Fifteen Years with Kansas Dad, the Kansas Years

I’m reminiscing this week in honor of our anniversary. Read the first post here and the second post here.

I remember when my engagement ring broke and I lost my diamond. Kansas Dad had taken First Daughter, still an infant, to pick up First Son from his day care while I exercised, one of the first times since she was born. When I finished, I realized my diamond was missing and frantically searched the carpet between the couch and the television. I was in tears when he arrived home and then cried even more when I found my diamond, safely buckled into the car seat under First Daughter’s bum.

Somehow, we managed to both need to go to New York City the same week, him for the defense of his doctoral thesis and me for a business trip. We couldn’t manage to both be gone for any of it, so Kansas Dad flew there first while I stayed home with the two kids (and pregnant with Second Daughter) and we celebrated the successful defense over the phone (yay!). Then our planes passed each other somewhere in the sky as I flew to New York and he flew home. It might still be the longest we’ve been apart since we married (though perhaps my trip to Boston this summer surpassed it). First Daughter, who was nineteen months old, had to be picked up at day care one day while I was away and Kansas Dad needed to teach class. So he took her along. She wrote on the wall with dry-erase marker and delighted the students.

The first time we saw our first house, Kansas Dad was on crutches after a dislocated ankle and I was nine months pregnant. It was so muddy, our van almost got stuck in the driveway. We hobbled and limped around trailed by First Son and First Daughter who declared we should buy the house because it had a slide. I’m not sure how much the slide figured into it, but we did buy the house. This house has given us warmth and shelter for five years now and placed us within the best parish we have every known.

The year after Second Son was born was a difficult one. The children were all so young and I felt keenly my defects as a mother each day. Then one day while frantically dumping out a bag to pack the diaper bag for a visit to the pediatrician, anxious about being late and disorganized, I saw drop onto the bed the watch Kansas Dad had given me for my birthday a few months after we’d started dating, the watch that had been missing for years. I loved that watch; I remembered watching the sunset from my parents’ porch swing the night he gave it to me and what a perfect gift I thought it was. When that watch fell out of the bag, I almost believed an angel had found it for me and tucked it in there earlier in the morning so I’d find it and remember all over again what a wonderful life I had.

We’ve had one real tornado scare in our home. Oh, we’d gone to the storm shelter before but it was more a precaution than that we were worried a tornado would really come close. This time was different. We’d watched the storms for hours after the children went to bed and eventually realized we were really and truly in the path. I gathered up laptops and external hard drives and shoes for the kids and carried two bags out before we woke the kids. We dragged everyone through the storm and then watched YouTube videos (until we lost our Internet) while huddled in the dark, damp from our run through the storm. Second Son was so unhappy and shared his unhappiness with the other kids, groggy with sleep. It wasn’t a particularly fun night, but I felt so safe and protected in the storm shelter, surrounded by the most important people in my life.

Just a few weeks ago, we organized three different vacations in four locations for our family of six so Kansas Dad and I could spend a few days relaxing with each other in peace and quiet. Through the generosity of his parents, my parents, my brother and his wife, and his brother and his wife, we had a delightful anniversary trip (a little early). We went to the Illinois State Fair, where Kansas Dad examined every chicken and duck in the poultry barn. We ate our meals outside on the deck, walked through the woods, and played Agricola when it rained.

Everything in my life is better with Kansas Dad at my side and I look forward joyfully to all the years in our future.

Fifteen Years with Kansas Dad, the New York Years

I’m reminiscing this week in honor of our anniversary. Read the first post here.

Our first Thanksgiving in New York is one of my favorite Thanksgivings. My family all came to visit. Our little apartment was crowded with people I loved. My dear friend J and her boyfriend (now husband), S, came for the meal. S saved Thanksgiving by catching the turkey with his bare hands while Kansas Dad was turning it.

I remember the Easter Vigil when Kansas Dad joined the Church. I’d only been to one Vigil before, the one when my father joined and I was very young, so it all seemed new to me. The church glowed with light and I was incredibly happy to be Catholic.

I have so many wonderful memories of our time in New York: eating cannoli in our Bronx neighborhood, walking through Union Square Park, wandering Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the Indian restaurant we frequented in Park Slope, the night we went to the opera (one of the few times we enjoyed the “culture” in New York without a guest or two to justify the expense), and, perhaps my favorite of all, riding the Staten Island ferry there and back. It was such a treat to stand with you on the deck and watch Lady Liberty and the New York skyline drift by.

The summer before First Son was born, just before our fifth anniversary, we vacationed for two weeks in Italy and France. I had never been. It was delightful: gelato, bisteca florintine, St. Peter’s and the Scavi, all the museums and art I’d only seen in books, and that gem of a museum in Lyon on printing where Kansas Dad had to read the signs to me because I didn’t know French. We bought a rosary at the Vatican gift shop, carefully selected for the baby to be born in a few months.

I remember when First Son was born. Exhausted, I looked at Kansas Dad as he choked out, “It’s a boy! We have a son!” There were tears in his eyes and for a brief moment, the lights and noise and movement in the room around us faded and I could see only him. I loved him almost unbearably in the moment. The memories of the births of each of our children are dear to me, but this first was one of the most powerful moments of my life.

I remember watching Kansas Dad carry First Son around our tiny Brooklyn apartment when he was just a few days old. He was swaddled tightly and he was crooning into his ear, reading some theology textbook aloud to him, studying and soothing at the same time. I could never have known how wonderful a father he would be when we married, but I thanked God for my whole life then.

Fifteen Years with Kansas Dad, the Early Years

This week, Kansas Dad and I will celebrate our fifteenth anniversary. Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about our time together and have enjoyed reminiscing about the experiences we’ve had so far. In the next three posts, I’m going to share fifteen memories (with some flexibility). These are not necessarily the most important moments of our life together or the most meaningful. Rather, they are the moments I remember thinking, “This is my life and it is a good one. How blessed I am!”

Oh, our honeymoon! We needed a new one a few days before the wedding and ended up in California with a rental car but no place to stay. We wandered north and south of San Francisco, even staying with Kansas Dad’s aunt and uncle for a few nights, but it was wonderful I remember one day, leaning against the railing at a lighthouse. We had been hoping to spot some whales, but the drizzle and fog obscured everything. I remember the smell of the sea and the feel of the mist and raindrops on my face…and my husband at my side.

We got a cat shortly after we were married because I wanted one and was devastated when Kansas Dad turned out to be allergic. Then, being prepared for a pet, we felt bereft and decided impulsively to get a dog, a beagle. We drove three hours to pick him up. He was fat and dirty, but we’d driven so far we took him home. The very first day, he ate part of the entertainment center, chewed through the television’s cord, pulled down all of my dresses and rolled on them (requiring a hefty dry cleaning bill). It was only the first of many stories about “Things Sherlock Ate or Otherwise Destroyed,” but he was a good dog.

Just before our first anniversary, I started a new job and came home in the middle of the first day feeling ill. Eventually diagnosed with pneumonia, I missed the rest of the week and we debated canceling our anniversary trip to Maine, but drove up anyway. We stayed in one room of a huge house along the coast, sharing a bathroom. One day, we visited a near-by state park where I dozed on the beach while he walked the dunes. It was peaceful and calm and I felt like a convalescent on the coast of an English novel.

Was it our second anniversary when we stayed in Plymouth? Kansas Dad surprised me with a whale-watching cruise. The camera was broken, so we have only the memories of that amazing trip, when we saw every kind of marine wildlife possible. Remember how the humpback and her calf appeared so close to the side of the boat that we rocked a bit? The guide warned us any other whale-watching cruise would be a disappointment after that one, but I still hope to one day take the children on one.