My husband, David, and I had just finished dinner when he mentioned he was driving to the train station in Hachinohe that night, a one-hour trip from our base in Misawa, Japan. He was the sponsor of a new family.
The color drained from my face.
As a sponsor, it was our responsibility to make sure incoming families had their immediate needs taken care of as they faced the fog of jetlag. Throwing this on me within hours of their arrival was impossible—the commissary was closed. I frantically packed a cooler with milk, cheese, and jelly. Burrito meat was browned and put in containers. Totes were filled with toiletries. With fire in my eyes and dread in my stomach, I watched as David sheepishly loaded everything into the car.
“Why is he acting like this is not a big deal? Does he not remember how hard it was to move here 2 years ago? Men!”
I walked back into the house, settling our three-year-old daughter into bed. At 7 months pregnant, I was glad to relax in my room, journaling my woes until David returned. Stepping into our room, he hid a figure behind him—my mom. From Colorado Springs to Japan. I could only stammer as she hurried to my side.
On a wild hair, she had decided to attend my baby shower. Flying from Denver to Tokyo, then taking the train to Hachinohe—nearly 6,000 miles. A surprise that spanned the Pacific. That is my mother.
As a child, Mom was nearly always there to greet us when we arrived home from school. For the handful of times she wasn’t, my brother and I would seek refuge in the barn, assuming the rapture had come and we’d missed Jesus. I’d cry out to my Savior, wondering where I went wrong. How did I tumble from Mr. Webb’s fifth grade into a life of unrelenting sin?
A stay-at-home mom is a strange dichotomy of 24/7 availability and restriction. Amy Carmichael, a missionary to India in the early 1900s, wrote that Indian locals said “children tie the mother’s feet.” She found freedom in that limitation.
When my siblings began to leave home, I saw those mother and child ties loosen. Mom’s role changed from “stay-at-home” to “homemaker.” She shows up as needed; to a dorm room in Wyoming, a Naval base in California, a delivery room in Kansas, a graduation in Texas. And she traveled wherever the Air Force took my family. In all of those places, she continued making a home for her children—two generations of us.
When David was deployed and I flipped my car seven times, Mom arrived within hours. She comforted me, but she also brought a paint roller and transformed my kitchen into a welcome retreat. When our firstborn arrived after the 9.1 Tohoku earthquake, Mom came as soon as the train was rebuilt. She brought peace, but she also grabbed a piece of chalk and tallied every aftershock. She made the uncertain into just a line on a board, a record of how, as she put it, the “tremors rocked her to sleep.” When we had to track down our foster son in a crisis, she flew to South Carolina to stay with our other children. In the midst of heartache, she turned our home into a Christmas wonderland. She saved the star for our son—found safe and in our arms--to put on the treetop.
Jordan Peterson argues that longevity is proof that raising children is a “two-generation job.” After facing the uncertain waters of parenthood, a grandparent can remember the parting of the sea and show us how to plant a staff in faith.
Mom continues to teach me that home is a refuge amid natural disasters and human failings, a place where pain can eventually become just a mark on a board. Victories are coming. All things can be made new. And we can, like the noblewoman in Proverbs 31:25, laugh at the days to come.
