Then Came Joy

We're running through the very heart of the monumental central atrium in the Istanbul Grand Airport. My husband, Tim, has sped ahead to see if the plane is still at the gate. I am following behind with our three-and-a-half-year-old daughter.

I'm carrying a giant, heavy backpack, wheeling a carry-on in one hand, and clutching Joy's hand in my other. Sweat drips—down my spine, off my forehead, soaking my waistband. My lower back twinges angrily and my rapid heartbeat thumps in my ears.

Joy grasps my hand with one of hers while wheeling her bag with another, and somehow also clutches the document giving her permission to leave the country. In fact, she's crumpling her official, one-exit-only, emergency document—the fresh and still wet ink smearing in her small hand. I worry she will smear something critical as I drag her along in a halting and ineffective jog.

Soon, Joy's sporadic whines turn to wails, growing louder by the step. I'm sure, wherever he is, Tim can hear her irate voice echoing through the atrium—him and everyone else, including the ever-present police who have been dogging our steps. The police who I have no doubt are observing our every move. My only focus is getting to the gate. I push away every thought of the plane's departure without us, even as I know that's the most likely reality.

Joy's escalating cries set off alarm bells in my mind. My eyes sweep the area like early-warning radar, looking for danger. After three and a half years of trying to parent counter-culturally without being noticed, it's automatic to investigate if anyone's watching. We've always tried not to make a scene that might cause the wrong set of eyes to take interest and bring the catastrophic down on our heads.

She has done so well. She's followed us around this airport for hours on end with very few complaints, while we obey sporadic WhatsApp missives from faceless State Department officials to go here, go there—and, above all else—keep cool.

That is, until the commands and texts became one word: "Run."

These last two weeks have been hell on earth. As two international powers played high-stakes chess with our lives, and her parents did their level best not to disintegrate in front of her, Joy has remained cheerful and patient beyond her years.

We're so close, but Joy can't understand that. In her mind, what's been happening will just keep happening, forever. And she's had enough. So, she digs in her heels and stops.

She just stops.

— — —

My childhood is best told in flannelgraph.

Here are the parents, their names are Tim and Jan. They are happy, adventurous, and so very young.

Here is Jan, raised on a dairy farm, confident and capable enough to conquer the entire world, graduating from Biola with a nursing degree, and beginning her military service. She hitches rides in Blackhawk helicopters, calmly directs an entire hospital, and has never met a grossly out-of-scope project she couldn't tame. She is the calm at the center of every storm.

Here is Tim, eldest son of a preacher man, kicked out of Bible college owing to a series of increasingly hilarious pranks, whipping around Los Angeles delivering aluminum parts. He evolves from attending Toastmasters at the behest of his wife so he can grow more comfortable speaking in public, to never passing up the opportunity to chat up a stranger. He is interested in everyone and everything and exudes kindness.

Here is Jan, pregnant with their first child. She wears a maternity uniform she assembled herself since the Army had none to provide. Jodi is born on the base at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina. And here they are, four months later, moving because of Jan's new posting. She asked for active duty in Vietnam; instead, she was assigned an entire public health program to direct.

Here is Jodi's cat and Jason's dog and bikes and family vacations and Kenny Rogers' concerts. Here is their new house and a neighborhood of kids to play and fight with. Here is their perfect, Christian family, going to church and hanging out with flannelgraph Jesus. See the smiles on their freshly scrubbed faces?

And here they are welcoming a third child, a son named Kerby. Here he is at the very center of their universe as they orbit around him.

Here is Kerby's funeral.