Dad

October, 2019

Nearly seven weeks ago, my dad died.  Writing that seems as surreal as the actual experience.  And yet, here I sit, fatherless.

We watched it happen.  My mother and my three siblings, we watched as my father quickly deteriorated.  We watched over the course of hours as he rapidly lost comprehension of reality and slipped into some kind of in-between.  And unless you've also seen it happen, there isn't a way to explain it except for that.  He was still up and walking. Still talking. It wasn’t the quiet, laying in bed, waiting for death you’ve seen in movies. It wasn’t like that. We sat around in the dark and shared stories around him.  We laughed so hard, we cried.  And then, we just cried to cry.  My brother, Wesley, and I stayed up all night and watched him struggle to breathe.  We idly chatted, just to make noise and to keep his mind occupied.  I shared with him his last glass of wine.  Wes helped him change positions every few minutes.  We held hands.  I received his last ever kiss. We whispered things to him we really needed to say.  We told each other hard truths about growing up that we never shared with each other before.  Wes smelled like lavender and my dad smelled like...him. 

Despite what anyone will tell you, there isn't anything to prepare you to lose a parent.  There isn't another person who has gone through it who can tell you what it feels like, but they will understand.  There isn't a little blue book on the planet, and the hospice nurses will kindly hand one over to you, that will make sense of what you are about to experience.  There just is not.  Because all the preparation in the world cannot make you ready for yours to completely crumble.  And that's what it feels like.

I told myself I was ready.  The days leading up to his death, my dad and I had several conversations about his final wishes.  He told me what he wanted to wear.  What kind of casket he wanted to be buried in.  How he worried about my mom.  How he worried about us kids.  He gave me all his passwords and told me he hoped my mom knew how to navigate life insurance policies, because he hadn't a clue.  He sat on their couch, in his usual spot, with his trusty German Shepherd beside him and told me stories of his life "before."  Before his heart transplant, before he became sick, before he wasn't able to get out on his own.  Before us kids, before my mom, before he was grown. Before, before, before.

And, during those days, the stories didn't fall right on me.  Even just a few weeks ago, we were so wrapped up in my father's illness, it was hard to remember any time before he was frail and pale.  But, the truth was, that wasn't my dad at all.  My dad was strong and olive-skinned.  He always wore a mustache and had a deep and booming voice.  He was intimidatingly brilliant and made people around him nervous before he ever made them comfortable.  Winning him over was a valiant accomplishment and I was always kind of relieved that I never had to do it.  He flew airplanes and drove Porsches and Audis and hard-to-find Volkswagens.  He taught every one of us kids to drive a stick shift and loved a good prank.  He had Asian/Cherokee eyes that he inherited from his father, and when he laughed, they got really small and sparkly and watered like crazy.  He was overly affectionate and loved a good time.  He loved animals.  Dogs.  Llamas.  Horses.  His best friend when we were growing up was the small town veterinarian and my dad would help him deliver all the large animals in the surrounding communities.  He loved camping and hunting.  He loved history and artifacts. Arrowheads. Coins. Bones. Quilts.  Cardigan sweaters.  Tweed hats.  The Gulf Coast.  San Francisco. Bagpipes. The Moody Blues.  John Sebastian.  He used to make us mixed tapes when we "kids" were in high school and we loved them.  He adored and was so proud of my mother, almost as much as they drove each other crazy.

He was hard on us.  Too hard, sometimes.  He was strict with us girls, more with me than my sister.  He always said he could trust her more.  But that he worried about me less.  He could sum up any boy I brought home with an uncanny accuracy after the first meeting.  "Probably a solid B-student.  Smokes too much weed.  Pretentious and probably an asshole.  Thinks he's real cute by pulling that shit with me, but he's too lazy to be going out with you." He was popular with his peers and respected by nearly everyone who ever met him.  I was so proud to be his daughter.  I still am. Whenever I run into someone who knew him, it’s an inevitable, “Ahh, Doc. He taught me about [fill in the blank here]. He was amazing.”  He was. 

The waves of grief are sometimes unbearable.  They come from nowhere...a song on the radio, a smell in the air.  Sometimes, a simple memory will trigger me to choke on my own tears.  I mourn for my mother, too, and the inability to understand the immense loneliness she must feel.  It's just not something we were ready for, although it feels like we spent so much time preparing for it.  I have so many pictures from the 18 hours leading up to his death.  They are as comforting as they are painful.  I love to look at them, and then I regret that I ever did.  But, they help me to keep close all the memories of that night: the last time he addressed Eve.  The last time he looked at me.  The last time he laughed.  The last time he made a smart-ass remark to my mother.  The last time they held each other on the couch.  The last time he stood with my mom, resting his head, eyes closed, on my much-larger brother’s chest. All of those, a mere fingerprint away...when I'm ready.

And, for the times I am not, I still hear him half-laugh and half-scoff at me with a "Damnit, Cate." (He never called me Catie.  Cate or Catherine.  That's it.)  I can smell his beard and his vanilla tobacco.  I can feel his breath on my cheek when he whispered something in my ear.  I can hear him sing. I can feel the warmth of his leg when we'd sit together on couch. To date, it doesn’t feel like he’s gone yet.


July 27, 2020

Over ten months now, and I can't say that the pain has dulled much.  Maybe it has a little; it doesn't burn so heavily in my chest and I'm not on the verge of tears with every word that comes out of my mouth.  I love to talk about him and I mention him casually pretty often.  My entire family does.  We can joke about him not being here (like finding humor in my niece saying that Grandma had gone to Springfield, where he is buried, to see Grandad and bring him home.)  My memories are good.  They are pretty and frequent.  They aren't so much of the last few hours before his death or the very unpleasant and ugly moments as he died, but of the really funny things he said or did; his quirky likes and dislikes, and the times he lost his temper about the most ridiculous things. 

I found his leather tobacco pouch recently, just before Independence Day.  He lost it at my house two years ago, along with (allegedly) a couple of tins of sardines.  The sardines have yet to be recovered, but the tobacco pouch was tucked away in a galvanized mail sorter.  Top compartment.  Too high for me to have ever seen it.  And it still smelled like him, sweet and earthy.  I slept with it next to my bed for a few nights before I offered to give it back to my mom.  In return, she gave me the quilt he died in; the one I bought him for Christmas a couple of years ago.  It was a good trade. As I type this, it’s draped across me. 

Recently, I worked in the adult ED for a shift, in the same room I sat with him for his last ER visit.  The room where he told my mom with a smile that he was done fighting the inevitable.  The same room I held his hand and talked to him about food while my mom and sister tried to process what he just said. I took a patient to the same ICU where I sat next to him after school for weeks in high school while he lay, asleep.  Where I work, where I spend a lot of my nights, is crawling with memories of him, and not all good ones.  It's the hardest part, sometimes, of trying to find the peace in his passing.  Walking the halls of the hospital is like trying to avoid shards of glass sticking out from the walls, waiting to catch your clothes and cut into your skin.  If I keep my attention just a few degrees out of focus, I can manage.  If I pay too close attention, I see him everywhere.  

Right now, there isn’t an escape from the grief. Or the memories. But I don’t hate it.

The Good

Eleven months now. 

Today, I listened to someone read “The Tale-Tell Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe. Intentionally. With my eyes closed so I could remember being eight and sitting at my dad’s feet and listening to him read it. I love that story, always have. And he told it with the best crazed, inflection-filled intensity that had me on the edge of my seat and seconds from crawling out of my skin. I loved it. I must have heard it 100 times by now, 99 of which were read by him. 

I miss him. I miss him all the time. And though it now does feel like he’s gone and I’ve forgotten what his beard smells like, I feel like I remember so much more of the regular Dad. The Dad who wasn’t sick. 

And I’m certain he’s pumping his fists at the state of the world and thanking God he doesn’t have to be here right now. 

I’m also becoming so keenly aware of how alike we are. How hot our tempers can blaze and extinguish. How deeply we can dig our heels in about something, how stubborn stubborn can be. How we possess the shared ability to make decisions quickly and not really process them until later.  How annoyed we can get, and say nothing about it until our gaskets just blow, and how we like things just how we like them.  Oysters on a chilled plate. The crouton on French onion soup. Coffee, thick, but tea to be weak. No sweet drinks, ever. Seafood. Japanese food. Scaring our kids. And feeling like we don’t owe anybody anything when we get in just the right mood.

And I can see how his relationship with my mother was remarkable, and how selfless she was when it came to him. And how his relationships with my siblings, ones I used to envy, were just different than ours. They were uniquely theirs. They have their own stories to tell, their own memories. 

Wes’s connection to my dad is through medicine and politics.

Mine is through our tastes in life and music.

Colleen’s is through aviation and food.

And Thomas’s through cars and random knowledge.

He understood and connected to all of us differently. Deeply.  Inherently ours.  

We have since been able to share things we never knew about our own father, and that’s something incredible. I spend more time with my family. I spend less time fighting with them. We’re brutally honest with each other. Our language is raw and we’ve accepted each other exactly as we are. We laugh more than we have in a long, long time. 

The grief isn’t pretty, but it’s breathtaking. It changes you. It doesn’t seem to go away, at least not yet. You learn to live with it, to incorporate it. I don’t hate it, but I miss him. I love the cemetery in which he’s buried. It’s the most peaceful place on earth. I love the dreams I’ve had about him and how they’ve compared to my sister’s. 

The good. There is always good. All the time, in all things.

The Bagpipes  

The first time we almost lost my dad, he technically did die. Seven times. And, seven times, he was brought back. During that time, he had a very vivid near-death experience/dream in which a bagpiper (who he later believed to have been his great-grandfather) approached him on an Irish shoreline. Saying nothing, he beckoned my dad to follow. The way he described it was the most peaceful and beautiful feeling he had ever experienced. But after following the man and the music, he remembered the life he was leaving, and stopped walking. The bagpiper stopped, too, and turned to look at him. My father told him he couldn’t go yet, that he had a wife and four children and that he just wasn't ready. The bagpiper nodded, still silent. 

And we got our dad back, for nearly 22 years.

Fast forward to September of last year. An hour or two before he died, my dad was sitting at the edge of his bed, laughing and talking with someone. Sitting across from him, I leaned in to try to hear him better. “Who are you talking to, Dad?” And he chuckled. Took a swig of coffee from a mug that wasn’t there, his eyes fixed on something in the distance, and said, “I’ll be damned. He came back for me.” 

And that day, the bagpiper took him, and my heart broke into a million pieces.  And I miss him every single day.  Every one.  And he took with him the parts of me that only he knew, the memories of me that only he had.  And that realization makes me impossibly sad. 

The Now

Tomorrow will be September, and that's a hard month to be in, but it's happening whether I like it or not.  He's gone, whether I like it or not.  And the dates in the next few weeks are going to sting and burn and make me really sad and angry at the same time.  The day we rushed him to the hospital, the day he opted to go on hospice, the day we met with the hospice coordinator, the same day my mother insisted it was too soon.  The day he came home.  Our last Tuesday together.  The day I cut his hair, not knowing it was the last time it'd ever be cut. The night we stayed up with him, and the day we said goodbye. The days we dressed up and greeted rooms full of people, even though we were numb on the inside, and the day we buried him. 

I hate it all.  I miss him terribly.  But I'm so grateful for a lifetime of memories, for all the happiness he gave me, for the immense loss I feel now.   And if he were able to read this, I'd tell him that.  And that we talk about him all the time.  That Eve, though two-and-a-half at the time of his death, can still point him out in a picture.  She still knows who he is. That she once laughed at some debaucherous thing she did and said, "Grandad told me I should stop doing that."  I'd tell him how we think of him every time we see a cardinal, and that the boys fired up his miniature steam engine last week.  I'd tell him I want to get rid of his old desk, but I don't know what to do with it.  I'd tell him about that time a couple of months ago I heard him say "hello" as clear as day, so much so that I turned my head toward the sound, and then cried into my hands when I realized I was mistaken. I'd thank him for listening to my rambling-ons at his gravesite, and tell him that Hatch thinks it's pretty awesome now how his name came to be.  I’d tell him that Thomas and Wes take pretty good care of my mom and that Colleen and I spend as much time with her as possible. And that there was some trial and error, but she figured out the insurance stuff. I’d tell him she also changed his passwords. I'd tell him we miss him.  And that we love him like crazy.  And that this year has been tough, but we're all doing alright.  And that we’re all going to be okay. And I think he’d like that. 

Seven of Seven, Still Loved

Today, the baby is two.  Specifically, in about 8 hours and 50 (ish) minutes, the baby turns two.  That means we have had two whole years of loving that girl so much, my heart actually aches at the end of the day, and I could not possible be more grateful.

You don't really know Eve, so let me tell you about her. 

Eve Cahill is the youngest, our seven of seven.  She's short and round with reddish hair and the beginnings of light brown freckles across her nose and on her arms.  She has light gray eyes, like her dad, and bright pink lips (helped, naturally, by the fact that the rest of her is so very fair.)  She has a small vascular imperfection on her left side, which always makes it look like he has a bite mark, and two toes on her right foot which are party fused.  She has short, chubby fingers and even shorter legs.  She's got a round little belly, which she sticks out when she walks, and the world's smallest baby buttocks, which she tucks when she runs. 

She is very opinionated and very outspoken.  Being the youngest has made her determined not to be unheard, and she'll repeat herself with abandon, and progressively more loudly, until her point is made.  She likes to roam freely, "I walk, Mom.  I walk.  No, I walk," and  isn't really excited about being told what to do. 

She loves to eat.  And eat.  And eat.  She loves granola bars and yogurt and pasta.  Sushi, seafood, Japanese pho.  Deli meat, bean burritos, cheeseburgers.  Fish and chips.  Breadsticks.  Crudites. Fried chicken.  If you've got it, she wants it.  If you steal a bite, she will attempt to retrieve it from your esophagus.  (I'm really not kidding here.  She will try to reach down your throat and get it back.  We don't touch her food.) 

She loves to take baths, but only if someone is joining her, and usually if that someone is Annie.  She loves bath bombs and salts and foot scrubs.  (Sometimes, the three of us get in the tub together and soak for hours.  I'll nurse Eve and she'll start to fall asleep and I'll try to hold on to the same memory of doing the same thing when she was brand new and I was still healing and leaking and all my parts were still swollen.)

Eve loves her siblings.  Annie, her favorite, she calls "E."  Next is "Eo."  She likes to tattle on Hatch for things nobody can understand, and Patrick is another parent to her, holding her and changing diapers and making sure she doesn't fall down the stairs.  (Once, he had to give her the Heimlich.  I had taken the kids out to eat and three of them had to go to the bathroom.  I left Patrick at the table with Eve and she choked on her food.  He was hysterical when I came out, and people had come to help him, but, damnit, he did it.)

Her siblings love her, too.  In fact, Eve is the family favorite.  She might always be. 

She's two.  Tiny and mighty.  Funny and expressive.  Happy.  Cherished.  Loved with all our hearts. 

The Art of Being Quiet

I title this post, as if I have some insight into this.  Here is the truth: 


I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO DO THIS.


So, I'm working on it.  This year, especially, I feel a calling to be quiet and to listen.  As I sit and watch helplessly as my loved ones are hurting and faltering, as I wait impatiently for the members of my own house to see me, I just want to scream and tell everyone how to feel and what to do.  That's, in fact, what I am good at.  Rather, that's what I would typically do. Because I don't think anyone is really "good" at those things.  Nobody wins by oversharing.  I'm sure not. I don't know if I ever have.


So, this year, I'm practicing the art of being quiet.  And, I shit you not, this is HARD.  It's hard.  I type and erase text messages and emails.  I compose many arguments in the shower (obviously, I win them all).  I bite my tongue when my instinct is to just. say. something.  Anything.  Make a poignant point.  Point them in the right direction.  Because I'm good at being right, don't they know that?  Don't they know?


Nope, they don't.  Because I'm not.  And this wretched self-awareness is really a buzz-kill, but I'm going to keep trying.  And I'm going to keep this mouth shut, if it takes everything I've got. 

2019

Here it is, 2019.  And here I sit, writing something for my long-ago forgotten blog, one I used to keep up with vigor, and now is a ghost of my past.  And there is almost certainty that nobody reads this anymore, so here, I will type.


As the New Year is upon us, I am so looking forward to a fresh start and a proverbial clean slate.  I can almost feel it, and if wet, white paint and its accompanying fumes had a feeling, that would be it.  New beginnings and habits (haha), new focus, purging of things we don't need, rebuilding things broken long ago, and looking forward to all the good that is coming.  Because it is.


2018 was not our year.  It could have been, I suppose, if we would have made different choices, parented better, communicated better, made any sort of effort to understand each other, and tried our hardest not to just live parallel to one another.  But Adam and I?  We didn't do that.  We spent our twelfth anniversary in a blow-out fight, which is actually perfect because it sums up who we were last year.  Stubborn, arrogant, full of solutions ONLY if those solutions left one of us the victor and the other the wrong-doer.  Oh, hindsight.


And though we weren't heading toward the D-word, for the first time in our marriage, it was easy to imagine us there.  That idea would keep me up choking on my thoughts at night.  And there were reasons we were in the shape we were.  My focus wasn't on us, but on helping family members who needed me more.  I lent out our home and my time and gave away our money the better part of the year, and Adam didn't understand how anyone else could have slid into my #1 priority slot.  I couldn't understand what he couldn't see.  I was giving every ounce I had of myself away, and how could he not see that I needed more from him?  But he was annoyed, angry, unhappy at my distance.  I was hurt, even more angry, and resentful that he couldn't do what I was doing, and slowly, we just quit talking. 


And if you know Adam and me, that isn't like us.  We're loving and affectionate, we talk several times a day.  We send ridiculous texts to each other just to get a laugh. We LOVE each other, in the verb-iest sense of that word.  And I don't know when things changed, probably gradually, definitely peaking and plateauing sometime around July 4th, and finally settled down now.  Now, at the end of the year.  Now, with new beginnings ahead of us. 


It took nothing at all from us.  Mostly a tearful, "I don't want to be mad at you all the time," and something in Adam changed.  It wasn't dramatic.  Not some big talk or resolution.  Just a simple, "I need you to show up."  And so, he did.  Because if there is anything I know about Adam, it's that he loves us.  He does.  Sometimes, he forgets to remember and sometimes he forgets to show it, but I know he does.  And he's shown up every single day.  Sometimes, he'll fold a load of laundry.  Other times, come lay next to me on the couch when he knows I'm already half asleep.  "This year is our year," he said on New Year's Day.  Maybe it is.  "Maybe we should renew our vows," he said. 


And I laughed.  "Maybe we should see how this year goes." 


Happy New Year, to those who will probably never read this.  May your fresh, wet, white-painted beginnings be as beautiful as you imagine. 


Love.

Date of Origin: September 12, 2017.

The last two weeks have been devastatingly sad and encouragingly optimistic and overwhelmingly humbling all-in-one-go. And though I don't know that anyone reads this any longer, I felt it was worth documenting, at the very least, where we Waldens are at right now.

My friend's baby died two weeks ago.  Almost three weeks, I guess.  I don't know...time has kind of moved like sludge since then.  This beautiful girl was a month or so younger than Eve and her mama and I spent many an overnight working together during our pregnancies.  It was her first and my fifth, but we still compared symptoms and woes.  We talked about all the exciting things and looked through beautiful ruffled outfits and registries together.  We would ultrasound ourselves and each other to peek at our sweet ones' faces.  She was due March 21st, I was due February 1st.  Eve was born January 27th and Ziyah was born March 1st.  And, one night, both of our babies laid down to sleep and only one woke up.  Just typing that made me fall apart on the inside.  If it affects me that deeply, I simply cannot imagine how my friend must feel.  And yet, I think about her and her baby every. single. day.  More than once.  I can't seem to put my littlest girl down.  I can't stop watching her breathe or smelling her skin.  I can't stop trying to imagine how my friend must feel and then crying with hurt. I can't stop my brain from working like that and I can't stop wondering when life will go back to how it was.

Except, I know that it won't.  Because I've been in a similar position before, and I remember thinking the same thing.  And life doesn't ever return to how it was because the feelings don't go away.  The what-ifs and the beautiful memories and the painful thoughts, they linger.  You don't ever really forget the way that life hands out unfairities and expects us to move along.  You just learn to accept it, I guess.  But it doesn't stop hurting just because you want it to.

Beyond that, school (did I tell you I was back in it?) is getting me down.  And the constant cleaning and running errands and wishing I had time to paint and redecorate and reorganize.  Wishing for something more than I have, which is ridiculous.  It's shameful.  But...it's me.

And, so, here I am, wallowing in hurt that doesn't even really belong to me, except that I can relate to some degree, and I'm surrounded (literally, on all sides) by the very best things that life has to offer.  The very best.

Adam and I went to a concert together last week.  And, though that's not really out-of-the-ordinary, we had the most wonderful time.  Like, the MOST wonderful time.  And, that night, I resigned myself to the fact that our family really was done growing (at least that we plan for) because I had forgotten what we were like alone.  And, honestly, I really like Adam.  I love him, of course.  But, beyond that, I really like him.  I like what he has to say and how he says it.  I like the way he laughs and how he's SO laid back about everything.  (I mean, really, it would be annoying if he wasn't so damn cute.)  Adam is the best husband.  He's the best friend.  And the best dad.  He's the best.  I'm glad he's mine.  My first blessing.

And Patrick, halfway-to-grown with a charming little giggle and an otherwise-serious demeanor - he's my second.

Leo, the pretty one, with the most sensitive heart (oh, but the tears...ugh), and the most loving acts, he's my third.

William, his wild eyes dancing and his particular and peculiar ways-of-living, my fourth.

Annemarie, with her passion for fashion and her sharp-witted-tongue, fifth.

And, Eve, she's my sixth.  My sixth perfectly-timed blessing.  And, since you do not know much about her, let me fill you in:

Eve is seven months old and so very soft.  She's so happy, so quietly happy with her giant smile and silent laugh.  She does speak a little, "mama" and "dada" and "hi" and "baba."  She claps her hands and kicks like crazy when something makes her happy, and that's almost always.  She's physical, climbing and crawling and cruising around furniture.  (She started to crawl just before she turned six months.  Later that month, she pulled herself up.) She likes to rest her forehead against my lips and sit motionless.  She'll sleep just like that all night long.  She makes my heart so very happy, and I still hold hers over mine just to feel them beating together.  She really is "mine," in that nobody can make her as happy as I do.  And nobody in the entire world loves me the way that girl does, I cannot begin to tell you what that feels like.  Happiness.  It feels like happiness.

Despite all this, I'm still wrapped in an itchy anxiety blanket, wishing I could will myself to feel the way I want to - grateful, that is.  And it's not that I don't see how lucky I am, but that I can't shake this unsettled feeling long enough to actually see the big picture.

And that is where I am. 

Bless.

Leo Walden is Seven and Spectacular

Leo is seven.  Seven years old.

He's magic and courage and bravery and humor and selflessness and beauty in a perfect little seven-year-old package.

Here is how he is now, as my (still) little Leo.

Leo Walden's Seventh Birthday Interview

1.) How old are you going to be? Six. What? Six? No, seven.

2.) Do you know when you're going to be seven? Four more days.

3.) When is your birthday? April 30th...I don't know the year.

4.) How does it feel to be almost seven? Good. Fine.

5.) How will your birthday be? Awesome. Because I'll have cake.

6.) How do you think the weather will be on your birthday? Sunny! Sunny and warm.

7.) What is the most important thing you have learned in life so far? Being smart.

8.) How do think you're different than you were a year ago? Small?  I mean, I'm not small now. Short.  But not now.

9.) What is your favorite thing about yourself? I'm really smart. And I have a good teacher.

10.) That's it? Yeah.

11.) You are in kindergarten this year. How do you like it? It's good.  No awesome. Because I learn stuff and I play with my friends.

12.) Who is your best friend? Tyler B.

13.) What is one thing you like to learn about? I like to learn about animals. My favorite animal is a lion,

14.) Is there anything you would do to make school better? Oh, man. We'd have a pool.

15.) Tell me about our family. What? That I have a mom and dad and brothers? Oh, and I have sisters. They are all really nice. We go to the pool and the zoo and we do a lot of cool stuff.

16.) What do you like about being a big brother? Umm...I like taking care of my little twins.
       Your twins? No, I mean my little brother and sister.  Well, my two little sisters...and little my brother.

17.) If you had a whole day to do anything you wanted, what would you do? I would go to the park and eat cheeseburgers.

18.) What is your favorite song? Shut Up and Dance.

19.) What is your favorite movie? Moana.

20.) What is your favorite book? Diary of a Wimpy Kid

21.) What is your favorite toy? Tiny remote-controlled cars

22.) What do you want to be when you grow up? A mascot. Probably a lion.  A guy who cheers for sports in a lion costume.

23.) Do you think you will ever get married? Oh, yes.

24.) How old do you think you'll be when you get married? Probably 39.

25.) What have you learned about girls this year? They are so pretty.

26.) What is your favorite food? Cheeseburgers.

27.) What is your favorite candy? Ice cream.  Pretty sure that is a candy.

28.) Are you scared of anything? I'm scared of bats. They fly past you in the dark.

29.) Is there anything else you'd like to say? Bats are black. Also, we're having a pool party.  I actually do want a pool party. Can we have a pool party?

All By Myyyseeelllfff - Nope. That's a Lie.

Eve Cahill is two months old today.  Two months of glorious living, and, I have to say, I adore her.  I adore her in that way where I hold her little body just so that her heart is directly over mine just to feel them both beat and I breathe in her neck at least 50 times a day and I miss her when she's sleeping or when I leave the room.  I adore her when she's crying and she reacts to the sound of my voice and in the wee hours of the morning when she nudges me and smacks her lips to tell me that she is hungry.  We're in that kind of obsession mode.  And, I'm happy to report that our little Ebba (did you know that was a nickname for Eve? Me, either) feels the same about me.  And Leo.  She feels the same about me and Leo.  The rest of the family (Adam included) are kind of like pleasant extras and not really necessities in her little world. And this works out okay for now, because here is how life has changed in the last two months:

I am never alone.  Not ever.  Not for ten minutes.  I'm never alone.  I think, when someone asks, "what's it like having five kids?" that would be my go-to answer.   Last night, there were six people and one dog in my bed.  And I have a big bed.  But it's not that big with seven mammals in it.  And this weekend, Adam I went out for my birthday (and, note: if there is anything Adam does really well, it's date night) and our littlest one came along.  She came to a brewery tap room and out to a fancy dinner.  I nursed her with a bucket of champagne and two flutes on the table.  There is a bouncy-seat in my bathroom where Eve sits while I shower and get ready (because her well-meaning sister is rough).  There is a swing in the kitchen, where she sits while I prepare meals.  Inevitably, Hatch or Annie are on my heels during every waking hour and Eve, well, she's usually in my arms, save the two times mentioned above.  And I think I could be alone, for, say five minutes, if I really tried, but I don't care much.  I like to have the kids close.  And, since I'm raising a crew of intensely affectionate children, this works out well for all of us.

But, aside from that, things here are pretty much the same.  I'm ridiculously happy.  The kids are adjusting well.  I'm trying to cope with the post-baby body; the soft parts that shouldn't be so soft and the other parts that are just...so...big.  (My boobs.  There were big before.  They are enormous now.)  But that's the trade-off, right?  I get this perfect little girl instead of a reasonably-proportioned midsection.  I'll say that's fair.

For record keeping, here are the memorable bits of Eve at two months:
10lbs, 7oz, 22in
Has new hair, a beautiful auburn (but a little scant on the top and full in the back)
Has a fierce stork-bite over the back of her neck, over her right eye, under her nose, and between her eyebrows.  
Has short little fingers (like me!)
Has two toes that never quite separated all the way (also like me)
Loves to be talked to
Loves to be sung to even more
Nurses on demand...and demands a lot.  
Is, at this moment, sound asleep in my arms.  She's been like this since we came home from the doctor's today.  She'll probably be like this all night long.  And that's okay...I didn't have any plans anyway.  This is a good way to spend a Monday.

Let Me Introduce Myself

Hello.

My name is Catherine.  Catie, for short.  I'm 36 years old, married to the best man I've ever known and the mother of his five children.  I'm a nurse, a Catholic-school mom, a chauffeur at least seven times a week, and an avid browser on Amazon.  And, once upon a time, I had a blog.

For months and months, I've mentally prepared posts I wanted to write.  I've wanted to document major life events, chronicle the little ones that are sure to be forgotten, and keep up what was once a great past-time for me.  And then, I didn't.  I got really busy.  And that is sad and unfair because a lot of good stuff happened this year, and now nobody will ever know.

Ok, that's not true.  But it's not written and that sucks.  Especially for Eve, who is now the second of our kids (second only to Patrick, who was born before this blog existed) to not have her entire existence documented, even in utero.  But I'll get back to her.

When this blog first started, I had a lot to write.  I was 28 years old and I knew a lot.  Or I thought I did.  Rather, I had opinions and beautified memories to share and, as time has gone on, I've second-guessed those instincts.  I know less now than I did then.  I've made more mistakes.  I've learned a lot about myself.  And, though good, that set me back a bit.  My confidence has wavered.  I'm not who I was.

I took a new job in leadership last year.  I didn't want to, and I turned it down twice before I eventually said yes.  (That doesn't seem like enough to change a person, does it?  Maybe I'll look back on it and think the same thing one day.  I hope.)  At first, it was terrifying.  And then too good to be true.  And then terrifying again, too much stress and time.  But I loved it.  I felt good about myself, like I was finally figuring things out.  I was learning a lot about potential and passion and strengths and growth and I felt like a million dollars.  But I worked like crazy and I missed my kids.  And then, it seemed my world came crashing down.

I stepped down from that job.  It wasn't meant to be, I told myself.  I wanted to be with my kids.  I didn't want to stress about who was watching them or how I was missing another sick-kid pick-up.  It probably was the best opportunity I've been given (career-wise), and I turned it down.  I told myself it would be better for everyone if I passed on that job and let someone who was ready for that commitment go for it.  I wanted to be true to the self that I knew, not the one that I was just meeting.  And, so that's what I did.

And that made me cry.  I hated my job.  Hated it.  I cried some more.  All the work I had done was undone, I felt.  I was black-balled, in a sense, and kept out of things I once had a strong handle on.  And nobody cared but me, it seemed.  Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, but I couldn't approach the job the same after that. It hurt me to my core.

I thought I knew who I was and what I wanted, but I wasn't sure.  I'm always sure about decisions, but not now.  Now is different.

And then came a reassuring whisper.  God wasn't subtle, but He was quiet.  In a silent breakroom on a sunny day in May, I found out that I was pregnant.  I wasn't supposed to be, we weren't planning on it, and we had relied on reasonable Catholic-approved methods to make sure we weren't going to be growing our family again.  Despite that, God gave us another child.  And that solidified my path.  It was a reminder of what I was really meant to be doing.  Maybe the work I had done made me feel good about myself, but maybe it wasn't about me.  Maybe it never was.  And so, I surrendered to that.

That brings me to Eve.  Eve Cahill Walden was born January 27th at 8:22 in the morning.  Her delivery was beautiful and brisk.  Her arrival was joyful and calm...anticipated for months.  Her existence was a surprise, but her being here...it's magic.  I tell her all day how much I love her, and yet, that doesn't really seem to describe how I feel.  This is what I was meant to do...to be with her.  With all of them, really.  My five children.  My dream team.  They brought me back here - back to my little, simple blog with the outdated layout, made back when we were just three.  When I was just getting started, that is where I want to be again.

This blog brings me a bit of peace, like writing letters that my children will one day read.  I miss keeping up with it.  It may be painful to pick it back up, and maybe I'll struggle with the writing, but I'll stick it out if you will.

Bless.

In my Cocoon

Yesterday, the kids wanted nothing but to lay with me. To cook with me.  To talk to me.  To be my "special helper."  To sit next to me at the dinner table.  And it was like that the day before, and the day before that.  And, to be truthful, I was probably a bit annoyed, at least part of the time.  I desperately wanted to take a bath in peace, to watch a movie not intended for kids, to clean a room uninterrupted.  But I couldn't.

Because, right now, we live in a little cocoon.  A little nest that we built and rarely venture out from.  We stay within feet of each other, all the time.  Our furniture wears out three times as fast as it should, because we live on it.  Together.  The older boys go to school, but once they are home, it's shoes-off-hugs-all-around-speed-talking.  Because they want to be with me.

But those days are fleeing.  I can physically feel them slipping away.  In one year, Annie will start preschool.  In two more years (maybe three), she'll start Kindergarten,  And my cocoon will start to lose its appeal.  Patrick will be in middle school and maybe tolerating me at best.  (Leo isn't going anywhere.  Leo will stay with me forever.)  Hatch will have probably abandoned me early.  And Annie will eventually follow suit. And I won't be as important in my house as I am now.

And, as I work and I stress about needing to work more, as I over-commit myself to plans I may never follow through with, as I sometimes feel badly about how rarely I leave my cocoon, how I never wear real clothes, how I couldn't even tell you what stores sell what, I tell myself again and again...

Be here now.

Enjoy this now.

Smell them now.

Love them now.

Put them first now.

Because it's not going to be like this for long.

Is Anybody Out There?

I almost cannot believe that it has been nearly seven months since I've posted anything.  Anything.  It's like six months of our lives, completed erased. Undocumented.  Did they even happen?!  (I kid.  Of course they did.  And a lot happened in them.)

In short:

1.) Adam got a new job.
2.) I got promoted.
3.) Leo turned five and started kindergarten.
4.) Annie turned two and is (almost) potty trained.
5.) Little Hatch turned four and started pre-school.
6.) We got a new dog.
7.) We got a new car.
8.) And then another new car because the one above was a lemon.
9.) We lost a lot of money. See above.
10.) We went on a few trips.
11.) We still love hard.
12.) And life is still good.
13.) And I've missed you, blog.

I'm back.

Day after day, alone on a hill,

The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still.
But nobody wants to know him,
They can see that he's just a fool,
And he never gives an answer.
But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning around.

Well on his way, his head in a cloud,
The man of a thousand voices talking  perfectly loud.
But nobody ever hears him,
Or the sound he appears to make,
And he never seems to notice,
But the fool on the hill...

Nobody seems to like him
They can tell what he wants to do.
And he never shows his feelings,
But the fool on the hill...