Tuesday, January 25, 2011

My Baby sister



19 years ago, and a few months, I was the baby in the family. It was all me.  I was the youngest, the last and in my opinion....the best of what my parents could produce. And then, at the age of 43 my mother has her last baby..and I am ousted to middle child position...which means I am now forgotten and lost and invisible.

The day Kathryn was born, well it was very early in the morning to be exact. I had fallen asleep waiting to hear the phone ring and so when it did, I jumped up and almost hit the ceiling of my room. Jen, the oldest sister and secure in that position, also answered the phone so both of us echoed the "Hello?..Dad? How is mom..how is the baby??"


"Good, they are both good"


"What is it?"


"Its a girl"


I still felt lost.  Ousted. At least my mother allowed me to help choose the name of my replacement sibling. I picked Kathleen at first but my mother felt that Kathleen Moore was to Irish a name for a girl with no Irish in her. So I settled for Kathryn. I named her after Catherine the Great, one of my favorite queens, and Catherine Earnshaw, the daughter of Catherine Linton in Wuthering Heights because she was loving and good and everything her mother was not and she was going to make a success out of her life and follow her heart.  She married her love and they were happy. That is what I wanted for my Kathryn.

We arrived to the hospital on that dreary March morning. I had brought my mother red tulips because she loved tulips.  A grand gesture, I thought, of kindness and welcome coming from me to my rival.  I wanted to put a good foot forward, even though I hated being the middle child now.

And then I met my baby sister.  Baby Kathryn. She was dark, like a raisin and she had a ton of black hair. I remember thinking that she had a ton of black hair.  And then a crazy thing happened to me. I could no longer remember ever not knowing her. I couldn't remember a time when I didn't have a baby sister named Kathryn. She became our entire world, the whole family, including me. I fell in love with that little raisin in that flash of a second and now I can't believe she wasn't always been in our lives.

I love being the middle child now because it means that Kathryn is the baby and that's the way it's supposed to be.  It turns out that I've been waiting all my life to have a sister named Kathryn. I can't believe I survived so long without her.  She came just in the nick of time. And she is turning out to be everything I hoped she would be.

Now she is my inspiration and my muse.  She teaches me something every time we talk, whether its how to include a music file in an email, or how to be more patient and loving...or how to be fearless and raw and follow your heart.  She is strong and compassionate.  She is brave.  I always think of her as that tiny raisin lying in the hospital or that infant learning to crawl, or that teenager slipping on every piece of ice on the sidewalk while the three of us were in Maine until I thought I was going to lose her under a parked car... or I think of her as the adventurous girl that I saw set off by herself everyday we were in CA together, having adventures and exploring the city of San Francisco ..I thought of her as too young to be able to do that without me but she was fine..she drives everywhere on her own..almost like she doesn't need me anymore and that is a terrible feeling, because I very much need her and I would hate it if I was on a one way street in the needing department..but she is an adult now with talent and a voice. And now the greatest moments for me are when she shares her talent with me or when she shares her voice. I worry that because I live so far away, that I am going to miss something, some tiny bit of her...and I will be the loser if that happens. I don't want to miss a single moment.  I miss my sister Kathryn. (Now I'm gonna hear it from my sister Jen..Love you too Jen, miss you too!)

So here is to baby sisters everywhere, stealing the spotlight and changing lives. Thank you for coming along...nothing would be right without you. We middle children would be nothing without you to miss and worry about and be crushingly proud of.

XOXOXOXOX to you Kate.. I am seeing in me now the things you swear you saw yourself. I miss watching movies with you and playing Mario Kart too.  I miss you asking me or telling me or sharing with me.  I miss your light.  Don't stop shinning it because if you try to shine it very very bright I will feel it, even all the way down here. And I need you, my Kathryn.

Monday, January 24, 2011

No work Mondays

I work a four day work week so I have Mondays off.  And it is just as good as it sounds. Get up late, walk Anna, cook, clean the house, sneak in a nap.  Its very very good.  The bad part? I want every day of the week to be a Monday. Except for Saturday and Sunday, of course.


I'm waiting for dinner to be done and the bottle of Lady in Red to be well oxygenated before I dig in.   


Somehow though, despite the day off and all the relaxing I've been doing, I find myself wallowing to a certain depth of self pity. You see, my husband leaves Friday for France.  F R A N C E...for five weeks. And I, I have to stay here, in Florida, working at the job I do not like. At all.  And I'm not happy about that. At all.  So what am I to do? Wallow.  And eat.  Thats all I've come up with so far. 


Its ruined for me, being alone.  I once loved it, relished in it even. The silence, the freedom of it all.  No one to share my wine with, my food with, no one to explain myself to or wait for. If I wanted to watch a show again, no one complained. If I wanted to watch Out of Africa every night no one complained. (Actually, in all honesty my roommate complained about that one. She once stood at the doorway to my room pleading with me to get out of Africa) But when I was all alone...no one cared what I did.  I could wear socks to bed, I could leave the bathroom door open. And incense...I could burn a ton of incense and set off the smoke alarms if I wanted to. 


So I'm gonna be alone for five weeks.  Blissfully alone.  So what's my problem.


Turns out that being alone isn't as great as I remember it. I can already sense myself falling apart at the seams.  Dennis keeps me from being consumed with self interest.  He keeps me human. And he gives me something to look forward to every single morning and every single night. So I dread these next few weeks without him. While he is drinking in the French coastline and eating the best cheese and tasting the best wine..I'm going to be wallowing here in our condo, with the bathroom door open and Out of Africa on the TV..Alone..waiting for time to pass until we are together again and my life makes sense again. Because, as a wise man once said, when you've met the person you want to spend the rest of you life with, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.




Have five weeks past yet??

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Saturday morning nothings

Sitting here in the sunshine and the 75 degree temps, its hard to imagine that just a short while ago we were trapped up north by snow. I must say that Florida Winter is starting to really grow on me.

Saturday spent at home. This morning I took on the thrilling task of cleaning out our fridge. How does it get so disgusting? Onion peel gets everywhere and why does that half of a lime always slink to the farthest corner making it impossible to find until its shriveled to nothing? I am so proud of myself, I wiped everything down and even rinsed out the drawers. I came across 4 plastic containers full of molded and indiscernible food, and rather than throwing them out or calling forensics to help me identify the remains, I actually cleaned each one out. I gagged the whole time but I did it.  Yes, its true,  I am growing as a person. Or at least Dennis must be having a positive effect on me. However, I still eat and drink everything he doesn't want me to. I keep telling him, baby steps. I wash everything in Borax, that should count as progress.  Plus, I mostly totally stopped burning my incense, mostly. So, I am improving. You can see the improvement if you hold very still and look very very closely at me...and you don't blink.

My weekly loaf of bread is baking in the kitchen (whole wheat), making the house smell delicious.  Anna is asleep in the sunlight of the balcony and all the clothes have been washed, folded and put away. Just call me Suzy-home-maker.  Although Dennis went food shopping, I still feel I've accomplished the lion's share of the housework today. Bravo to me. Did I mention I also walked Anna this morning? Seriously, I'm amazing.

Now I need a nap