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The outside of the immigration building is a foreboding place, all cold concrete and few windows. The inside doesn’t offer much more with its stark walls and rows of plastic chairs connected and fixed to the tiled floor. There are serious men in mustaches and suits who hold the power to determine the future with a simple yes or no. The only decor present is a tacked-up sign stating now-outdated Covid precautions in Turkish, Arabic, and Farsi. Depending on the day, crowds of people line up to scan their fingerprints, a way for the government to keep track of its four million refugees.

On this particular day, my husband is here among the crowd, knees bouncing in one of those plastic chairs, waiting for one of those mustached men to call his name, signaling his turn to enter the office. Sitting along the wall are groups of newly arrived Afghans—some alone, some with their family. Men shuffle and reshuffle papers. Women hold infants wrapped in thick fleece blankets. Collective weariness bounces off the walls from those here for the same reason: trying to find safety and stability in the middle of unimaginable hardship.

Tensions are running high and there’s a commotion between a group in the room next door. Several voices rise in a wave of misunderstanding then settle moments later. Trying to calm his nerves, my husband focuses instead on the three small Afghan boys next to him. The youngest, not more than a toddler, pulls and pulls at his mother’s arm, trying to get her attention. The older two squirm in their seats and kick at each other’s shins. All three are fussy, no doubt tired of spending the morning sitting in an immigration office, or—maybe more so—tired from the confusion of wondering where home is.

Perhaps it was because my husband is also one of three brothers or perhaps he saw himself in the parents, worry furrowing at the father’s brow, uncertainty clouding the mother’s eyes. After all, he too carries the weight of displacement on his back. He too wonders where home is. But an idea sparks, and without overthinking it, he decides to take a chance at missing his name being called, and sprints across the street to a corner convenience store.

“I wish I had the power to do something more than that though,” he tells me that night, the family still on his mind. He describes the reaction from the parents as he handed over a plastic bag filled with snacks, relief stretching across their faces now that their squirmy children were preoccupied at last, and the shy smiles from the boys as they ripped open small bags of pretzels and cookies. He speaks to them in Farsi, his native language, and they respond in Dari, their native language.

“But it didn’t change anything,” my husband continues. And I understand where he’s coming from. Giving some snacks to three boys didn’t change their situation. It didn’t grant them asylum or give them a place to call home. It didn’t wipe away years of trauma or rebuild governments.

Do you also feel like your little portions can’t possibly be enough? Do you feel the ambiguous grief over the world right now, too? Oftentimes, this powerlessness to do anything big can act like a grip stopping us from doing anything at all.

“But what you did was still important.” I’m earnest in telling him this because he did it. He didn’t overthink the seemingly unremarkable. Despite carrying the same type of baggage as that family, bringing them snacks was a way to take up arms and fight back against the injustice they were all experiencing, even if he didn’t realize it in the moment.

There is something holy in taking that one small step and entering into another person’s story. It may not be as spectacular as enacting policies or granting visas but it is meaningful.

Quietly doing the next simple and necessary thing can be the light that pushes back the darkness for our neighbors. Sending flowers, offering a ride, writing an encouraging text, baking banana bread, saying I love you, bringing the snacks. It all matters. It is all holy.

These small things are the only things to do when we don’t know what to do. It may not feel like enough, but in the great magic and mystery of God, our little portions can be more than enough for someone else, as my husband unknowingly taught me that day.

And so, may the love of a God who sees all our stories transform us to see others. May we tune our hearts to our neighbors who could use a helping hand. May we step into their story—for there is no such thing as other people’s neighbors. Doing so declares God’s goodness and power even when everything around us says otherwise.

Shortly after the day at the immigration office, I came across a few lines of a prayer commonly attributed to Salvadorian Bishop Oscar Romero, who was martyred for his faith:

“We cannot do everything,
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.”*

May we look for ways to be snack bringers today. One small step along the way, the next right thing—it is holy work.

—

_{*Read the rest of “Prophets of a Future Not Our Own” here.
Photo by Mariia Forest on Unsplash}

Mashed-up Cheerios are dribbling down my shirt. My daughter Esther is in an infant carrier strapped to my chest as I push the metal luggage cart I paid $7 for up and down the baggage check-in line. Two overweight suitcases (that I’ll soon pay $80 for although I don’t know it yet), a stroller, and a carry-on bag are piled precariously on top of each other. There’s a giant sweat spot forming on the front of my shirt where my 25-pound child sits.

The Turkish Airlines check-in agent takes my bags and my credit card and tags the stroller and the carry-on. My daughter is getting antsy in the carrier and I know the Cheerios aren’t cutting it as a meal. I bounce up and down at the desk waiting for the agent to come back with my card and passport. I sweat some more. Maybe if I look as desperate as I feel, I’ll get a pity-upgrade to business class. She hands me back my passport with a ticket to the U.S. tucked inside.

After getting checked in, I need to regroup and move my daughter from my carrier to the stroller despite her protests. We’re both hot and hungry. People from all over bustle by, lost in their own worlds. I get her situated and pull at the front of my shirt to circulate some air. It’s hot. Did I mention that? Also, I’m alone with a baby traveling 6,000 miles. 

He should be here, too is all that bounces through my mind as I push the stroller back and forth. I shouldn’t have to do this by myself. I’m overwhelmed but trying to keep it together until we’re home. Home. What a strange concept. I have two, each an ocean apart from the other. 

We’ve got time before we need to head through security (another big ordeal but again I don’t know this yet). So I take a moment to breathe and crouch down to look at Esther, really look at her. What a crazy life you and I have. Who would have thought? 

I think of my husband, who’s displaced, carrying the title of ‘refugee’ for the last eight years. My husband, who should be here, too—who wants so badly to be here, too—but cannot due to the country listed on his expired passport, due to the visa he doesn’t have. 

I think of how so much of the world is experiencing displacement, how so many people are finding themselves pushed out of their familiar, forced to navigate new and disorientating places.

Esther is now munching on a Lara bar I had packed for myself but it was the easiest thing to reach for in the diaper bag. She looks at me from her stroller. She doesn’t know the layers blanketing this trip, the conflicting emotions threading through my mind. She doesn’t know a life of displacement like her dad does. She only knows her two homes. She’s lucky in that way.

We look at each other as people continue to flow around us.

…then she snorts. 

Yes, like a pig. And laughs, her mouth open wide showing all her teeth and the bits of fig. She’s trying to get me to laugh, too. I realize this and I realize that maybe she does understand. Maybe I underestimate her sometimes—her emotional depths, her perception, her empathy. Maybe she holds more than I realize.

We laugh together. We’ll get through this together. 

***

On the other end of the flight, in another airport, in another country, 14 hours later, we survive. We get through it, relatively unscathed, only slightly limping. 

We land in Chicago where we need to reclaim our luggage before a night in a hotel and a quick plane ride to my family’s home in North Dakota. 

The orchestral sounds of beeps and dings and announcements over speakers clash with the sleepy movement of passengers disembarking our transatlantic flight. Altogether, we look like a yawning river making our way to our bags amidst the bright lights and sounds of the airport. For us, it’s the middle of the night (I think). But here, the day is well underway. 

A woman sprints over, leaving her two school-aged boys at the baggage carousel.

“You look like you could use some help.” Before I can respond, she lugs my suitcase onto the metal luggage cart. Do I look like I need help? Is my hot mess that obvious? I try in vain to help her but my daughter is once again strapped to me and the folded stroller she refused to sit in is under my arm. Jet lag and weariness make their way somewhere onto my body, too. 

The woman readjusts my carry-on bag and stroller as they balance precariously on top of the suitcase. I’m struck by how intimate her act is: physically touching my belongings, taking a moment out of her traveling to tangibly help a stranger.

I give her a nod of thanks but before she leaves she makes sure to catch my eye and says, “What you’re doing is really brave, you know?”

Those last two words—you know—were spoken not so much as a question but in a way that made me think this stranger wanted me to make sure she saw the work I was doing.

It’s true, there are no trophies for doing the things required in parenthood. But traveling alone with a baby is hard. Traveling alone internationally with a baby is harder. Traveling alone internationally with a baby during a pandemic while your husband has yet to receive a visa is on an entirely different level of hard. A tiny trophy would maybe be nice. The woman’s unprompted but wholly appreciated kindness did just that. 

The quick interaction in the O’Hare airport reminded me of one of the Old Testament names for God: El-Roi—the God who sees. It was spoken by Hagar, the first and possibly only person in Scripture to speak to God by name. It was in Hagar’s lowest, most sorrowful place where she has a true encounter with God and discovers she is not alone. 

Like my daughter who made me laugh 14 hours earlier, the woman who helped me with my bags at the airport didn’t know the weight sitting on my shoulders. She didn’t know how he should be here, too chanted in my mind as I maneuvered airplane bathrooms and passport control lines and x-ray machines—alone. She didn’t know anything about the indignation we have felt when facing injustice square in the face, the powerlessness to change anything for our family. But she chose to enter into my story and help anyway.

Here’s what I learned while crossing the Atlantic by myself with a baby in tow: El-Roi is found in a stranger’s simple act of kindness. El-Roi is found in the silly baby breaking the tension. El-Roi is found in the wilderness, where things seem impossible and all seems lost.

And this: the unseen work matters. The grief no one sees matters. The invisible things we carry matter. They are seen and known by a God who fiercely loves us, a God who can take those moments and redeem them.

“Do you think angels talk to babies?”

Our daughter, Esther, twirls around us in her flannel Christmas nightgown, the hem now inches above the tops of her feet, a measuring stick of sorts, showing how much she’s grown since December. We sit on the floor next to her as she climbs over our legs to get to the mirror. She sings a song to herself as she twirls, her way of winding down for the night. My husband’s question to me was prompted by something I had read on Instagram, about a baby boy who had pointed to the corner of the ceiling above him one day while he was nursing. “Hot-hot-hot,” he had exclaimed to his mother, who concluded that he must have been seeing something supernatural right there in the nursery.

On New Year’s Eve, we say a half-hearted prayer for our dinner before silently picking up our forks. It was a quick mumble, really. We were soul-weary, exhausted from the fact that another year had passed without any movement in my husband’s immigration case, exhausted over all the horrors in the world, another year of uncertainty ahead. Rote words, spoken a thousand times over slid out of our mouths and onto our plates.

But Esther stopped us twice during that meal, holding out her hands to us, saying “Pray,” so definitively, like a command. She knew our first prayer wasn’t sincere, standing on the precipice of a new year. Her outstretched arms and pointed look told us to pause, to exhale, and to speak out our hopes for the coming twelve months, even if it hurt, even if hope felt just out of reach.

The next day, New Year’s Day, we pulled into an empty town square after running errands all morning so Esther could run around a little. The streets were quiet, everyone sleeping off the prior night’s festivities. Here in the square, hundreds of pigeons were swooping from the tops of the corrugated roofs down to the cobblestone lot where we stood.

We watched as a man came out from one of the shops with a cigarette hanging from his mouth and a large scoop in his hand. He scattered corn and seeds onto the ground—breakfast for the birds. Once he was safely back inside his shop, the pigeons flew down, as if their leader gave a silent signal. Only the beating of their wings made any sound. We stood there quietly, mesmerized by their swirling, synchronized patterns, like a sheet of silk, so close their wings almost grazing the tops of our heads.

Peace was the only word that came to mind.

Do angels talk to babies? I’m not sure, but today she’s pulling me up from the couch where I’ve been sitting, swiping photo after photo of tanks crossing borders, a bombed-out apartment building, grandsons leading grandmothers away from homes, believers kneeling together in prayer, their own uncertainty palpable through the screen. I can’t stop seeing my own baby in every refugee family, can’t stop clicking through videos of fathers saying goodbye to their toddlers and makeshift NICU wards in bomb shelters—everything unfolding right behind my screen, everything happening not more than a 2-hour plane ride north. War in real-time.

Esther pulls and pulls at my arm until I surrender to her. She hands me a burp cloth my mom had made when she was born, pastel fleece with sheep jumping across. Esther knows I know the drill; no instructions are needed. The music is loud in the living room, booming from my husband’s iPhone, and the three of us sing and twirl the fabric in the air.

Does she know what’s happening in the world? Dancing, she seems to tell us, is a respite from the heaviness.

“And if angels do talk to babies,” my husband continued that night on the floor, “maybe we can pass on a message from her to them.” 

And then later today I watch her as we walk down our road to the corner grocery store.

“Abr!” she points to the dark, full clouds rolling in from the west, using the Farsi word for cloud. “Abi!” She points to the east, the Farsi word for blue, the one color she so confidently knows. The sky is split in half, a crack down the middle as a storm encroaches on our town. The wind picks up into mighty 20 mph gusts as we walk, blowing our hair across our faces in every direction. We bow our bodies forward against the wind.  

But then Esther stops mid-track just before rounding the corner and rips off her hat (a miracle it’s stayed on this far). She then rips out the clip in her hair and for a second I think she’s about to rip off her jacket, too. What will the neighborhood aunties think? That poor foreign lady, letting her toddler run around near-naked in February? But instead, she surprises me and raises her hands above her head, palms facing the heavens. She closes her eyes as the wind swirls around her, delight spreading across her face. In this dry, arid region of the world, we rarely experience weather like this.

She stands like that for a few moments, her smile unfading, palms spread wide, like she’s touching something. And I imagine her as a worshipper, standing in the rows of a church, holy music flowing through her, fervent in spirit. 

And yet I don’t have to imagine it. That’s what is happening right here in front of me—something holy.

Do angels talk to babies? I can’t answer that. But I do know that we are all more intricately connected than we realize, and life is so much more delicate than we can comprehend as if this decade hasn’t taught us that yet. 

We change diapers and read the headlines. We send a text asking Can you get milk on the way home? and then Are we safe here? What will happen next? We cook dinner and say tired prayers and cuddle toddlers to sleep, hair sweaty and matted against our chests. We breathe in and out, grasping at the hope that seems to unspool a little more each day.

But all these moments are connected in a jumbled-up, messy sort of way. I’m sure they are. That spool of hope? It’s a holy thread woven through all the mundane and all the chaos, through all of us.

And perhaps that’s how—not angels—but God speaks to us: through babies who seem to be more perceptive than we give them credit for, in our neighbor who stops us outside her door to hand us a bag of her green apples, the Afghan refugee who gives us a secret discount on garlic and potatoes, the murmuration of birds and the man who feeds them, in the awkward way we try to lead our children through the events of this world, in reassuring texts, and heads bowed together long after the sun has set.

That’s where the scent of God lies—through neighbors and toddlers, headlines and news reports, in the creation of birds, through you and me.

And if we stop to take notice of how the wind blows through our fingers and how the birds fly in tandem with each other, then that spool of thread will wind back up. Hope will return.

In all of life’s suffering and joy and mess, God is near. That much I know.

6:14 AM- The coffee percolates in the pitch-black kitchen. The ezan, the call to prayer, goes off from a crackly speaker somewhere in the neighborhood. It’s the first of five prayers of the day and also serves as my alarm clock. I use my phone to take a blurry picture of two mugs in front of the coffee machine and toss up my own silent prayer that I can finish my cup before my daughter, Esther, wakes up for the day. 

7:21 AM – Everyone’s awake and I was able to drink 1.5 cups of hot coffee and even enjoy the last .5 with Afshin, my husband—a morning win. I take a picture of Esther standing in front of a wall of Polaroid’s near her crib, still donning pajamas and bedhead. Every day, we say good morning to the photos, naming each family member. Good morning, Uncle Erik. Good morning, Auntie Jenna. We’re spread out over three different continents and I want her to recognize everyone’s faces. She kisses her grandpa’s picture. 

8:02 AM – Breakfast is well underway in the kitchen—Afshin’s job most mornings. Today he’s serving oatmeal and bananas. I record a short video of this scene that more or less happens similarly every morning: Afshin by the stove with a wooden spoon in one hand, raised high, the other hand on his hip. He’s singing a children’s nursery rhyme in Farsi. Esther is wiggling in her high chair, both arms also stretched above her head. 

–

At the beginning of November, blogger Laura Tremaine hosted her annual #onedayHH challenge (One Day Hour by Hour). Thousands of Instagram users like myself committed to posting a snapshot of our day at least every hour. This wasn’t meant to be a time to share curated, beautiful photos, but an opportunity to share the “behind the scenes” look at our everyday lives—piles of laundry, working at a desk, walking the dog, dinner cooking on the stove.

I chose to participate for the first time this year because I was curious to see if I could find something worthwhile to snap a photo of every hour of my day. So often I feel that our life here in Turkey is only made up of waiting, a placeholder until our life really begins. 

I chose to do this because I’m tempted to think that when we’re out of Turkey, settled and rested, then I’ll have something worthwhile to post or write about. I’m also tempted to overlook the little nuggets of goodness, like doing so somehow dishonors the grief and trauma my family carries in our day-to-day lives.

–

9:55 AM – Esther and Afshin are out the door. Today he’ll drop her off at my mother-in-law’s down the street on his way to work, which means I have the next couple of hours free. I take a photo of our freshly washed blankets and sheets clipped to the clothesline. The string of multicolored blankets is heavy and causes the line to bend under the weight. A neighbor across the courtyard secures her own family’s laundry to their clothesline. 

10:30 AM – After picking up the house a bit, I take advantage of the odd free time and sit down to trudge through Farsi language learning. I snap a quick photo of my setup: a notebook, highlighters and pens, and one of Esther’s picture books I’m translating. It’s slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

11:21 AM – I start on dinner preparations before Esther gets back, kneading grated onion, coriander, and dried mint into a bowl filled with ground beef which will later turn into Turkish kofte. Afshin forwards me a video of Esther listening to Persian dance music at my mother-in-law’s while she picks up orange slices off a plate and pops them into her mouth.

–

In one of the final essays written before his passing, Brian Doyle wrote, “Sometimes we are starving to see every bit of what is right in front of us.” Only moderately familiar with his work, I read this particular quote of his the other week. A friend had posted the words on her Instagram, set against a beautiful sunset. I took a screenshot of it and found myself flipping through my camera roll to re-read the words several times.

I yearn so much for a life in the future, yet fail to see how it’s happening right in front of me. I’ve held off on painting rooms, buying a rocking chair, decorating for the holidays, and starting family traditions because I’m not where I want to be. But life has a strange way of moving forward whether we want it to or not. I have a daughter who is no longer a baby, who now has opinions and preferences and a very loud voice as she takes her first steps into toddlerhood. And my husband and I are still taking steps forward (then backward, then forward) in the thick, overgrown, and often unjust forest of immigrating to the US. Our circumstances bellow out for a resolution yet pages are turning and chapters are forming right here and now.

–

1:30 PM – With Esther down for a nap, I rest too, grabbing my paperback copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns and an instant coffee packet—a surprise find at the grocery store from the other week. When specialty imported items make their way to the shelves, any smart ex-pat will know to grab as many as possible because it’s uncertain when they’ll be back again.

3:42 PM – We head to the park, something we try to do every day. Two pigeons sit on top of the light pole overlooking the playground. Esther notices and shouts “bird,” the consonants of the word all smooshed together. The earthy-sweet smell floats around us as we stomp through piles of fire-red maple leaves.

4:47 PM – I finish cooking dinner with Esther next to me. She desperately wants to be involved in every task. We recently bought a kitchen helper stool for her to stand next to me when I cook, a purchase that made my husband and I wince. It wasn’t because of the price tag but more-so the investment of what that item symbolized. I teach her how to peel the cucumbers with my hand guiding hers. I mince garlic, chop walnuts, and mix the shredded cucumbers and more dried mint into yogurt.

–

I had a friend visit the other day. Over cups of coffee and Esther swiping little chocolate balls from the serving platter (which would later result in an over-hyped toddler chasing Turkish street cats up and down the alleyways long after the sun had set), we talked about the tension of being human and feeling all the jumbled up sorts of feelings all at once. While I wrangled Esther away from the sweets, my friend asked me to name some “little sparks” in my life at that moment.

Her question took me by surprise, forcing me to pause and reflect for a minute on the little bursts of goodness happening even in the middle of our trials. “The big sparks are nice,” she went on to explain, “but for me it’s the little sparks that keep me going.” Doyle’s words popped into my head again as I realized just how much I’m starving for the big sparks to happen—like getting on a plane with my husband and child on each side of me, finally crossing borders and oceans together as a family. But little sparks are happening every day if only I’d stop to take notice.

–

5:32 PM – We video call my mom in North Dakota, something we do every night. She reads to Esther and takes us on a tour with her iPad through her house. We agree that Esther remembers her summer spent here. After the books are read, Esther kisses the screen and we say goodbye.

7:32 PM – Afshin’s back, dinner is eaten, the kitchen cleaned, more dancing and reading and cuddling. Esther’s in bed for the night (finger’s crossed).

8:53 PM – Child-free, we try to sit down to watch the season finale of a series we’ve been watching—I’m even able to get a quick picture of the T.V. screen—but on this evening, we can barely keep our eyes open. We turn off the T.V., prepare the coffee machine, and head to bed. And as Afshin frequently says, “Tomorrow is another day.”

–

Trying something new won’t change your circumstances, but it may change your perspective. Committing to document a very ordinary Tuesday in November hour by hour opened my eyes to the little sparks of goodness in my life. It was something relatively simple to do, but through my phone’s camera, I saw the love between my husband and daughter, how they have a bond different than mine. I saw how Esther is growing and changing near-daily, making connections and trying out words. I took note of the beauty of the changing season and thought how maybe there is always a little beauty when things change. Maybe something is sparking in this in-between time.

Make no mistake, looking for the little sparks is not a way to guilt us into counting our blessings (believe me, I’ve done my fair share of making daily lists of gratitudes, hoping in vain it’d change my feelings). It’s deeper and richer than that. Practicing the art of pausing and noticing is an invitation to open our eyes to the goodness that buoys us above life’s choppy waters.

And while I yearn for our circumstances to resolve, making note of the little sparks of good that happen amid perfectly ordinary days might be what’s needed to stave off the hunger of the not yet.

A Blessing:
To those of us feeling awkward giving thanks this holiday season,
To those of us tired of the futility of gratitude lists and counting blessings,
To those of us trudging through loss after loss,
May we continue to walk through the grief, knowing it will one day lead to healing and redemption.
But may we also give ourselves permission to pause along the way and notice the goodness, the gifts, and the little sparks that light the path forward.
May we recognize that doing so will not dishonor our grief, but instead, make room to let hope in.

***

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “Novel”.

Photo by Philip Moore on Unsplash

There are thirty-one boxes of mine taking up real estate in my parents’ home, much to their protests. Isn’t that what inevitably happens when children grow into adults? They don’t have room at their place for sentimental keepsakes or items not needed at the moment, and so it all makes its way back to their parents’ basement.

In any event, I have boxes of all sizes sitting like pieces of Tetris on storage shelves there. I know the exact number because I counted and made a list the last time I was home. None of the boxes are opened. A brand new set of kitchen knives, baking dishes, blender, rice cooker, espresso maker, cheese grater, and more wait to be cut open, taken out, and used. Almost everything was bought with gift cards given to us when we got married four years ago and again as graduation gifts when my husband finished his master’s last year. 

It is there, deep in a basement in North Dakota, where our imaginary future lies—one we had envisioned together even before we got married. Those boxes were meant to be used in our life in the US, a sort of nest egg put together by bits and pieces over the years, representing our dream of a life no longer overseas: a Kitchen-aid mixer placed on the counter in a just-moved-in apartment, begging for someone to mix a batter of cookie dough; a spice rack filled with tiny glass jars, a colorful representation of our bicultural family; a coffee machine waiting to be brewed faithfully every morning. 

But then a travel ban happened, barring my husband from entering the US solely due to the passport he carried. It forced us to get married in a country that was home to neither of us, our lives coming to a screeching halt. During four years, deadbolt after deadbolt was installed and latched, pushing us further from our future. After the implosion of the US immigration system, we scrambled to find anything that might be a key. The dream of living in the US was a shore that drifted just out of reach, a place of refuge that we could never quite grasp. We remained in Turkey.

Over time, those boxes became buried under plastic totes filled with photos taken decades ago and other boxes containing childhood stuffed animals, Christmas decor, and china sets. My mom would add a cloth shower curtain, and my sister a picture frame and some coffee mugs, signs they hadn’t given up hope, even though our imaginary future began to collect dust. 

For so much of our marriage, we have been living in the short term. This is seen in how we’ve furnished our apartment in Turkey. Most things were bought second-hand or were used items passed on to us from friends. I can probably count on one hand how many items we purchased new and at full price. If we had to leave at a moment’s notice, we could easily shed this current life for the one we desired because none of the pieces held much sentimental or monetary value to us.

It took us well into our daughter’s first year of life before we even considered putting together a nursery for her. We had the spare room, that wasn’t the issue, but the emotional energy it took to put down even shallow roots was a lot. But as she neared her first birthday, we did it anyway. We needed to and she deserved a space of her own. We didn’t paint and we bought very little, if anything, new. This helped quell the sting of making our house a home here and not there. What was once a dream reserved for our life in the future, was altered to fit our life in the present.

***

The other night, Afshin and I sat on the floor of Esther’s room, getting her ready for bed, something we tag team each night. He was reading a book in Farsi to her, one where daddy animals kiss their babies. He read a line: “Daddy giraffe kisses his calf’s neck,” causing Esther to squeal and run around the room, anticipating kisses from her dad.

I sat cross-legged leaning up against the wardrobe with a sippy cup of warm milk in hand, watching as they finished up this part of the nightly routine. I must have had a strange look on my face because Afshin lifted his head from the floor where he was now laying, curious to know what I was thinking. The book had ended with smooches all over and somehow Esther had gotten herself on top of him, each leg straddling his stomach, no doubt retaliating for the kissing. If the effects of my husband’s life of displacement had touched her in any way, it didn’t show. She forced him to lay back down with a shove and a mischievous smile and continued bouncing. 

I didn’t know how to describe what I was thinking, watching my family play and laugh together in this room in the middle of Turkey. It was this realization that life was happening right here, right now. Our tiny family of three was all under one roof, growing and blossoming, making memories, and settling into a calm pattern. These are the good old days. I felt a pinprick of guilt needling its way in as soon as that thought crossed my mind, like, if I acknowledged that this moment was good—a joyful little morsel amid hardship—that it would somehow seem as if I’m dumping aside any hope for the future. 

When I do spot a sliver of delight while living here—whether it be posting a photo of our family on the beach or a video of us at a playground on a warm day—I’m met with well-intentioned friends commenting on how it seems we are blooming where we are planted or how we’ve let God use us in this hard season. I cringe at these comments. Is this what our life looks like from the outside?

I think of how one-half of my family is living in displacement. When I post videos of our weekend vacation, what people don’t see is the stress it took to make that happen. No one sees the permission my husband had to get from the police to leave our province—something never guaranteed for a refugee and is a stark reminder that they have no rights here. My mother-in-law applied three times and got denied each time. No reason was given as to why and she had to stay behind. There was also the stress of evading police check points along the way to the beach. Police are notoriously fickle, even with the right papers, and could send my husband back to our city at any point. No one sees how he’s missing half an eyebrow in those seaside pictures—an outward sign of how he copes with the inward turmoil and trauma of being displaced.

Blooming we are not.

It takes a special kind of privilege to be able to bloom where you are planted, to grow and thrive and accept your circumstances. In fact, you cannot bloom where you are planted if your feet are being violently forced into the ground by great powers above you. You cannot bloom where you are planted if the soil is poor and shallow.

What good is a weekend vacation when the waiting is indefinite and no country wants you? To make someone wait indefinitely is one of the most twisted abuses of power, is it not? This is the life of a refugee.

And this is the source of my guilt.

***

Every day after her nap, Esther and I walk to the park behind our home. It was unusually windy this particular afternoon, while we squatted under a group of trees, examining the dried leaves already on the ground. Autumn had made itself known and the trees were a smattering of golds and scarlets that weren’t there a week ago. 

We fell into a simple game of me picking out a leaf (the crunchier the better) for Esther, where she then crushed it in her hand and disposed of the little pieces in a pile by her feet. Back and forth we went. But we’d stop our game each time the wind picked up. The already fragile leaves clinging desperately to their branches could not withstand the gusts of wind, causing a flurry of color to rain down around us. The leaves came alive, collectively chattering as they skittered across the pavement, creating a welcome mat on the ground for the coming colder, barren months.

I’m not one to use the word “magical” to describe everyday things often, but I’d use that word now. To watch my child’s eyes in wonderment, her hands outstretched, as a great whirlwind of leaves circled us, was magic. 

Maybe this was autumn’s way of laughing even though it was grieving summer’s end. Maybe each time the wind picked up, the swirl of leaves, dropping like pieces of confetti, was a gift from a season before and a gift for a season to come. 

Whatever it was, I found myself thinking those guilt-drenched words again: These are the good old days.

It takes a lot to face this monster head-on and shout that the good and the beautiful are happening right now. But I’m learning I can spot a sliver of good now while still honoring the grief I carry for our imaginary future. My hope for a life beyond this one still clings to me, like a child to his mother’s hem. Those thirty-one boxes aren’t going anywhere. They’re stacked in a basement an ocean away, waiting for our homecoming—a gift for a season to come.

Looking for the good doesn’t mean you’re blooming or that you’ve given up hope for a better tomorrow. It may mean you’re only surviving, remaining dormant until conditions change. Like the crunchy leaves raining down on us, it may look like a tiny spark of magic in a desolate season.

It feels scary to acknowledge the good during the hard, but here’s your permission to do it anyway. May we not overlook the magic in the everyday as we stretch our eyes forward. But may we also not lose hope for a future safe and secure. 

Hold both the good and the hard in all their discomfort and awkwardness. I’ll do the same. While yearning for a world that has yet to exist, we’ll be over here, making room for delight to thread its way in.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “Unmasking Fears”.