Author: Jackie Semmens

It’s another hot night, and I lay on the couch praying that my children will soon fall asleep. The windows are open and in blows a breeze, a welcome respite from the air that has baked inside of our house all day.

The wind carries in the neighborhood noise. Babies’ tired cries float out from their nurseries, cars stall, hammers pound. I can smell hamburgers on the grill, and hear the radio play as someone fiddles around in their garage.

We flow in and out of each other’s houses, leaving the briefest impressions and slipping away silently. This is summer, and in summer, you are never alone.

***

I open the box and follow the directions. Three minutes later, I see the lines. Two lines. And on the next test, and the one I take later that afternoon, and the one that I do a week later just for the hell of it. Two lines. One for each healthy baby I have carried. One for each week I would remain pregnant.

***

The night before it all happens, we sit on our deck eating pasta with peas. We had planted the small round seeds in the dirt months earlier and waited patiently to see if they would become anything. The early heat of summer had begun to wear on the delicate plants and they started to wilt, and so we had picked enough for one meal before they turned completely brown. We eat our pasta primavera that night, chasing the small green peas around the plates with our forks, my husband and I stealing glances with secret smiles while the boys wave at our neighbors moving in next door.

***

The ER is cold. I walk in, fighting back tears as I wonder if there is any reason for me to be there at all. I know what is happening, what is going to happen. I picture the bill going up higher every time I hear a tech open a new packet of sanitized medical supplies, and hear my husband’s voice telling me not to worry about the cost. His voice is in my head, that is, as he is home with the children, texting me for updates.

A nurse walks in, rubbing her hands with hand sanitizer. “So,” she asks energetically, “Any chance you might be pregnant?”

I think of how warm it was the day we were at the playground, waiting for my husband to meet me on his lunch break. “I know you’re busy,” I had texted him. “But can’t you just sneak away for twenty minutes? We’re at the playground across the street from you.” Finally he acquiesced, agreeing  to meet us. I stood there in the heat, waiting, pushing sunglasses back on to my children’s sweaty faces and looking for his car to pull into the parking lot.

“I have a present for you,” I said, grinning, as soon as he walked up. “I think I know what it is,” he replied with a smile.

***

“I’ll be right back,” I tell my husband, “just have to run to the bathroom.” The boys keep playing in the creek, splashing, not registering that I had left.

There it is. Red. An ending before a beginning. A misuse of punctuation.

I hurry back to the spot where we had been playing and whisper to my husband. We keep our faces straight as we tell the children playtime is over, it is time to pack up and go home.

My oldest starts wailing instantly. “But you said we could stay here and play! You said we could play!” he cries as we walk back to the car. “I know, honey, I’m so sorry,” I say over and over again.

Promises easily made are easily broken.

***

Two weeks is not long enough to think of a name, to know if it is a boy or a girl, but it is long enough. It is long enough to have nicknames, and plenty of time to picture a baby born in late winter, snuggling with us as the snow melted and giggling on blankets in the early summer sun. It is long enough to love.

The shortness of the pregnancy is its blessing and curse. I did not have to lose a baby whose heart I had gotten to hear beat, whose feet I had been able to feel kick. The only thing I ever knew about it was that it was there.

***

I am sick in bed, morning sickness overwhelming me. My husband is in the bathroom washing the children up before bedtime, and my oldest peppers him with questions.

“What is the hardest thing in the whole wild world?” he asks.

“To love someone,” I think to myself.

“Diamond,” my husband answers.

***

I know that it is still summer, and outside my bedroom I can hear the world. The crows and magpies fight in their mock street gang style and my neighbors fire up the grill and drink beers on their porch. The sound of my children’s laughter floats out of the house. They walk quietly around me, offering hugs and telling me they hope my tummy feels better soon, smiling back at their dad, proud of their own good behavior.

In a few months, when this summer fades, we will shut our windows and retreat into our cabins once again. But now we are here together, almost touching. I close my eyes and listen to the hot wind bringing in the noises of the world. It is not the connection I want, only the one I have.

***

I was pregnant, and now I’m not.

Today I’m excited to share I have an article on BonBon Break about the importance of taking your kids on microadventures! I hope you check it out!

When having kids made our family budget and free time shrink to never before seen lows, my husband and I realized it was time to pack up dreams of vacations of travelling and start embracing the microadventure. By definition, the microadventure is a short trip into nature – going on a day hike rather than walking the Camino de Santiago, for example. Calling these activities “microadventures” is mainly just a turn of phrase, but thinking of our simple outings as mini expeditions has given me a new perspective. Even in our hometown, we can find plenty of opportunities for learning, excitement, and fun.

Read the whole article here!

A man once asked Jesus, “What should I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus replied, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

But because he wished to justify himself in front of his social media  followers, he said to Jesus,

“Who exactly is my neighbor?” 

Jesus replied,

“A black man fell victim to vigilantes as he drove home from his minimum wage job after dark one night. They stripped and beat him and left him for dead. 

A businessman happened to be driving behind him down that road. When he saw him, he pulled out his phone and tweeted, “#AllLivesMatter,” and continued on his way. 

Likewise a young woman drove past the scene, and turned to her friend saying, “He should have complied.” Nodding, her friend continued, “He shouldn’t have been working late, he shouldn’t have been poor, and he shouldn’t have been black.” 

But a homeless man, perhaps knowing what it felt like to be left behind, abused, unwanted, hated and unloved, came upon him and was moved with compassion. 

He approached the victim, held his head and sang him songs. 

And then he did the most important act of all – he believed the young man when he said that he was in pain. He listened when he said he was hurting. 

“Which of these three,” Jesus asked  “in your opinion, was neighbor to the vigilantes’ victim?” 

He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.” 

Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise. Even if it is inconvenient, do likewise. Whether or not you want to, do likewise. Even if it makes you somewhat uncomfortable, challenges your beliefs, and takes the better part of your day – do likewise.”

Today I am excited to have an article about a topic that’s near and dear to my heart up on Parent.co. The way we view caregivers like stay at home moms has big consequences for all parents, especially working parents. 

“Raising children is not a second class form of work, a workplace inconvenience, or simply a personal undertaking.”

It’s about time for policy to stop treating it that way.
Read more about the 6 Ways American Policies Undermine Equality and Fail Parents. 

You do not complete me.

We are not two halves that make a whole. We are two whole beings which have moved independently, and then, toward each other. And you and I, two wholes, have merged, become enmeshed until something greater has formed. We are not simply a puzzle with the last piece satisfyingly clicked into a place. We have now become a force, moving together.

Life has come into, and out of, this simple coupling of two beings who had agreed to love and continue together. Pieces of us have been taken apart, rearranged, and put back together into miniature faces that look vaguely familiar but unlike our own. But the strands of DNA which have been pulled out of our bodies and given to a new life are only a small piece of what has now been created. Overused words such as love and family are not adequate descriptors because we use them blithely without regard for the power implicit in their meaning.

We have created an us.

There is, of course, still a me, and a you, but now there is an us. An invisible thread has painfully, lovingly sewn us, all of us, together into one.

Threads break. They catch and snare; they wear thin when no one is looking. One person holds tight to the end of the line while another slips away, to another life, to another world. But we remain in formation, even as the mold cracks away, choosing to hold tight even when nothing binds us together.

You do not complete me. Together, we complete something more.

They say that when you write,
You should not use the world beautiful
Because they will not know what you mean.

I hope you know that when I call you beautiful,
I do not mean the curvature of your brow, the color of your eyes or the fall of your hair.
I mean that I do not know you.

It has also been said that love at first sight does not exist,
Because its basis is in appearance
Rather than acquaintance.

But I have fallen in love with you,
A brand new soul that no one has yet to understand.
I am in love with your mystery.

And so my wish for you is thus:
May you never grow accustomed to beauty,
But always marvel when you come upon it.

From where I am sitting today, on a hillside above the coast, the ocean appears to be a beacon of peace. Wide, calming, and deep. I could stare at it for hours, marveling at its vast steadfastness, letting its peace wash over my soul. 

But as anyone who has spent time sailing the seas can tell you, this would be a false metaphor, an incomplete characterization. The ocean’s waves can wail and batter, churning with discontent and power. Its sandy shores are the pummeled remains of rocks that have not survived its strength. The reality, viewed up close, is a complex force rather than a peaceful vista. 

I suspect it is the same for the lucky few astronauts who have viewed our home from a seat in the sky. Our discontents, wars, anger, poverty, fears and boundaries appear invisible under the blue planet’s swirling clouds. The cries of the men and women who were murdered in Orlando on Sunday would not have escaped the atmosphere. 

In times such as these, the weight of a churning world can feel too much to bear. The atrocities that surround us are numerous – people are hated and killed for simply loving, weapons of war are held by citizens who aim to kill, and refugees are forced to wait helplessly on foreign shores because they call their God by a different name. Poverty concentrates in communities of color, women can’t walk streets alone, and children live under the reign of terror. These realities tempt my soul to anger, fear, and occasionally hate. 

I subscribe to an faith which, I must often remind myself, commands me otherwise, preferring that I align with love and peace, words that seem wholy inadequate at times such as these. Love and peace are weak, an anemic response compared to hate and anger. Love is the Beatles and a brass band playing along during a movie’s opening credits. It is a red heart emoji, a word we use to describe our feelings about pizza and Starbucks frappuccinos. We have watered it down in to meaninglessness. 

Peace has met a similar fate, its symbol becoming a piece of preteen jewelry, a t-shirt slogan. It is synonymous with inaction; it is a command from the haves to the have nots whenever they dare to lift their voices. It is not a response suitable enough to stand up to the waves of evil which rock our homes. 

If I am forced to chose between hate and anger, and meaningless inaction, I am not sure which is the worse path. 

Unless, of course, my initial assessment of the ocean was correct. What if peace was a force, powerful enough to shatter injustice and oppression? It would then require action, rather than a hollow repetition of words and displaying of symbols that have grown meaningless with use that has not been followed by deeds. 

I am a writer, and my course of action is to write. I do not doubt that this is little more meaningful than inaction. I am at best a voice shouting into silence, at worse another noise in the clamoring chorus. 

I am, however, but one small ripple in the water, one part of an ocean that finds it strength in the multitudes moving together. It is important to be realistic, to understand that it only takes one person to perpetrate an act of hate that destroys scores of lives. If acts of love wish to outweigh evil, they then must be many times more numerous, many times more frequent, many times stronger. 

In a few short weeks, we will forget this tragedy just as we have forgotten all others. It is unfortunate but necessary – it would be impossible to hold all suffering at the forefront of our minds at all times. The weight would be too much to bear. It is not too much, however, to let ourselves be changed by it, to let the waves of pain wash over us and leave something behind, which if we allow it, may become even stronger. 

I’m excited to have a story about how I ended up nursing my almost two-year old, and its unexpected benefits up on Mamalode. Check it out!

They say they’re too old once they can walk up to you and ask for it.
They say you should stop if they’ve got all their teeth.

They say it’s definitely time once he’s hitting your chest and yelling, “MILK!” in public.

I know they say all these things, because I used to say them. 

Read it here! 

“I can’t,” I said. “I just can’t do it anymore.” We drove down the highway, his hands clutching the steering wheel of my car. The reality, which I had hoped to put off until after the graduation festivities, had exploded during an emotional conversation. And with those words, a four-year relationship ended as we drove towards campus.

Then it was summer.

I was reeling in a way that seemed impossibly difficult to a 21 year old. I told my parents that I couldn’t move home that summer, saying I would be better able to find a job in the tourist town where I went to school than back in the countryside. The truth was, I was unable to move. The thought of leaving for the lonely Appalachian hills where my ill-fated romance had begun seemed impossible, and so I chose inaction instead. I sat alone in my apartment, staring at rows of books I had read and a diploma that bared my name.

Thus I began the Thursday Night Potluck Club. I invited everyone I knew whom had remained in town for the summer, and many I did not. This was not the sort of school where students stayed around once classes had ended, preferring instead to flee the southern heat and let the tourists take over the local sandwich shops until fall began. We were a rag tag bunch – there was my roommate and a few close friends. We were joined by the friend from high school I hadn’t seen much over the last few years, the fellow who sat next to me in a public speaking class whom I had barely said ten words to, the friend of a friend, the friend of a friend of a friend. I grabbed everyone I could find and told them to come to my place, Thursday, 6pm. Bring food and beer. I’ll bake a pie.

That summer was particularly hot, and the heat felt good. It came right up to my skin, filling the spaces between my fingers and behind my ears, suffocating me in a way that let me forget about my newfound freedom. During the day I worked odd hours babysitting and selling bath lotions at a store I hated, and counted down the hours until Thursday night again.

We fired up the ancient grill outside my apartment complex that no one had actually ever used and cooked hot dogs. I served my mother’s broccoli salad and we ate whatever other dishes we had managed to learn how to slop together during our college years. The rag tag bunch grew as people invited the roommate campus housing had assigned to them, or the friend they ran into at the library that week. Most had stayed behind necessarily, either to finish up a course requirement or work at an internship, and perhaps I projected my own loneliness and desperation on to them. But nevertheless, they returned, week after week.

The seniors shuffled slowly through the summer, awaiting an unknown future, and the underclassmen remained blissfully unaware of what was coming. The days grew hotter, and Thursday nights expanded in to cold pints on Tuesday, trips to the beach on Saturday. We went to the water well after the sun had set, the only time that was cool enough to enjoy the outdoors. The boys debated the best bait to use when fishing in the dark and the girls waded into the black water, rolling our eyes at the fervor of the discussion.

Eventually, the summer wound down. Internships ended, final papers for summer classes were turned in, trips home before fall were scheduled. It would be noble, as well as cliché, to say here that the Thursday Night Potluck Club gave me back more than I gave them, but that would imply that I had an altruistic intention of bringing people together. No, I needed to surround myself with others, to forget the loneliness I had brought upon myself. Eating potato chips on a picnic table while we stared up at the summer sky wondering if a thunderstorm would soon come to break the heat, I was home.

There is a feeling, one that is rare as it is wonderful, that comes at graduations and at five o’clock on Friday evenings. It comes when you move homes, quit jobs, finish long books you loved reading, and watch shadows stretch out on summer evenings. It is a sense of completion mixed with anticipation, of satisfaction and adventure, of loss and relief. It is a feeling I rarely have now that I am a stay at home mother, and my days churn into nights without end.

That summer, I lived in that feeling, and surrounded by a community of friends and strangers, I felt my pain slowly give way. That summer I was free.