The Heart of Memory

from Marisa and her concern. Claiming she had a doctor’s appointment she needed to get to-a foolproof excuse she was cautious not to overuse – she took Marisa back to A &A rather than lingering over their coffee. “Give me your receipts and I’ll file them for you,” Marisa said when they pulled in. “That way you can just get going to your appointment.”

“That’s alright, I need to talk to Shaun a minute anyway. I’ll go write them up myself.” She followed Marisa in and turned into Shaun’s office, which was empty. She poked her head out into the hall and glanced around. “Brenda, is Shaun in?”

“No, I’m sorry. Do you want me to call him for you?”

“No, that’s alright.” She’d been planning on asking when he’d be home that night, but she had a feeling she already knew the answer.

She pulled her receipts from Dazbog and Village Inn from her purse and sat down at his desk to hunt down a reimbursement form. She was about to start checking his drawers when she saw one of the forms on top of a pile. Her name was at the top.

“Oh, handy.” She pulled it off and took a pen from the cup to write in the details, but then her eye caught a line item that looked unfamiliar. Then another.

Why are these under my name? She looked again at the form and wracked her brain. Maybe they were from her and she just didn’t remember. Maybe memory loss was also a part of the new Savannah.

She gave up trying to place the expenses and wrote down the day’s totals, then paper-clipped the receipts to the form. She’d ask him when he got home. If she was able to stay awake that long.

CHAPTER 8

SHAUN STOOD BESIDE HIS CAR AND TOOK A PICTURE OF THE building so he’d remember it. The Mountain View property was the second office suite he’d looked at that afternoon, but this one gave him a good vibe. It was only two exits further south on the freeway, so it wouldn’t require a much farther commute for his staff, and the neighborhood wasn’t nearly as sketchy as the first he’d visited. It would shave nearly three hundred dollars off their rent, which was as good as he was going to find. It was quite a bit smaller than their current location, but if he gave up his office for a cubicle, removed the sitting area in the reception space, and doubled up a couple people, they’d be fine. Or he could fire someone else. There was someone who wasn’t really pulling her weight these days, but unfortunately it was the same person around whom the whole ministry was built.

Another positive was that it was only half an hour from Jessie’s campus, and the halfway mark boasted a decent shopping area where they could meet. It was where he was headed now.

He shook hands with the Realtor again, then got back in his car with a smile on his face.

Jessie was already at the Caribou Coffee when Shaun pulled in. He ordered his drink and then joined her at the table she’d chosen by the window. “Well, this is fun, seeing you during the week,” he said after giving her a hug. “Good classes today?”

“Totally fascinating, yes.” He listened as she told him about her child development lecture. “And I had this huge revelation,” she said, her eyes shining. “I just kept thinking, motherhood is so much more than just housework and babysitting. You’re a mentor, you’re a teacher, you’re a nurse, you’re a psychologist. And it totally hit me-I don’t have to have a career just because I can. Being a fulltime mother is a huge responsibility; you’re responsible for shaping and teaching a person for their whole life. Sure, I’d be able to shape and teach if I taught elementary school, but my influence would be so brief compared to the influence you have as a parent. It really is okay if I want to stay home and be ‘just’ a mom.” She raised her eyebrows, looking uncertain. “Right?”

He chuckled. “Of course. If that’s what God is calling you to, then it’s absolutely okay. And I’m really happy for you that you’re figuring this out. I think you’ll make a fantastic ‘“just” a mom’.”

“Thanks.” She sipped her drink and rolled her eyes. “I’m so glad you get how important this stuff is to me.”

“Of course I do.” Then he caught her meaning. “But your mom, it’s not like she doesn’t see the value -”

“No, she just thinks I should be doing something else. The stuff I want to do is never what she wants me to do. It’s like she has this idea of who she thinks I’m supposed to be, but rather than just come out and say, ‘I think you’d make a great XYZ,’ she just shoots down everything I like and expects me to read her mind or something.”

Shaun winced, knowing how accurate the description was. “There’s a reason for that, Jessie.” And he really wished Savannah had just come out and explained it to Jessie years ago-it might have saved them all a lot of heartache. “Your mom was raised in a culture that had a very narrow idea of what women should do and be. Anything outside of that was supposedly unbiblical. And she sees you moving toward teaching, which was the only career option she was allowed to consider outside of motherhood, and she’s afraid you’re going to short-change yourself; with your skills and talents you could go so many other directions.”

“But I’m not short-changing myself if that’s what I’m meant to be, right? So why can’t she see that?” She took a sip of her drink, then set it down with a look of worry. “Oh, my gosh. She feels short-changed because she had me, doesn’t she? She didn’t want to be a mom, is that it?”

“Oh, Jessie-no, that isn’t true at all. A &A was born out of her experiences as a mother; she never would have had the ministry without you.”

Jessie let out a snort. “That’s a bit twisted, given how much that ministry short-changed me out of a mom.” She gave Shaun a small grin. “You should have at least given me a sibling so I would have had someone to commiserate with-and someone else to help bear Mom’s expectations.”

“Well, we tried.”

“Eww, Dad. Gross.”

“No, no. I mean, your mom was pregnant, two other times. But she miscarried both times.”

Jessie’s eyes got wide. “Seriously? Why didn’t anyone ever tell me this?”

“Your mom took it really hard. She was absolutely devastated. I don’t think she’s ever really gotten over it.”

Jessie’s face fell. “Well now I feel bad.”

“Don’t, honey. You couldn’t have known. Anyway, that’s when she started writing her first book, to help her process the grief of that second loss. And things just took off from there. It’s not like she woke up one day and thought, ‘I’m going to build a nationally known ministry!’ She just had this idea for a book and wanted to use it to reach out to all the other women who were dealing with the same frustrations and confusions and fears that she had. And when it got bigger and bigger, she had no role model to look to for how to balance a job and motherhood. It just wasn’t done in her family, or in the culture she grew up in. So she did the best she could, and she screwed up, because that’s what parents do. She didn’t want to push you toward teaching and motherhood the way she was pushed, but she went too far in the other direction and tried to push you into a big career so you wouldn’t think teaching and motherhood were your only options. That’s parenthood for you: you learn from the mistakes of your parents and try not to pass those on, but then you end up making other mistakes instead. The best you can do as a kid is recognize your parents aren’t perfect and realize that you do in fact have your own opinion and destiny.”

Jessie was quiet for a moment, stirring her blended mocha with her straw. “So what mistakes did your parents make?”

Shaun chuckled. “My dad was an absent professor type, minus the intellect and education. Frankly, he was a bit of a laughingstock. He’d dream up all sorts of schemes and try to patent them or sell them to companies, rather than apply himself to a steady job. So we were poor and our family was looked down on, and I grew up wanting to make sure my own family never felt like that.”

Jessie smiled. “So, off I’ll go into my own life to screw up my own kids in my own unique way.”

He laughed. “Yes, exactly.”

“Maybe I ought to charge you for the therapy I end up needing.”

“Hey, if the money’s there I’ll gladly pay it.” His heart ached as he said the words, knowing the chances were