On 20 Years Of Marriage

June 17, 2019.Reading time 10 minutes.

Yesterday Lee and I celebrated 20 years of marriage.

The day we got married, there was no

fanfare – there was just us – Lee in his best shirt and tie and me in my $20 dress from Marshalls that I’d bought the year before because it was beautiful and I hoped I would get a chance to wear it somewhere nice.

And of course Ian was with us in nothing fancier than his cleanest T shirt and shorts.

It was perfectly imperfect in every way.

We began yesterday as we have almost every other day for the last two decades – waking up to take care of the needs of a 7year old. Ian was 8 when we were married so Lee and I have never been “just a couple”. There have always been high energy, high need little people in our lives who distract us from our “oneness”.

If you begin as you mean to go on, then we celebrated 20 years in much the same way as we began that first day – simply, with zero fuss, with no one the wiser. In a change to our routine, I brought Lee tea (on the weekends he always brings it to me). Then we did some laundry (with 4 kids still to manage, there is always laundry), went to a soccer tournament, and finally ditched the younger kids with the teenagers (another running theme in our marriage). Then we rode our bikes into town for a few hours of time to ourselves.

The story of how we began is simple and sweet. We met at Camp Cayuga in the summer of 1998. Lee was a returning staffer and I was there for the first time with a 7 year old in tow. The first time I remember seeing Lee was on the back of a banged up old work truck. Lee first saw me standing in the staff cabin next to another new staffer and naturally Lee thought we were a couple.

He quickly learned we weren’t and thus began our first summer together. We spent 4 more summers the same way except for the summer William was born, two years later.

Nyree came along three summers after that and her first summer at camp was our last, but, as the tag line for camp says, the memories will last a lifetime.

There were other adventures to be had.

We moved too many times to count, welcomed two more children into our clan, and said goodbye to my sister and Lee’s grandfathers before we were ready.

This is the hard stuff of life and it is a blessing to have someone by your side through it all. Babies are adorable, yes, but they will also break you if you aren’t careful (no one ever wants to admit that, but everyone who has ever had a squalling newborn or endured a difficult childhood diagnosis or other child related crisis knows exactly what I mean).

The grief you experience from burying the people you love most in the world is somehow softer, the edges less jagged, when you can cry in the arms of someone who has no other place to be than right by your side.

My marriage to Lee is the single most defining characteristic of my life, right there with being a mother to these 5 kids. When everything else has been stripped away – and it has all, at one time or another, been painfully taken from me – I always have this as my anchor: I am mother to these children and I am Lee White’s wife.

If there was competition between these identities, motherhood has, perhaps, had the edge. Raising young kids is like that – they demand undivided attention. This is why it is important to marry someone who shares your values: Lee never resented my focus on the kids – in fact, I think he loves me all the more for it.

That focus is slowly shifting and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Over the next few years, as the kids need us less and less, Lee and I will have more and more time to spend on us.

Sometimes we get a small taste of it and it leaves me wanting more. I think this bodes well for our future.

One of the things I’ve learned after 20 years of marriage is that nothing stays the same. Our location has changed – often, lol! Our family composition has changed almost as frequently. And we have changed as people.

I love the person Lee has become. Lee has always had a tremendous sense of responsibility – it’s why he never once shied away from becoming a husband and a step dad. It’s one of the things I love most about him.

He will move mountains to help friends in need. “Friendship” is defined very loosely in this regard. An example: he’s invited many people without homes to come stay a while with us. Some were known to us, others were panhandling the day he met them. Nor does he care about money or what others will say – he will always show up for people.

Lee also finds a way to forgive. Don’t get me wrong, he has a temper and he has a well developed sense of the way things should be and how you should treat folks. But he cannot hold a grudge.

Together, no matter the egregiousness of the offense, we always manage to offer grace and forgiveness. At the beginning, we loved each other because of our best qualities. It is so much more satisfying to know someone so intimately that you can still love them in spite of their flaws. This is the gift of 20 years of marriage – to love when there are no more illusions.

I loved the man he was 20 years ago, I love the man he is now, and I cannot wait to see who he will become over the next 20 years.

We married 20 years ago for a green card. We married so we could live on the same continent. We married without a long term plan and without any money – some things haven’t changed!

But maybe that’s why we’re still together. The vows we made on that day mattered and even though we weren’t in a church and had no thoughts beyond that summer, we stayed true to them. For better or worse. In sickness and in health, for richer for poorer.

I didn’t really understand at the time what I was promising. I do now.

I have no idea where we will be in another 20 years. Probably not where either of us expect – for us, the best laid plans are always useless.

But I’m looking forward to seeing how it all plays out, not with the best man in the world (because I don’t think he exists), but with the man who has devoted himself to me (and I am under no illusions about how much work that takes!)

We will go on just as we started – with a cup

of tea in bed in the morning or a few peaceful hours by a river or up a mountain. There won’t be any fuss and no one will be the wiser.

If we’re lucky, it will be simple and sweet and absolutely perfectly imperfect.

Just like us 💙

Dear New Zealand

March 16, 2019.Reading time 7 minutes.

Dear New Zealand,

Since I woke up this morning, my heart has been breaking into a thousand pieces for what you are enduring. My mother is from Christchurch and I have watched Facebook over the hours as uncles and cousins and loved ones marked themselves “safe”. I have seen the horror on your faces, your grief, and your shock and I want you to know that my thoughts and prayers are a living thing and I am breathing them into the world. I hope they find you soon.

What I want to say next I say not as a loving cousin who grieves as only a family member can grieve, but as a sister who has been where you are now. You are a community that has suffered the trauma of hate and you have the blood and the bones and the wounded flesh to prove it. We are part of a small but growing family of communities thrust onto the world stage not because of all the things we love about our towns, but because of hate and terror and graphic, unimaginable rage.

Two and a half years ago I was living in Charlottesville, Virginia and was present at every event that long hot summer of 2016 when white supremacists made several visits, culminating in the tragic death by terror of Heather Hyer. I, too, have seen the blood and bone of a terrorist attack. I, too, have lived in a community that had to cope in the days and weeks that followed.

You will struggle to make sense of it. For many days time will alter and you will feel brittle. You will feel rage and anger at the bastards who did this. You will look at each other and say, “This is not us.”

And you will be wrong.

This is you. You have to find a way to own this if you are ever to prevent it from happening again. As comforting as it will be to say that hate has no place in Christchurch, you must be strong enough to open your eyes and your ears and your hearts to the reality that it does.

I know, I know, you think I do not understand New Zealand. My mother, your daughter, told me as much today. But I am a white woman, and like many white people in Charlottesville (and the world over), I said these same things in the wake of the Nazi attack in my town. So many of us said some iteration of the “this is not us” theme. And I believed it – oh, God, how I believed it!

When I protested that Charlottesville was a progressive, welcoming town, many friends of color said, “Sister, come, take a walk with me, and I will show you otherwise.”

I started listening, not to my echo chamber of middle class white Charlottesvillians, but to our communities of color, to our immigrants, to our refugees. And I heard a different story, one that shocked and shamed me. They told us of great acts of discrimination and small but daily hatreds that were like a thousand tiny cuts. For many, Charlottesville was not a sleepy little college town where everyone knows everyone and the streets are safe, even at night.

Rather, it was a place that protected white privilege. It was a place that allowed white people the dignity of not seeing or feeling the wounds that our culture inflicts on others every minute of every day – inequalities of education, wages, criminal justice, access to resources, daily kindnesses.

That was a side if Charlottesville I didn’t see; it was a side I didn’t want to acknowledge.

And then the Nazis came and Heather was killed and I learned a hard brutal lesson: we can say it is not us, but these young men who came with their manifestos and weapons and intention to break things did not come from communities of color, but from white neighborhoods like mine.

My husband once remarked that he could confront them – and he did, many times – because he knew them intimately. Not these ones in particular (my husband is English, not American), but he knows their kin because they exist in poor, working class white neighborhoods in the UK. And though I didn’t want to admit it, they also exist in the middle class neighborhoods where I grew up.

I am so sorry, New Zealand. I love you so much. And I know how heavy your burdens are and that the journey is far from over.

Trust me when I say the only way to put them down is to acknowledge their existence.

You think hate has come to your town – from Australia, from America, but definitely from away.

That may be true on a physical level. But you are also like every other town dominated by whiteness – a town that turns a blind eye to the every day hatreds that are inflicted on many of your citizens.

Other places may have planted the seeds, but yours is the soil in which those seeds grew and bore fruit.

So yes, this is you. You are one of us, a member of a community that has seen the darkest side of humanity. Like us, you have many years of collective and individual work ahead.

Let the beginning of that journey begin with a full accounting. Expose your shadows to the light. Listen to those whose voices are not often heard.

And know that we are with you in spirit, every step of the way.

With much love and peace,
Your sister,

Katie

The Endurance of Wild Flowers

August 5, 2017.Reading time 5 minutes.

A year ago today, I was fired.

Despite what all of the experts on LinkedIn say, this is not something easily managed. It is a stain that refuses to be cleaned. I still can’t write those words without feeling the pain and humiliation of that day rise up like bile in the back of my mouth.

Why was I fired? I am glad you asked. I was on vacation when I got the call and while I know that I was fired for retaliation, when asked directly for the reason for my termination, they refused to give one. This is perfectly legal in a “Right to Work” state like mine.

I will say only this: in deeply disturbing circumstances, I am proud of how I handled myself. I left that organization knowing that in all my interactions and in all of my words and deeds, I conducted myself with honesty and grace. My integrity is intact.

That being said, to say that this last year has been devastating is like saying the ocean is immense. I remain unemployed despite a severance agreement that guarantees positive reference language. I have applied for well over 100 jobs and have had dozens of interviews but no offers. The pain of this level of rejection and the self doubt it has bred has been, at times, crippling. As a result I am financially ruined for the foreseeable future and have suffered from serious bouts of anxiety and depression.

And yet.

I have come to see this awful experience as something more than a an unmitigated disaster. Strange as it may sound, my faith is more unshakable today than it was 13 months ago. I have been brought low, deep in the valley of the shadow, and I am still here.

My family, especially my parents, have been rock solid. My father is still my guardian and I could not love him more. Few friends know of my plight but I am so grateful for the support of the ones that do and who have supported and encouraged me.

Opportunities have arisen that would not have but for me getting the sack. As a result, I love my community all the more because I know her so much better!

And, once again, I can look myself in the eye and know that I did the right thing. I stood strong in my values, I did not take the easy road. I did not abandon doing what was right for what was expedient. I passed The Test.

Actually, I have passed many tests, none more important than staying rooted in my faith despite the length of time of this ordeal. I have never once been angry at God. Never once have I insisted that he prove His love by ensuring my gainful employment or that he reward me for making me and my family suffer for such a long time.

“This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad of it.”

Yes. Yes. Yes! There is still food to eat and miraculously, the lights are still on. There are people to love and children to raise. The sun shines. And the wild flowers, despite heat and draught and the lack of a manicured garden, are glorious.

I am a Wild Flower. I endure much, do without more, and in spite of everything, all is right with my soul. This is where true beauty is cultivated and this garden is bountiful.

It is a glorious world and I am blessed to be in it. So today, Day 366 of my Great Trial, I rejoice and give thanks and know deeply, intuitively, impossibly, that all will be well.

On Birthday Magic and the Origins of Family

February 23, 2017.Reading time 4 minutes.

Today my sister would be celebrating her 50th birthday. 50! And my dad is celebrating his birthday, too. The date is intermingled – an event that was always a dual celebration in our house. I thought it was a special kind of magic that two people not related by blood would share such an important date. It’s like they were destined to be family.

This may surprise some people who know my family – my dad is not Aimee’s genetic father. Dad met my mom in Christchurch, New Zealand when Aimee was but a year old and adopted her when she was…Maybe 6? These things took a while back in the day. I know that my dad, in his inimitable way, decided to marry my mom within days of meeting her and that my mom, badass that she was, made no bones about the fact that she was a proud single mom and that to love her was to love her daughter. This was 1968 – she was staking out her ground and daring a man with vision and courage meet her on her own terms.

Dad was the man for the job. A young naval officer at the time stationed in Antarctica (he got an island in the Antarctic named after him for his efforts – imagine that!), Dad accepted the challenge and went to battle for her hand and her daughter.

I mean this literally. My grandmother, Dorothea, was the most badass warrior woman God ever created. She fought on Burma Road in WWII and no half-witted, soft-lad Yankee was going to steal her beloved Granddaughter and spirit her off to the God-forsaken wilds of America. Let’s just say that woman knew how to wield a machete and was not afraid to use it.

In my father’s usual quiet way, once he set his mind to something, he went and did it. He won my mother’s hand with his keen mind and sense of humor then he won over my grandmother with his courage under fire.

And my sister? He won her heart with his willingness to enter her world and search for Christopher Robin and the Hundred Acre Wood. I think they found it somewhere near Morgan Hill back before there was silicon in our valley and orchards still covered the land. I’m sure wherever it was it smelled divine – like cherry blossoms and old oak trees.

And that was the start of our family – Mom, Dad and Aimee. I came along a few years later, and then, pulling up the rear, my brother.

And here we are, 50 years after her birth. We carry on without our beloved daughter and sister. But the link between us all, the invisible thread that ties us together is still there. This is one of the secrets you learn when you lose someone before their time – if you keep telling their stories, they are still with you. Until the last story is told.

Here’s to more stories and more memories. Happy Birthday Dad. And to Aimee, wherever you are 💙💙💙