WATFORD CITY, N.D. - Edie made her stage debut as "Baby Jesus No. 4" in church last Sunday.
As the story of Mary, Joseph and the angel unfolded on a stage filled with neighbor kids in homemade costumes, moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles and cousins looked on adoringly, waiting for their kid to take the stage as a camel or a wise man.
Meanwhile, in the middle of the congregation's beautiful try at the refrain of "Angels We Have Heard on High," Edie joined in the chorus with a fart so loud it rumbled our late-to-church front-row pew. Turns out Edie's first church fart led to a poop explosion that leaked through the special "Baby Jesus No. 4" outfit I picked out for the occasion, which also seeped onto her dad's pants, which sent him and his sweet, stinky daughter to the back room for a quick change, only to have her re-emerge down the aisle dressed in fuzzy footie pajamas right on cue and right in time to lie down in a bouncy seat manger among a half-dozen barn animals, a dove, a monkey, a skunk, a couple shepherds, the angels, Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus Nos. 1, 2 and 3.
The little country church where I grew up is experiencing a baby boom, and there was our Edie, second to youngest by a day, right in the middle of a Christmas story with carols, memorized lines and a close call with the Christmas tree, the Advent candles and a toddler in a donkey hat.
It struck me then that Edie's only 4 weeks old and already she has a memory. Not one that she'll recall necessarily, but one I will retell to her year after year, about her first Christmas, her first stage debut and her first trip to that little church.
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When I was young, I used to love to hear the story about the day I was born. It was a drought year, 100 degrees for days on end and a tough year for cattle. I was expected mid-July, but it was late August and my dad drove my mom over summer fallow fields in their old pickup to help induce labor.
But I came on my own time, in a small hospital in my hometown, delivered by an old Norwegian doctor with a thick accent. And when my dad held me for the first time, he looked out the window to find the sky had opened up and it was finally raining.
I don't tell it as well as my parents do, because it isn't my memory. But it is part of my story, a part that I loved to hear because it made me feel like my coming into this world had something to do with the long-awaited rain.
When I tell Edie the story of her birth, I will tell her how peaceful it was, arriving at the hospital in the early hours of the morning. I will tell her how she came to us quickly and without issue, and how I wailed a breath of relief and gratefulness when I heard her cry.
I will tell her how we got to take her home on Thanksgiving, which was fitting because we were the most thankful we've ever been, and so began weeks of an endless stream of guests, friends and family lining up at the door to meet her.
Watching all 20 or so children stand up in front of the church last Sunday to help tell the most famous birth story of all and seeing our tiny baby girl among them, I couldn't help but think that each and every one of those children have their own special "coming into the world story" that they will hear year after year.
And some will hear about that day in church, about how she recited her lines as Mary perfectly, about how he ran down the aisle on a stick horse, the most gallant and swift 2-year-old king of all, about how he almost knocked the Advent candle over into the Christmas tree and about how only Baby Jesus No. 4 could get away with such a loud fart in church.
Jessie Veeder is a musician and writer living with her husband on a ranch near Watford City, N.D. Readers can reach her at jessieveeder@gmail.com .
