Author: Marilyn

Writer & Public Health Nurse living between worlds. Third Culture Kid. Grew up in Pakistan. Four countries to call home: Pakistan. Egypt.United States.Kurdish Region of Iraq.

A Mom’s Gifts

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Walking along Boston Harbor today, I was struck by the beauty all around me. While the day dawned gloomy and chilly, by noon the sky was the blue of a clear spring day and blossoms and buds had appeared like magic. It reminded me of the children’s book The Secret Garden and the description of springtime.

“Fair fresh leaves, and buds—and buds—tiny at first but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air.”

The Secret Garden

It’s been six months since my mom died and I’ve been thinking a lot about her these past few days. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, and it will be my first Mother’s Day where my mom is not present on this earth. I am well aware that in the natural order of things, every person gets to a point where their mothers are no longer present. I am not alone in this. In fact, I am one of those too fortunate people who had their mom for many, many years.

And I also feel the loss acutely. Last year I was recovering from major surgery, so I was unable to go be with her for Mother’s Day. Had I known that she would be gone, would I have cancelled the surgery? I don’t know that I would. I had cancelled it once before and I really couldn’t hold off anymore. I think my mom knew this and gave me the grace I needed.

Memories of previous mother’s days and other holidays, but mostly the visits I had with her where it was just the two of us on a regular weekend loom large and precious. We would go to Lake Ontario and have picnics of egg or tuna salad on fresh bread, always buying Abbot’s frozen custard on the way home. I would read aloud from either a book my brother had begun reading to her, or we would begin a new one. Some of her favorites were books by her friends from Pakistan, her eyes sparkling as she filled in details from her own memories of events relayed in these books. Her routine was to get up much later than I would in the morning so I would fix myself a cup of tea and then have breakfast with her when she got up. Parathas and spicy eggs were a favorite from her Pakistani past, but as time went on, a simple piece of toast or an English muffin was all she could eat.

In the months before she died, it was more difficult for her to get up and get going. Our times included a lot more staying inside with reading, resting, and stories. Audio books were a plenty and I will never be able to listen to Maisie Dobbs books on audio again without thinking of my mom on her recliner, eyes open, mind alert, body tired. Sometimes she would doze off and I would gently wake her to see if she wanted to head to her bed for an afternoon nap. “I should, shouldn’t I?” she would reply, only to doze off again one or two times before going. In between all of this, I heard stories of childhood and beyond. I was taken back to her elementary years, to an older girl Evangeline walking her home from school and laughing and scolding her for having the lofty dream of attending college. “Oh Pauline! What makes you think you can go to college? Your mom and dad never finished eighth grade!” Scarlet, more from the anger that erupted in her than Evangeline’s chiding, she vowed that she’d show Evangeline! And she did.

The stories moved on from childhood to college in Boston, a city she loved dearly, friendships with roommates Maggie and Ruthie, and falling in love with my father. What a gift to those who are older that they get to fall in love again and again through their memories, reliving the joys of those initial days like they were yesterday. Mom and Dad’s love story took place in the city of Boston where, poor as the proverbial mice that roam around churches in search of morsels, they bought five cent coffees and an occasional coke float. While I had heard many of the stories before, there were new ones that emerged, while the old ones were the more precious knowing that the storyteller would soon be leaving us, leaving me.

And the storyteller did leave. She left in the late fall when the golden leaves were creating heavy earth carpets, and the smell of wood fires was in the air. Now it is the spring and I miss her. I miss the almost daily phone calls that were sometimes check-ins and other times heavy with conversation and memories. We loved talking to each other about books – those that she was listening to and others that I was reading. I miss knowing that when I got back from a trip, she would be waiting to talk with me, to ask about it. I miss having her ask me about my kids. “How is Joel?” she would say, and I knew she really cared.

Despite the missing, I would not bring her back for an instant. She is in Aslan’s country, further up and further in, and it would be cruel to bring her back from glory to a place with only glimpses.

In truth, Mom left me with many lasting gifts that I hold on to tight with hopes that I can one day pass on the same – the gift of an enduring faith lived out in stubborn persistence, the gifts of reading and writing, the gifts of delving deeply into the scriptures and daily prayer, the gifts of learning when to speak up and when to keep silent. Most of all, the life-long example of a mom who knew how to love well.

On this Mother’s Day, I reflect on these gifts with a healthy mixture of tears, wistful longing, and gratitude. Though her presence is gone, the gifts remain, and I am deeply grateful. Honoring her is about entering wholeheartedly into the day with laughter, love, tea, and cake, expressing love and thanks to those around me and those at a distance.

I wonder as I write this – what gifts have you received from your mom? Whether alive or no longer here, what do you hold precious because of her?

Pre-Paschal Reflections – 2024

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It’s been 10 years since I entered the Orthodox church.12 years of attending the same church – something that our children probably find astounding! From the time we entered the United States, fresh off the boat from Cairo, we changed churches like teenagers change their minds. It was exhausting for all of us.

Recently in a conversation with a friend about the Orthodox Church, she said to me “You deconstructed before it got popular.” But I don’t think we deconstructed. I think we reconstructed, and it led us to where we are today.

Today as the sun set on Great and Holy Saturday, and as I prepared for our Paschal feast in the wee hours of the morning, I felt deep gratitude for the journey. It has not been easy. Like entering any foreign country, there is a rhythm to learn – feasts and fasts, sacraments, and the ascetical life of the church. It has challenged me in ways I could not imagine – and it has also offered me unexpected belonging and community. So many in our church know what it is to live between worlds, know what it is for worlds to connect or collide. The unifying thread is our collective understanding of being part of something greater than ourselves, something that, in the words of C.S. Lewis, beckons us “further up and further in.”

As I offer this year’s Pre-Paschal reflections, I’m also grateful to those of you who have been on this journey with me. For you have offered grace in your listening and honored my words in unexpected ways. I can never express how thankful I am that you continually read.

In closing, I’ll offer my favorite words from St. John Chrysostom’s Easter Sermon:

Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.

Blessed Pascha to those who celebrate – and to those who don’t – come visit some year! It is a glorious day!

Χριστός ἀνέστη
المسيح قام
Khristos voskres
Hristos a Inviat
Christo Ressuscitou
Christ is Risen

Great and Holy Friday

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In his book Disappointment with God, author Philip Yancey, tells a poignant story about a boy who shot his father. When he was taken to a residential facility and asked why he did it, he responded that he hated his father, he wanted his father dead. Later that evening as a staff member was walking down the hallway monitoring the deeply troubled and wounded kids who were there, he heard the boy crying “I miss my father. I want my father.”

It’s this story that I think about on this day of Great and Holy Friday because the boy is me. I continually do things that kill the character of God, that wound his righteousness. I sometimes want him out of my life, blame him as the cause of all suffering. But in the dark and quiet of the night, I too can be heard crying. “I miss my father. I want my father.”

Today around the world, from Palestine to Alaska, Orthodox Christians are gathering – many in the midst of unquantifiable suffering – to commemorate the death of Christ on the cross. In doing this we remember the ultimate act of love and sacrifice and will ourselves to pause for a moment; pause to remember the most horrific death imaginable. Pause to remember the suffering of Christ. We pause to remember and as we do, we recognize yet again that suffering is not meaningless but is met by a God who sits with us in our pain. Sometimes he whispers comfort, sometimes he is silent, but his presence is a reality that I will believe throughout my life.

There is much pain I am feeling these days. I find it difficult to read any news, more difficult still to comprehend the depth of suffering and pain present, particularly in mothers who have buried a child even as they watch another child suffer from malnutrition and lack of medical care. It is too big for me to bear. And I cry before God and his holy mother, knowing that on that day so long ago, a sword pierced her soul. That’s where I will sit today, at the foot of the cross, with Mary, the mother of God, and I will weep even as I rest in the “vast mystery of God, the surety of God’s power, the reassurance of God’s goodness.”

Today He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the Cross. He who is King of the angels is arrayed in a crown of thorns. He who wraps the heavens in clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery. He who in Jordan set Adam free receives blows upon His face. The Bridegroom of the Church is transfixed with nails. The Son of the Virgin is pierced with a spear. We venerate Thy Passion, O Christ. Show us also Thy glorious Resurrection.

From Matins of Holy Friday

The City Within My Chest

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Yesterday, my friend Robynn shared a compelling video with me. The video was of Enrique Garcia Naranjo retelling a story about being stopped by border patrol. Before he gets into the actual story, he set the stage of where he was prior to the incident. He was speaking to a group of high school students in Douglas, Arizona, reciting a poem he had written about his life, describing his “barrio, the holiness of tacos, and the unrelenting spirit of Mexican grandmothers.” He describes the students as people between languages and cultures, as people of the border. At the end of his poem, he told them to get out pens, pencils, and paper and gave them a prompt. He asked them to write about “the city within my chest.”

The prompt deeply resonated with me, and I began pondering the physical missing of places, how sometimes it feels like they literally live within our chests. There is a heaviness to missing places and people, a heaviness of homesickness, a burden defying description. The weight of absence moves from our chests upward, constricting our throats, upward again to a burning in our eyes. Tears come unchecked, seemingly out of nowhere. Such is the power of place.

What city is within your chest? What place is within your chest?

Is it a city from your childhood, a place you’ve never been able to return? Is it the place where you first felt the security of belonging and love? Is it a farm where long summer days had you in bare feet, grass tickling your toes as you ate watermelon without a thought to the privilege and burden of belonging? Is it a beach town where you woke to the sound of the ocean crashing on the shore? Is it a town that kept you safe and secure in the knowledge that you held an undefinable “membership” that wasn’t because of anything you did or didn’t do, but just because you existed?

If you were to write about these places, how would you describe them? What would you choose to bring people into your memory of food and grandmothers? Would it be the pure joy of curry and chapatis as you break out in a sweat from the spices? Would you describe the resilience of boarding school people? Would it be about the grandmother who took your hand when you were young, and prayed you through life when you were older? Would it be about the rushing glory of rivers and forests and the massive snow-capped mountains in the distance, or the crowded spaces of public buses as you join a community of escapees from the cold winter days in a city, the bus driver smiling in empathy as you hop on? Would it be a park where you watch the seasons come and go? Would it be about mountains calling you and long hikes on crisp spring days?

On Sunday afternoons, I carry places and people within my chest. The morning’s liturgical joy gives way to a deep melancholy, particularly when the sky is grey. Staying fully present and focused is a struggle and it is easy to have my mind travel to places far away where I hung my heart, places that are now carried within my chest. My mind goes to Cairo and Karachi, Erbil and Ranya. I carry the sights and sounds of places that will never leave me, the call to prayer, the street vendors selling molasses and bananas on the road below my fourth-floor apartment, the smell of bread baking at dusk, the sunset’s burnished gold and deep pink- benedictions to my days, and the people still there that continue to mark these places on my heart.

In truth, I’ve come to be grateful for these times. They are reminders of the richness of my life, reminders of the gifts that these cities and places gave me. As I surrender to the melancholy, I find comfort. Surrender comes easier with chocolate and a cup of strong, sweet, milky tea. Revisiting memories through photographs that remind me of these lives I lived before are also gifts to accepting the pensive sadness of missing. I’ve learned that surrender can make me stronger, resolute in my desire to make each place count and committed to living well in the present.

To all of us border people, living between the here and there, the now and not yet, the familiar and the foreign, may we carry our places within our hearts and be the richer for it.

“Always border people – caught between citizen and alien, silence and disruption, here and there.”

Enrique Garcia Naranjo

Baby Showers and Belonging

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My younger daughter is having a baby! We have known for months, but as is usual in this space, I don’t often share specifics about my children. As people who were initially formed in my womb, I don’t go a day without thinking and praying for my adult children multiple times, but I created an unwritten rule for myself a while ago that I would not share my children’s stories. Some of them involve me, some don’t, but either way, there is a sweet, humbling, and critical connection with adult children that must not be severed by any writing ego.

But today’s thoughts are bigger than Stefanie or me, or the beautiful new life that is every day changing inside her.

Yesterday I had the honor of hosting her baby shower. The walls of our small city house expanded to fit two distinct generations of women – my generation and Stefanie’s generation. It was a brilliant, beautiful mix of wisdom and exuberance, of sweet naivete and humorous reality, of skin free of wrinkles and age spots and skin that is marked by time, of bodies that have set into older maturity even as we try to cajole them into something less squishy and young bodies that bounce back from childbirth like Winnie the Pooh’s Tigger.

Because we know her baby is a girl, every one of us opted to go against the trend of genderless beings by reveling in ruffles and pink, bows and the sweetest little socks and shoes imaginable. Why are little girls’ clothes so much cuter than little boys, I ask you?

The food was a an equally beautiful mixture of savory and sweet with chicken salad, hummus, cheeses and dips sharing space with thick, chewy brownies made by Stef’s husband Will’s Aunt Carol, and the most beautiful lemon, raspberry layer cake with the inscription “April showers for a May Flower.”

Beyond the surface was a reality for Stef and Will: they are deeply loved. They have people who surround them with love and appreciation for who they are and what they will bring to this little baby’s life. Over and over, friends and family spoke of the combination of exuberance, kindness, love of life and love of sports that they will bring to their little girl. I loved reconnecting with, as well as meeting for the first time some of Stef’s girlfriends as they surrounded her with beauty and love, as well as a good deal of laughter for her sense of drama and her husband’s calm. They are in the delightful stages of early marriage, pregnancy and forming families of their own. There was an unspoken sense of belonging and security that I could see in my girl, belonging and security that she will be tasked with bringing to the baby that is coming.

Like so many of us third culture kid mamas, I often feel guilt and sadness for the way I have moved my children from the proverbial “pillar to post.” They have picked up and moved multiple times, leaving behind the tangible in dolls, books, dollhouses, Playmobil, friends, schools and more, as well as the intangible gifts of belonging and security that we get when we love a place and people within that place. We moved Stefanie to this area in the middle of her sophomore year of high school. She exchanged the sun of Arizona for the worst winter the Northeast had seen in five years. Thinking back, I feel a bit ambiguous about that decision. But then I think about yesterday and the circle of love that surrounded this couple. Had we not moved, yesterday’s event would not have taken place. I felt the goodness of God in the land of the living, the goodness of God in giving Stef, Will, and their baby a place to come home to and place to share with others.

The cynical may push away the idea of things like baby showers, opting instead for Amazon deliveries to bring the essentials to our doors, but these events are perhaps more important than we realize. In life we need markers and milestones, times of stepping back to welcome a new stage or event, times of being surrounded with belonging and realizing what we have. In a fractured world, it becomes even more important to know that there are places where we belong. Perhaps baby showers are one place that can be, not about gifts or cake, savory and sweet, but about publicly announcing that a new stage of life is coming and that a baby is entering a world where she belongs.

Seasons of Life and an Impossibly Soft Couch

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“I wish I could come visit you, drink tea, and sit on your impossibly soft couch.”

The message came from a younger friend of mine, Sungyon, a couple of years ago. I met her while she was in graduate school doing brilliant research with robotics while I raised teenagers and young adults alongside trying to keep up with my job as a public health nurse. What differences we may have had in life stage didn’t matter as we shared cup after cup of tea along with heart stories. Our long conversations included the complexity of relationships with family and friends, faith journeys and struggles, and cross-cultural views on just about everything. We would curl up on this massive and impossibly soft couch that often seemed far too big for our city apartment but held so many dear memories that I couldn’t imagine getting rid of it.

Like so many in a university town, Sungyon ultimately defended her PhD thesis and moved on to a job in another area. The couch remained, silent witness to our conversations, to a friendship between two women at different stages of life who found joy and connection with each other.

There were other friendships forged on the couch – some that continue while others served a purpose for a time but because of distance, time, and our limited human capacity have entered the realm of memories. All the while, the couch grew softer with the accumulation of stories and memories.

Friendships weren’t the only thing that our impossibly soft couch witnessed. Indeed, much of life happened in that room. It was on that couch where we learned that our oldest daughter was pregnant, and we would be first time grandparents. I was curled up on the couch when I learned that there was an uprising in Egypt. Other happenings that don’t belong in blogs entered our lives by way of the couch, but they were made easier by the soft comfort of a familiar space.

Through all of the ups and downs of that particular season of life, the couch remained, sometimes changing location in the room but never forfeiting its comfort.

We’d sometimes talk about how much we wanted a sleek leather couch. One that had no cat fur on it. One that was smaller and more expensive, that told a story of success and sophistication. Basically, a couch that was the opposite of our messy lives. We would talk, but it seemed an unnecessary indulgence.

When we left for the Kurdish Region of Iraq in 2018, we left the couch behind. In truth, this was only one of many things we left behind. There was much to mourn and say goodbye to: a faith community that had taken a long time to enter, jobs that offered amazing benefits, purpose, and salaries, most of all family and friends that would be oceans away. With all those other losses, losses that had faces and names, we couldn’t even think about the couch.

An unexpected move back a year later saw us in a fancy furniture store shopping for a couch, and we did it! We finally bought the sleek, chic, sophisticated leather couch. It was beautiful – exactly as we imagined it would be. Gloriously different than we are. We tipped the movers well on the day they moved it into our little, red city house. It found its place and settled in.

But oh, how I miss the crazy, impossibly soft couch. I miss the way I curled up in it and it enfolded me with cushiony comfort. I miss the conversations and cups of tea. I miss the forsythia bush I could see reaching its branches toward the windows. I miss the cats that curled up on its broad arms. I miss the kids that came home from college and graduate school all over the world to have a taste of home. I miss the friendships that were forged and the laughter that was shared.

I miss that impossibly soft couch because I miss the season that it represents.

This weekend, a friend visited us; one who had never experienced our old Cambridge apartment or the comfort of our incredibly soft couch. Instead, she sat on the beautiful leather couch, curled up with a blanket and a couple of soft pillows behind her. We talked, drank tea, and nothing else in the world mattered. And it was both good and right. The couch offered space and comfort, becoming a silent witness to a growing friendship and creating new memories.

This new couch will never be impossibly soft, and perhaps I’ve learned something about what I really want instead of what I think I want. But it can still be a memory maker, becoming softer and more precious from the moments shared and the people that enter and exit our lives.

Pieces of My Heart

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It’s 8 am and from my upstairs perch in Rockport I can hear someone practicing the trumpet. I wish I could adequately describe the off-key feeble attempts at creating notes. Just know that it has me giggling and secretly glad that I’m not in front of the musician. I’m sure it’s giving them great joy, which is a good thing because otherwise it may be intolerable. But – kudos to them for trying something so obviously new to them.

Several weeks ago, one of my nephews sent me an article on the day that is Ash Wednesday for Protestants. I found it deeply challenging and have been thinking about it these last couple of weeks. Written by Nadia Bolz-Weber, the article references an Old Testament reading from the book of the prophet Joel. And then she asks the reader what is harder – fasting for Lent or returning to God with our whole hearts?

My problem…and maybe yours too is that I sort of piece my heart out to things that cannot love me back –  to the unrequited love of so many false promises – my starving little heart is doled out in so many pieces trying to get her own needs met.

Nadia Bolz-Weber in Take Another Little Piece of my Heart, Baby

She goes on to talk about parsing out her heart to social media or addiction or mindless television watching or – fill in the blank. There are uncountable ways that we can dole out our hearts to things that will not give back. They are present and they are easy, even if the things they promise will never satisfy.

Tomorrow, Orthodox Lent begins and tonight is Forgiveness Sunday, where in a beautiful service of repentance, we ask forgiveness of God and each other before entering into this time of fasting and reflecting. As we move toward tomorrow, I am remembering this article and how much I have doled out my heart to everything but God. I find myself empty, discouraged, and wanting. Lent serves as a jolt to my heart, upsetting the status quo and asking rather than demanding that I think about giving my whole heart to God.

Deciding to stop spreading my heart to things that disappoint and returning to God is a theme woven through all of scripture. We see it in individual relationships like the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and we see it in entire communities like God’s constant interactions with the Israelites as they wandered through the Sinai desert. There are few conditions associated with return. We don’t have to look good; we don’t have to be good. The only conditions of return are willingness and repentance. We move forward and, like the faithful father in the story of the prodigal son, he comes running.

Do a search and it quickly shows hundreds of verses. Return to me so I can return to you. Return to me so that you can be restored. Return to me because I’m slow to anger, full of compassion. Return to me for I am gracious, I won’t be angry forever. Return to me. We read and experience this through stories of people over and over again. Clearly, we have a lot of company when it comes to piecing out our hearts.

As I often say in this space, I don’t know what is going on in your lives today. I don’t know what has divided your heart, what pieces and fragments have been spread around in restless longing only to realize that the things you’ve given your heart to will never give you what you long for. I do know that if you are feeling this, I’m with you in the struggle. I’m with you in the discouragement of feeling like the long road is sometimes too long. I’m with you in feeling like giving up, with you in feeling like it’s sometimes just easier to join the throngs of those who seem perfectly happy with hearts that are given to other things.

And I’m also with you in knowing that it’s worth it to return. Indeed – is there any other true way to live than constantly running back to the Father, ready to release my heart, even when I’m so far away? I don’t think there is. In all the piecing out of my heart, I am sure of only one thing – when I decide to return, the Father will be waiting.

Something is Always Leading Us Home

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The window of our plane showed a grey sky and light rain, leading me to sigh inwardly. We had just arrived in Boston after six days in Savannah, Georgia. The weather in Savannah could be described as – well, perfect. Light breeze, no humidity, and between 65 and 70 degrees every day. The old oak trees that are quintessential Savannah were magnificent, their Spanish moss (which we found out was neither Spanish nor moss) gracefully draped across branches.

Coming home to a place where your body and soul don’t always feel like they belong can be a challenge. When I look out the window as I fly into Boston’s Logan International Airport, I think ‘why are there so many trees?’ It is a disconcerting feeling, a sense of alienation instead of belonging. As I make my way through the airport to ground transportation, I go into another space between – that space between the airport and the home we have made in Boston. I walk through the chain-link gate of our small city house and through the door. I know from experience that I have to immediately do something tangible, something concrete that says to me “You’re home. Rest. Breathe.” Sometimes it’s arranging flowers, other times it’s baking bread, still other times it is just getting unpacked as quickly as possible and removing suitcases from view. Once I have done that, my soul begins to settle – at least for a time.

What I have come to know is that my struggle for home is not unique. I have also come to a greater understanding of a spiritual reality that I have known since I was a small child, but that has grown in its theological significance through the years. And that is that no matter what home I have or find here on this earth, there will always be something leading me farther up and farther in, something always leading me to my true home.

Heimat is a German word with no English equivalent. It is described as “the first ‘territory’ that can offer identity, stimulation and safety for one’s own existence” and can only be found “within the trinity of community, space and tradition; because only there human desires for identity, safety and an active designing of life can be pleased.” I think that the only humans who ever truly experienced heimat are Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, that perfect place designed by God for his creation. Only in that space was a perfect trinity possible. In a broken world something always disrupts the trinity of community, space and tradition.

Our entire lives can be taken up with the quest for home, the longing for home. And yet, once we think we have found it, something interferes with the perfect trinity we think we have and we find there is something more.

Something is always leading us home. I thought about this as I watched my mom enter her final journey this past fall. Her yearning for home was both spoken and unspoken, a longing fulfilled on a cold November night as her breath stopped, and she entered eternity.

My mom’s longings find an echo in my own heart and soul, a poignant reminder that throughout life’s transitions, moves, stages, and travels something perennially leads us home, not to a physical shelter but to a place of secure identity and complete belonging. My inward sigh is replaced by the deep comfort of knowing that this longing is woven throughout the human story, ultimately guiding us toward that place where the trinity of community, space, and tradition are perfectly restored in the presence of God.