Welcome, Stranger: Poems of Making and Keeping Our Children (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781646624195)

A reflective and intimate debut, Welcome, Stranger explores the radical act of hospitality that is parenting. It is a meditation on motherhood and faith- surprisingly sacred connections amidst the mundane. The collection is rich with memory, at turns amusing and contemplative, a study of child-rearing's ability to wear us down and enrich our lives with unexpected poignancy.

The poems flow from conception to the liminal space of pregnancy, through childbirth and nursing, to sleepless nights and crushing days, to reflections on adding multiple children and transitioning to toddlerhood, and to studies on the wonder and fear in watching our children grow toward launching into the outside world. A mother of three young children, the author allows the reader into the times that mark her expanding life, whether unexpected cesarean births ("5:06 AM"), bedtime battles ("10:16 PM"), or interrupted nights ("4:30 AM"), while also giving insight into her internal transformation.

The primary task of these poems is unearthing the whispers of the Divine among the chaos that is parenting. In poems like "Consolation," the author wonders if motherhood can be like art, science, or performance, a way to mine the glorious from the daily physicality of the baser tasks of caring for small children.

Rich in evocative images, the author uses Christian religious allusions and sacred texts to delve into how her faith both informs and is formed by the vocation of motherhood. Poems like "Alchemy," "Song and Shuttle," and "Icons" will remind the reader of incense filled churches and Latin masses, with the surprising context of messy parenting.

However informed by her devotion, the poems in this collection are not didactic but contemplative and relatable. Whether describing her experience with postpartum depression/anxiety in "Blue Heat" or laughing at the reality of less intimacy in "Dry Season," the author seeks to find beauty in the fragile state of being human while being in charge of fragile human beings.

The collection ends with poems that move toward the future. Poems like "Trinity Playground" and "Home-video Harbingers" ask if our children are prophets; "A Single Drop" and "Like Fine Red Veins" reflect on the limits and possibilities of faith being passed onto our children; and "Anatomy of An Arrow" looks ahead at the moment when what we've nurtured is released. The reader will be taken on a journey into the author's own experience but also invited to find glimmers of transcendence in his/her own lived reality.