mama3girls-phnig

I grew up in the country. At least that’s the simplest way to say it. But even that feels imprecise, which is fitting, because perfectly imperfect is part of all our stories.

I grew up in Adkins, Texas—or at least that’s what we told people. The problem is, Adkins is not actually a town.

It’s a mailing code.

I was smack dab between China Grove, made famous by the The Doobie Brothers on their way to a show in San Antonio, and La Vernia, which felt like actual country: farmers, ranchers, large plots of land, livestock, caliche driveways, and people who knew exactly where they were from.

I keep coming back to the lyrics of China Grove, especially the line about the preacher and the teacher being the talk of the town. The Doobie Brothers had it right. Places like this are not connected primarily by roads or maps. They are connected by people—by teachers and preachers, by hairdressers and gas stations, by gossip and grief, by stories that somehow keep flying long after the sun goes down.

Adkins was different.

I would call it suburban country.

That distinction may not matter to most people, but it matters to me. A town has a center. A town has boundaries. A town has a sign you drive past that tells you you’ve arrived. Adkins had addresses, mail routes, and pockets of land, but no real downtown. No obvious center. No moment where you crossed a line and thought, I’m here.

Or at least, that’s not entirely true.

Because as I sit here writing this, I realize Adkins did have landmarks.

One of them was my father’s house.

My dad built a geodesic dome house off Pittman Road—a round house unusual enough that people used it as a directional marker.

“You know where that round house is off Pittman? That’s Adkins.”

I love that. People needed something concrete to orient themselves, something visible, something memorable. And somehow, for a while, our strange round house became part of how people located home.

It was also part of how my mother located herself. She was a hairdresser—the Country Cutter—and she marketed her own products with my dad’s pencil rendering of the dome on them. Even before I understood branding, I understood that image: our round house had turned into a symbol, a logo, a way of saying:

This is where we are from.

Which, if you know small-town Texas, means my mother may as well have been local press. People felt safe telling her things. She could track a woman’s marital distress and time of the month by the way she wanted her hair.

“Cut it all off.”

Before long, the customer and my mom had usually decided maybe length was better after all, and Mom sent her home with calming oils and herbal remedies.

I’m not sure my mom actually made money.

“That’s okay,” my dad would say. “We’re rich in the things that count.”

That same round house sat close enough to Mr. C’s—a tiny gas station near Highway 87—that my sister and I could venture there by crossing storm drains.

Mr. C’s mattered.

Mom and Dad knew we would dig change out of couch cushions and creatively decide what the stomach and soul needed—or at least what both could afford—for $1.22. For a large chunk of my childhood, that meant a white chocolate Hershey’s bar for me. For Chas, it was Kit Kat. If we struck it rich, we could usually get a Big Red or a Dr Pepper too.

I would eat my candy bar immediately, with no delay, no strategy, and certainly no long game. Chas, on the other hand, would stash hers. Then, just when I had inhaled mine and started regretting my lack of impulse control, she would casually pull out her Kit Kat.

She was sneaky, that one.

Maybe that all sounds insignificant. It doesn’t feel insignificant to me, because if I’m honest, I think growing up in a place that wasn’t quite a place left a mark on me. There has been a subtle but persistent feeling in my life of never fully being home.

Not homeless.

Just… hard to locate.

Not entirely country. Not entirely suburban. Not entirely city. Always a little in-between—close enough to belong, far enough to feel slightly outside.

So when I say nobody lives in Adkins, I’m joking. But I’m also not joking. People live there. I lived there. And yet even now, Adkins feels less like a place on a map and more like a feeling.

A kind of geography of almost.

Almost here.

Almost named.

Almost home.

Which is why, years later, when I met one of Jimmy’s friends’ wives and learned she was from Adkins, my reaction was immediate.

“What the actual hell?”

Her name is Sally. Her husband, Mark, went to high school with Jimmy. Sally and I should never have crossed paths except for the strange geometry of South Texas life. Somebody’s husband went to high school with your husband. Somebody’s mama was somebody’s hairdresser. Somebody’s older sister babysat somebody else’s future friend. And years later, over dinner, the story circles back around.

Recently, Sally reminded me of a story from my childhood that I do not remember at all. I asked her, “Okay, Sally, tell me the story of my youth that I keep forgetting.”

She laughed.

The story involved her older sister, Margie. Apparently, when I was little—little enough that my parents still occasionally paid for childcare, which honestly surprises me because my parents did not spend money on much—I spent time with Margie while my parents were away. Why they needed childcare, I have no idea. Maybe they went to Mexico. Maybe they had somewhere to be. Could have been court related. My childhood was complex.

But this is what mattered.

After babysitting me, Margie told Sally something she apparently repeated for years.

“She’s my favorite.”

Not prettiest. Not smartest. Not easiest.

Favorite.

Every time Sally tells me that story, something softens in me. Because if I’m honest, there is something profoundly human about wanting to know your presence brought delight to another person. Not because of achievement. Not because you performed well. Not because you earned love.

And some days, my heart wants to harden, even though I actively pray against it when I am hurting.

My heart softens when someone experienced you and thought:

I like this one.

I don’t think we outgrow that hunger.

We just get better at pretending we don’t need it.

Sally and I kept talking the way old friends do—half storytelling, half teasing, half accidental therapy, which yes, adds up to more than one whole, but that feels right.

At some point we started talking about my writing. I told her I’m publishing blog posts in a way where basically nobody will find me unless they know me. That part is intentional. I’m not ready for the whole world yet.

Not yet.

I joked that maybe one day I’ll become the next Anne Lamott, writing Bird by Bird—post by post.

Somewhere in the middle of explaining all of that, I said a phrase I didn’t realize I was saying until Sally stopped me.

She looked at me and said, “Wait. Did you just make that up?”

I blinked.

“Make what up?”

She said, “A stage of miracles.”

I stared at her. Apparently those words had just fallen out of my mouth.

A stage of miracles.

The more I sat with it, the more it felt true, because that may be the best description of this season of my life. Not certainty. Not arrival. Not clarity.

A stage of miracles.

Small miracles happening on unfinished stages. Private miracles before public ones. Words arriving before confidence. Healing before visibility. Truth before applause.

I think that’s what writing has become for me—not performance, but practice. Not branding, but becoming.

Later in the conversation, we started talking about artists and musicians—people I have always loved. For a long time, I think some part of me translated people like that into a single category: brilliantly quirky and somehow operating on a plane I could admire but never quite access. Like my father. Or Kurt Cobain.

Not as an insult, obviously. Just… other. People who feel more, notice more, carry more, create more.

But Sally gently challenged that frame. She said she didn’t think that was weird at all. In fact, she said something much more beautiful. She said maybe artists and writers are simply people willing to live more fully as themselves.

That landed deeper than she probably realized.

Because maybe what gets labeled strange isn’t strangeness at all. Maybe it’s authenticity. Maybe what unsettles people is not eccentricity but congruence—the rare experience of being around someone whose inner life and outer life actually match.

Someone who isn’t performing for the applause of other people.

Someone who is simply themself.

Sally told me that one of the reasons she enjoys being around me is because I’m authentic. Because I’m myself.

Which is cute. I have always admired this about Sally. She is polished and professional. I am quirky and artsy.

Somehow we make it work.

Dinner gave us another reminder of why that matters. Our waitress was struggling. You could feel it before you could name it. Eventually, when gently asked if she was okay, she blurted out the truth.

She was miscarrying.

Right then, while working, serving tables, and trying to keep moving in front of a table of former MOPS moms—Mothers of Preschoolers—who have now apparently graduated into Mothers of Adult Kids.

For a brief moment, the whole table became aware of how much pain people can carry while still showing up and doing their jobs. She didn’t want spectacle. She didn’t want rescuing.

She wanted dignity.

Later, Tracy—the friend we had gathered to celebrate because her cancer is in remission—quietly asked if the waitress had Venmo. The waitress gave it to her. Nobody made a scene. Nobody performed compassion.

We just made room.

Before we left, I scribbled my phone number on a napkin.

“If you ever need someone to talk to,” I told her, “or if you ever need moms, call me. We’ll be there.”

Then the matriarch of our group—the grandmother energy at the table, the kind every younger mom instinctively recognizes—asked a simple question.

“Do you go to church?”

The waitress shook her head.

“No.”

I asked gently, “Would you be willing to tell us why?”

She paused, then said something I have not stopped thinking about.

“I feel like you have to perform when you walk into church.”

Then she said the part that silenced the table.

“I’m recovering from addiction, and I’m learning that performance keeps you from your authentic self. I don’t really need that from churches right now.”

No one argued with her. No one defended institutions. No one rushed to explain.

We simply listened.

And we all agreed.

What a loss when the places meant to welcome the hurting begin to feel like places where pain must be polished before it can enter.

I keep hearing versions of this everywhere—from trauma survivors, recovering addicts, young adults, exhausted parents, and people who still believe in God but no longer trust spaces that reward polished appearances over honest presence.

People are not starving for performance.

They are starving for connection.

Real connection. Honest connection. The kind where you can tell the truth before you’ve cleaned it up.

I wish all stories could be wrapped up with a pretty bow.

They just don’t.

Not in real life.

Maybe that’s the miracle. Not the dramatic kind. Not lightning from heaven.

Just this.

A babysitter who remembered a little girl. A friend who reflected language back to me. A table full of women making room for pain. A young woman brave enough to tell the truth.

Maybe a stage of miracles looks exactly like that.

And then, before we all left for the evening, I got to perform—which is ironic, because for once, I wasn’t performing for approval. I was just being useful.

A table near us squealed. Chairs scraped backward. Young men climbed up onto them. I got up and went to collect the large cockroach that had made its home under one of the table legs. By the time I released it through the emergency exit door, I turned around and saw an entire restaurant clapping for me.

I was on stage, so naturally, I took a bow.

Then I looked at Sally and said, “Growing up in the country has its benefits.”

She laughed and agreed.

Maybe that is why three simple words from Kurt Cobain have lingered in the culture for so long:

Come as you are.
— Nirvana, “Come as You Are”

Because it turns out most of us are not afraid of being seen at our best.

We are afraid of being seen before we have cleaned ourselves up.

And maybe that is where miracles have been happening all along.