to be paid. We have never been without, and I know our gratitude is inadequate. His mouth wraps around adult words he does not understand. Mine does as well.

“From thy bounty,”

My youngest now says “pray!” whenever he sees food he wants to eat. He asks, and he receives. He one day will learn that he doesn’t need to pray in order to eat, and that there are those who pray and still go without.

The blessings we have been given are not for us to keep. The gifts which grace our table are not here to remain.

“Through Christ, our Lord,”

The oldest spreads his hands wide,  prepared to clap when we say “Amen.” It is how he first learned to pray. As a baby, he saw us hold our hands together and assumed we were clapping. He now says the words, most of the words, at something close to their actual pronunciation. Next will come the understanding of the words. And then the forgetting of the meaning, as the mundane rhythm of daily life drowns it out.

And then the remembering.

The boys smile and bounce in their chairs, proud of the task they have just finished. The words are the easy part, I long to tell them. It is the living that will be harder for me to teach you.

The room is warm as we pass the bread around. They will learn eventually, I think. Here is where it will start.

“Amen.”

I’m trapped. I’m being held hostage.

My captor is twenty four pounds, covered in snot, and will only sleep if being held upright. For the last three days. His snores sound like the bubbling of primordial ooze and gunk flows out of every orifice.

He’s captivating.

I think I’m developing Stockholm Syndrome.

I stare out the window and wonder what I would be doing today if I hadn’t had kids yet. Sleeping still, or just laying in bed with the quilts pulled around me, wondering what the day would bring. I know what this day will bring. The first day of a baby’s cold is for pinning organic chicken soup recipes and researching the best essential oils for toddlers. The third day is for only consuming things that come out of a box and can be eaten by the handful.

I can hear his older brother coughing in the next room. I’m not sure why I have been insistent on wiping down the bathrooms and washing our hands over the last few days when germs can be directly applied to the face by a little one’s sneeze. The cold settles into my chest as well and burns my throat. I hold my breath, not daring to cough. The little one coughs in concert with his brother. He sounds like a seal. A seal that has been smoking for the last twenty years.

We sit in the chair, rocking, rocking, rocking. He alternates sucking on his pacifier and taking it out to breathe. I pray that he falls soundly enough asleep so that I can move, take a shower, eat. Eventually, he does. I don’t move. I stare at his gunky nose, feel his warmth, stroke his curls, appreciate his rare stillness.

After a while, we enter into hostage negotiations. My captor agreed to release one hostage, but only in exchange for another. He snuggles into my husband’s chest, rocking, rocking, rocking.

I am free.

I peek back through the door at them. They sit there rocking, snuggled in a noisy heap, a mix of sweatpants and applesauce encrusted curls. I am captivated.