Laurel Elisabeth Stevens

In each house we lived in growing up, I always knew where the photo albums were. In the house on Snag Lane in Spring, Texas they were in the wood-paneled living room, in one of the many built-in cabinets.  I could pull out the albums and wedge myself between the orange couch and the cabinets, leafing through memories. I would usually set aside the large album with paper pages and a blue and teal cloth cover.  This one held my parents’ wedding pictures, which I didn’t quite value at the time.  The photographs were black and white after all.  My favorites were an album with a cover that looked like basket weave, and one that had a slightly blurry close-up of white flowers on a background of leaves and stems. The photos were held down firmly on sticky pages underneath clear film.   Turning the pages was time travel—sometimes to moments remembered only in photos, others, to glimpses of events well-remembered. There’s one of a naughty two-year old me, try...

         I wrote this piece recently for a live story-telling show about motherhood called  Listen to Your Mother.  It was a wonderful  opportunity  to prepare this story and then read it to a live audience in San Antonio. I share it with grief and hope.  LS It was ten years ago this March—ten years ago that the doorbell rang sometime after seven in the evening on that Saturday night.  I was already upstairs getting ready for bed, feeling bulky and cumbersome at nearly 41 weeks of pregnancy.  Our three-year old daughter was sound asleep, and I resented this unexpected intrusion into a quiet evening with my husband John. Through the beveled glass of the front door I saw my parents and younger brother.  Why would they just drop in unannounced when they lived an hour away? I opened the door with a smile, trying to cover the curiosity and irritation I felt.  But when I saw their faces, my stomach churned. “W...

As our van drove up to the unofficial refugee camp, a group of children were already coming over to greet us.  “Hello!”  They practiced their new English with bright vowels.  “Nice to meet you!”    It was a beautiful spring day, and I was over the worst of the jet lag after traveling from Texas to Lebanon with a group of six others from my church.  On day four of our trip we had visited with Christians who were stretching themselves every day to serve refugees from their old enemy of Syria.  Now it was our turn to visit a camp and see it with our own eyes.  Fadil*, our guide for the morning, told us that we were invited by Nadia to visit her tent and talk with her.  The tent was one of hundreds and hundreds nestled close together just on the edge of town.  They were made of wood and covered with plastic, some covered with old billboard material—the walls of homes made from out-of-date advertising.  We took off our shoes an...