Author Archives: Katherine

About Katherine

Hi I’m Katherine; I’m a competitive sailor with a gap between my front teeth and especially good plaque-reducing saliva (not a single cavity). I’m the author of a book titled “Who in this Room,” but don’t even try to buy it because you can’t. I’m the Norwegian-American mother of an Africa-American two-year-old who loves Curious George, brushing her teeth and washing her hands. I’m married to Paul, an extremely likeable software engineer with a fondness for roadside furniture and a habit of whistling in his sleep. We have a sweet dog named Norah who has rocks in her head. In 2005, at the age of 31, I was diagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer. Statistically, I was given a 10% chance of living five years. Over the next six months I received 154 shots, ingested 510 pills, and spent 140 hours sitting in the green vinyl recliner receiving nearly two gallons of intravenous medicine/poison. I followed chemo with a bi-lateral mastectomy chaser and washed it all down with six weeks of radiation. Nearly a year after I started, I was declared cancer free and kicked from the sanitized nest of the oncology ward into the blaring sun of life. On May 20, 2010 I will have lived five years past my diagnosis. These days I am what my sister calls self-sustaining high-maintenance. It’s hard work keeping this complicated piece of machinery running. I take a handful of vitamins twice a day; I adhere to a special diet devoid of gluten and soy. I drink tea, distilled water, almond milk and sake (exclusively but never together). I used to be the person who would roll her eyes at the person I have become. In spite of how all this sounds, this blog is not about cancer. Here’s what it IS about.

Round 2

Warning: big announcement ahead.

We’re waiting for a baby. We’re waiting an indeterminate period of time, gestating without any delivery date, expecting without guarantee. It’s hard to know what to call this period in the adoption process when you’re in line but have no idea when the baby will come. I usually say we’re expecting. Actually, we’ve been officially expecting for a month now, I just haven’t had the time to tell anyone.

It tends to be something I casually drop into sentences, thinking that I’ve told the other person. Then: sorry, what the what?

The whole thing is a bit hard for me to believe. If I were pregnant, I could say something casual like, we were thinking about it and it just happened, all of the sudden. But it’s hard to say we fell into our 2nd child, casually, maybe even accidentally, when we spent hours and hours writing the 20 pages of our autobiographies, and pondering our childhoods and our parenting philosophy in an effort to portray ourselves in the most positive light possible – pick us, pick us!

It all just seems so much more carefree and cavalier than last time. By the time we adopted Josie, we’d been waiting for a baby for 3 years, since before I was diagnosed, then through a year of treatment in which we let go of our hope of biological children, came to terms with the possibility of my short childless life, then started the adoption process. I was kind of a wreck by the time we finished the paperwork. Wait, I was kind of a wreck even before we started the paperwork. Then we got a dud of a social worker for the placement part of the process. Then we started working with a facilitator who yelled at me. I was officially broken by the time we got the call about Josie.

Fortunately it worked out. We met our girl a few days later. I realize now that in some deep hidden part of my brain, I believed the gift of a child was permission to live. It was a grant, a concession from the universe, a permission slip to go ahead and resume “life as normal.” Carry on.

Of course, my rational brain knew this wasn’t how the world worked but that didn’t stop me from feeling it. The adoption of a child was a sigh of relief, a celebration of not just her life but the resumption of ours. I see that now and I understand the entirety of what was at stake.

This time, I know it will happen. The baby will come. No lives hinge on the delivery. I hope to relax and enjoy the process, even the wait, to enjoy the imaginary, indeterminate gestation. I have dreams of a wait time filled with preparation, nesting, house projects, photo books, and buying a few cute little baby things that I was afraid would jinx the process last time.

That’s a nice dream but in reality, my imaginary, indeterminate gestation is filled with a tireless three-year-old, endless book edits, a job, and a blog, but this is it, this is what normal life looks like. This is us as we carry on. This is us, busily waiting to greet our new baby.

Cover!

As soon as I heard Who in This Room would be published I started hotflashing and eyelid twitching about what the cover would look like. Handing over control has never been easy for me.

Fortunately, the lovely and utterly-reasonable people at Calyx agreed to let me pursue a few design ideas and I immediately called my friend, Judy. You may remember Judy of the super-cool tattoo from this post. As soon as we spoke I knew she was the perfect person to create the cover for so many reasons – here are the top ten.

1.       She’s so much cooler than I am. Do you need to look at that tattoo again?

2.       She’s had breast cancer.

3.       She uses the word ‘hoopty.’

4.       She’d never pick up a book about cancer (unless it was written by a friend who wanted her to design the cover).

5.       We both love the television show What Not to Wear.

6.       She’s a talented graphic designer. Oh yeah, there’s that.

7.       She has a whole cabinet of Japanese anime dolls. At least I think that’s what they are.

8.       She designed the logo and image for our friend’s business. I love that logo. BTW – Great cancer/health related blog on her site.

9.       She happened to be between projects. How lucky for me!

10.   She works FAST. Thank goodness.

I’m in love with the end result. Eyelid twitches be gone! Thank you, Judy!

Her Beautiful Friend

Lately my three-year-old brown baby has become aware of skin color. She points out all the black children at the pool and the store. Sometimes she seems pulled toward them. Other times she seems not to have any interest, she’s just pointing out a fact.

A few weeks ago, I bought the new Mavis Staples CD. When Josie asks for her it comes out sounding like mabitaple and she always wants to listen to her LOUD. I’ve told her teachers and grandparents that if they can’t figure out what she’s saying, she’s probably asking for Mavis.

We’d only listened to the CD a few times when Josie found the jewel case sitting on the front seat of my car. She picked it up and stared at the picture of Mavis. We talked about how pretty she is – what a nice smile she has. Josie started calling Mavis her bootiful fwiend and carrying the case around, holding it close to her chest.

For the rest of the post, click on over to www.mybrownbaby.com.

Calcium and Vitamin D

Oh, hey, hi there. How’s everyone doing?

It’s February, that dreaded, dark, gray, rainy month where not a whole lot good happens in Seattle. The light is starting to come back, we’re past the winter solstice but it’s still really dismal. Are you taking your vitamins? Are your kids taking their vitamins? There’s a lot of chatter out there in the world about how much Vitamin D we all should be taking. This new chart came out in late November and I think it’s a great guide. You can read the whole article that went with it here.

Where We Live Now

The house we live in now is where I intend to spend the majority of my life. That’s a strange feeling. After I left my parent’s house I was in a constant state of moving, always thinking of the next place, unsure of what furniture to buy and then not buying any because, who knows, the next place may have a square dining room and I may want a round, not rectangular, table.

Paul and I have looked at hundreds of houses in the Seattle area. Perhaps I’m difficult to please but that’s a story for another post. There was one house that we almost bought. It had a style similar to ours, 1950’s era, modern architecture, with a view of the lake. It was badly in need of a remodel and while we waited for an architect to meet us, I asked the selling agent about the giant front porch swing that was sitting in the middle of the living room. He said the owner, an elderly woman who raised her children there, drove half-an-hour every morning to sit in this chair and stare at the lake. She planned to do this every day until the house sold.

Then the architect came rushing in carrying on about plans to raise the ceiling ten feet and remove the wall that separated the living from the dining. I couldn’t do it. When I looked over the old green carpets, I didn’t see dirt and ick, I saw kids in soccer cleats and muddy dog prints. I didn’t want to paint over this woman’s childrens’ growth charts. I didn’t want to be the one to take this away from her.

We’ve been in our house for nearly three years now and I frequently think about the past owners, especially when I’m working in the yard. That’s where I see their choices, their personalities most clearly. I also think about the future owners. Who will buy this house from us?

I wonder who will comment on the wear patterns in our hardwood floors, the path worn from the stove to the sink to the fridge. Who will frown at and sand out the dog scratches where her toenails raked around the corner of the cabinets frantic to get to her dinner? Who will curse me for the navy blue walls in my bathroom? Whoever it is, I hope they understand that this place, all of it, is my growth chart.

Not Everyone

Have you ever had everything come together at once? A book deal (I just can’t use those words enough), completion of a big work project, a well-behaved (mostly) child, a memory full of holiday merriment, and a wedding to celebrate on New Year’s Eve. You’re filled with happy clichés. Everything is on the up and up. The sky is blue and the world is smiling with you.

Sure, you’re celebrating, but you’re hesitant about getting too comfortable in this happy place. You know enough to know that things will come around again. Not that everything will end in tragedy, but that there will be a natural, maybe even gradual, swing back to boredom, melancholy and/or irritability.

Then you get a call – a message on your voicemail from someone who shouldn’t be calling you, someone who, if she is calling, cannot possibly have good news. Just like that, the sky is not so blue. You’re reminded that things are not on the up and up for everyone. The world isn’t smiling with you.

Then you’re back in that familiar place of wishing you could do more to help and hoping that she knows she’s loved.

How to Adopt a Baby

1.       Talk to friends and friends of friends about their experiences.

2.       Try not to get lost driving around foreign neighborhoods looking for a community center that will host the Journeys of the Love, Hope, Heart, Blessed-Child’s Dream of the Christ’s Open Adoption agency meeting.

3.       Ask the social workers what programs/countries will let you adopt if you are single, over 40, in a same-sex relationship, and/or a cancer survivor.

4.       Choose the agency that can answer your question.

5.       Get fingerprinted, background checked, dig up the value of your house, find pay stubs, photocopy bank statements, get friends to write references, find your dog’s vaccination records, have the pet store where you purchased your fish sign an affidavit of its health, make a list of every illness you’ve ever had, dig up the name of your third grade teacher who could verify that indeed your favorite color was lavender, make a list of your stuffed animals and their names and how well you took care of each and every one of them, and promise, that if they could talk, they would guarantee that, if given the opportunity, you’d be the bestest mother ever. Click here to read the rest…

Holidays

The cousins arrived.

Santa came to grandma’s house on Christmas Eve. Who do you think was most excited?

He came back that night and filled stockings with band-aids, scotch tape, play-doh.

Then we went to the island.

Now we are here. We wear down vests and mud boots all day. We walk. We sit on the couch and talk about investment portfolios, book contracts and potty training. We dig through the bin of 50 cookie cutters and try to guess the animal for each. It’s surprisingly difficult. Is that a giraffe or a llama? Paul fixed the faucet. I steam cleaned the carpet that Josie smeared with Aquaphor last summer. I’m enjoying a book (Out Stealing Horses) for the first time since I read Cutting for Stone. I read while sitting with my feet close enough to the fire to melt the tread off my slippers.

We promised the girls a trip to the lake after their naps. We took them even though it was almost dark.

Happy New Year everyone!

It’s True

I’ve been a little quiet lately, but only on this here blog. Every other part of my life is very, decidedly, not quiet. It’s been moving so fast and demanding everything. Yes, it’s true. I have a book contract sitting on my desk. Right now. After 2.5 years it appears that Who in This Room will finally be published and available in October 2011.

I was shopping for my niece at the GAP when I got the call. It was all oh, ok, well, that IS good news. Then: Can I get this shirt in a kids size 8? Sometimes it takes a little while for these things to sink in. And then when they do… Oh, heavens.

Because the publisher, a small press called Calyx Books, wants the book to be out in time for Breast Cancer Awareness month, we need to hurry. The usually tight publishing timeline has to be compressed. I’m in a world I know nothing about. I’m reaching in all different directions. I’m reading, researching, asking questions and begging for favors. (Thank you friends.) I’m learning, processing and trying to crystallize the important. I’m building a plan, a divine master plan in my head. When I have it, when I see how the next few years will roughly play out, then I will rest.

Oh, and by the way, this 5 page questionnaire about you and the book and how it will be promoted, we’ll need it by the end of the year. What? Yeah, goodbye holidays.

But I’m not complaining because if all continues in this direction, I’ll have a book in 10 months. It’s a book I’m looking forward to holding in my hands and, eventually, closing.