She holds my hand and gently sweeps the polish on to my nails
Kelly is on her name tag but I know it’s not the name her mother gave her
Home is Vietnam, she says with her broken smile
I’ve seen pictures of this place
Half naked children playing in fields
A history of war
Sunsets that split the sky and earth
She looks at my little one getting her nails polished and watching a fairy movie.
"We came here for a better life when my daughter was her size" she says.
I feel ashamed.
For worrying about what my children will wear for Christmas photos and what I will give them at Christmas. For worrying at all. Worry means something so different to her. How I’ve misplaced this word. A thousand times.
She tells me The war took her father when she was 13
I want to take the cream from her and rub her feet. Tell her I’m sorry.
Apologize for all of us, who come in complaining about our layered lives. Asking that our chipped nails be filed and our eyebrows be waxed to perfection.
I tell her my mother is working in Cambodia close to the Thai border
She knows these places
She rubs my arms like I’m delicate
And I am
I have empty decorated bedrooms
Food on my table
Hot showers in mornings
Delicate
She tells me about her mother...that she died in Vietnam from heart failure. That she was unable to be there with her.
I think of my own mother in Cambodia holding a child’s hand. A teachers hand. Telling them a story.
I miss her. Always so far from me. Why Lord are some mothers so far from home, I ask.
The answer comes, “ALL my daughters are far from home”
And in that moment I know that the connections we make here on earth give us a better understanding of our HOME in heaven.
I lean over and whisper to her. What is your real name?
Maybe the most beautiful gift we can give each other is not something that needs to be wrapped. Maybe it’s something as simple as a conversation and the telling of a story. The greatest story ever told wasn’t meant to be shared only on Christmas day in a church. It was meant for the places we go every single day and for the women like us, who long for home.
Luke 2:1-20
