May 25, 2025
Katherine came in to our world at 6 pounds 8 ounces, on July 7, 1982, five minutes after her sister Sarah. The nurses were busy with Sarah, so they handed Katherine to her dad. He was perched on the stool behind me in the delivery room. She looked directly at him, and I could hear her quietly cooing, making sounds. So alert and expressive. Still is!
When Katherine was about five years old, she announced: “Mom, I really don’t want to play with dolls anymore. I’d rather play with my real people friends.”
One day, she came in from playing with a neighbor boy, saying he got mad at her.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I said he is pretty!” She felt that this was a compliment.
She was sometimes a “voice in the darkness,” padding into our bedroom and standing beside my sleeping form, making a request.
One day I rearranged her bedroom furniture. That night, her voice came out of the 3:00am darkness: “Which way does my bed go?” I turned on her light to show her, and went back to bed.
A few minutes later: “Mom, I still don’t get it!” I returned to her room, and found that she had put her pillow on the wrong end of her bed, so of course she could not get in the tucked end.
When Katherine was 5 1/2 years old, her sister Julie was born. We explained that babies have soft spots on their heads where the skull has not fully closed, so she should be careful not to touch Julie’s head until her brain was fully protected.
Katherine: “Did someone poke my soft spot when I was a baby?”
Me: “I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”
Katherine: “Because I am having trouble thinking today.”
One time I dropped her off at her piano teacher’s house for a lesson. She was a few minutes early. Later, she described to me some features of her teacher’s upstairs bathroom/bedroom area.
“Why on earth were you up there?” I asked.
She replied with matter-of-fact innocence: “Well, I was early, so the teacher said I should make myself at home.”
