Sunday Guest Blog: The Woman Behind the Mug

Kate's birthday is this Tuesday. She's the woman behind the mug.

A typical Sunday morning out

She's an actor, a producer, a director, a friend, a daughter, a sister, a mom, a wife, and the most amazing person I have ever known. The first birthday that I celebrated with her was nine years ago. At the time, I thought I loved her, and I did, but nine years later, I love her more deeply and more fully than I could ever have known all those years ago. From tropical vacations that included nothing but the two of us and an empty beach, to sleepless nights with sick kiddos, we have been together. The good times and the bad times have brought us closer. We get tired, we get frustrated, and we turn to each other for support. I still get caught breathless when I look at her and realize she chose to spend her life with me, and I wonder how I got so lucky.

I could ramble on, but I won't here. However, if you ever want to know more, just ask me, and if you have a few days, I will tell you more about how amazing she is.

Happy Birthday, Kate!

Love,
Jim

Missing Deadlines

I write these books. Books is generous, or perhaps, write is generous. I assemble these books for my daughters' birthdays. They are full of photos from the previous year and accompanied by a story. Although, last year, for O's third birthday, I wimped out and did an alphabet book.  A is for Absolutely Overwhelmed.

Now, O's fourth birthday has come and gone and I sit staring at the computer screen with P's second birthday standing menacingly over my shoulder. I am two books past deadline. I understand that it's not a real deadline, not a publisher's-breathing-down-your-neck deadline, but rather a self-imposed, pretending-to-have-your-shit-together deadline. And I do, mostly, have my shit together. But the 26th of April has come and gone, and not only is O's 4th book not here, it's not even written. I guess my fear is that it will become too easy not to do it, that I will fall so far behind and the backlog will become insurmountable, and they'll have these two or three lovely memories from their early life, and not the eighteen-volume set I had envisioned, kind of like that baby book that is 1/3 filled out (thanks a lot Mom and Dad). And maybe it's just that, it starts to feel like another failure, and what is modern parenting, if not a series of real or imagined failures?

So this time, I've chosen not to fail, real or imagined. I've chosen to write that book, in spite of being tired, in spite of feeling uninspired, in spite of being so far past my self-imposed deadline, and in spite of the inevitability of next year's book's being due in nine months. I want them to have that record, that eighteen-volume set, and gosh darn it, I need a win. 

The first page

The upside is, after an hour or so of nonjudgmental typing, I'm about halfway done. Jim assures me the story is charming and the layout is attractive. I might even believe him tomorrow, but hey, worst case scenario, it will be the Superman IV of an eighteen-part series. 

We aren't failing. We may be succeeding in a way that is different than we imagined, but we aren't failing. Today, O told me she thought the most important thing is to be kind. That feels like a win. 

This Guy: a birthday

O: It's still my birthday, right? It's always my birthday, until it is daddy's?

I asked Jim what I should write about him for his birthday and he said, "This is Jim. He is great. Let's have cake." I tried, but I couldn't come up with anything better, so...

This is Jim. He is great. Let's have cake.

But, seriously.  This is Jim.

The most loving, generous, compassionate person I know

He is great.

A great partner, a great friend, a great father

Let's eat cake.

Let's have cake together to celebrate this birthday, our daughters' weddings, our 50th wedding anniversary.  Hell, let's have cake to celebrate tomorrow and the next day too.  

This is Jim. I'm a big fan. Happy Birthday.

My Birth Day

O: What's a birthday? 

K: It's how we celebrate how many trips you've made around the sun.

O: How many trips have I made?

K: You have made four.  Four whole trips.

O was born at 4:26pm on 4/26/10. Whether that was fudged by a nurse with OCD or actual fact, I'll never know. I was a little distracted.

I woke up that morning planning to go to work, sure I had at least 6 more weeks of waddling around with a baby in my belly. I sat up in bed, sneezed, and my water broke. I called Jim, told him I was going to head to the hospital, but that he could probably stay at work. He came home. As we drove to the hospital, I was convinced that I wasn't going to have a baby that day.  It was too early.  We had just interviewed, but not yet hired, our doula. We didn't even have a car seat.  Her baby shower was the following weekend.

By the time we hit the hospital, my contractions had started and reality had taken hold. My dreams of a drug-free birth hit the floor as the pain hit my body. The anesthesiologist looked like an angel, halo and wings, when she came in to give me my epidural. I was in transition, but was too scared, and too overwhelmed to realize it. The rush of relief from the epidural was one of the highest highs I've ever felt.  Never had I more clearly understood how pleasure can just be the absence of pain.

No one said anything about those six weeks. Suddenly, when it was time to push, a team of gown-clad doctors and nurses rushed into the room. I realized pretty quickly that they weren't there for me.  The NICU team was there, just in case.  

5lbs 9oz

O was born quickly and without incident. She was small, but strong and cried lustily. That team from the NICU quickly and quietly left the room, happy to have witnessed a birth that they were not needed for. I still remember holding her, her body stretching from my elbow to my wrist. That first night was hard, with two botched blood draws and panic about her white blood cell count. But somehow, even only a few hours in, my newly-minted mother's intuition kept reassuring me that she was fine.  

And she was. She came home with us the next day, and other than some gnarly jaundice, she was perfect. They gave us an electric light-up blanket to wrap her in. She reminded me of a glow worm. At some point, I remembered to call in to work.

Look at that chub. Somebody made up for lost time. 

Today, she is four. Each year, her birthday seems to become more hers and less ours. Today was about surprises, special lunches, and a big girl bed. Tonight, though, now that she is asleep, is about memories. Tonight is about my birth day, one of the most terrifyingly beautiful days of my whole life.  

Congratulations on your 4th trip around the sun, O.