(Listen to the radio version here.)
Exactly 42 years ago, at 5:27 am on December 10, 1983, I gave birth to my webmaster. Of course, neither of us realized that’s who she would become at the time—the World Wide Web had yet to be created and there was no such thing as a web page. The one thing my tiny software engineer knew at that point was that she wanted to be close to her mommy every moment. The feeling was mutual.
After everything settled down and the doctor and nurse left, Russ, our baby, and I snuggled together for a bit, but Russ and I were both pretty exhausted, and he had to head home where his mom was taking care of our future thespian, technical advisor, and authority on all things Disney, 2-year-old Joey. When Katie and I were all alone, I carried her to the window—it was just about sunrise. The clouds were too thick to see any pink in the sky, but the softly falling snow was ethereally beautiful in the dawn’s early light.
Joey and my not-yet-born Simpson’s guru and kindred spirit Tommy were both born in October during the height of raptor migration—in both cases, the first bird to wing past our hospital room was an auspicious Bald Eagle. With Katie, it was a much tinier bird that flitted past the window—a chickadee. When she was building my website, her future husband Michael added his own illustrations of chickadees—so very precious and meaningful for me.
(This son-in-law is yet another gift from my daughter. He’s a wonderful designer—after my mastectomy, he’s the one who created a splendidly hilarious graphic to my specifications.)
Katie was born back in the days when the hospital kept just about all the babies in the nursery overnight, but she screamed so much, so loudly, without stopping for a breather, that the on-duty nurses couldn’t cope; they woke me at midnight and asked if I could try to settle her down. The moment I took her in my arms—and I mean that very instant—she stopped crying and snuggled in. My own exhaustion vanished, at least for a few minutes. When she was sleeping soundly, I gently placed her in the hospital bassinet right next to my bed. She stirred and started crying, but I stroked her back and sang a lullaby or two and she fell back asleep. I drifted off while staring at this adorable being through the transparent plastic hospital crib.
We went home the following morning, and I can say with absolute truth that my little girl has always lived up to the promise of that first chickadee—she’s brilliant, inquisitive, goofy, open, kind, musical, and utterly beloved. Even when she was still tiny, she was amazingly helpful when I was rehabbing birds—gentle, patient, and unfailingly reliable.
She has always been and will always be my Katie, but on her first day of kindergarten she decided to separate her home and professional lives, informing the teacher, “I would prefer you address me as Katherine.” That is what everyone outside of our immediate family calls her.
She’s done way more traveling than any chickadee could imagine. When she was 19, she rode her bicycle around Lake Superior with two friends. The summer after she graduated from college, she biked with a friend from the Mississippi Headwaters at Lake Itasca State Park to New Orleans. In 2008 she rode her bike, with Michael and one of their college friends, from San Diego’s Pacific coast to Florida’s Atlantic coast. In 2011, she rode with Michael and a few other friends from Washington state to San Francisco; in 2015 she and Michael flew to St. Petersburg in Russia with their bikes, took a taxi to the western border, and bicycled from there across Finland, took a ferry to Sweden, and then biked across Sweden and Norway all the way to the coast. And in 2019, they biked the loop around Nova Scotia. All of these trips were done without a support team; Katie or Michael pulled her trusty “Burley,” a bike trailer that held their sleeping bags and other supplies. (Meanwhile, the longest bike trip I’ve ever made was from our house to Russ’s parents’ house in Port Wing, Wisconsin—a mere 60 miles. And once was enough.)
Katie’s always been wondrously creative and focused. When she was four or five, I promised the kids I’d give them their own copy of the National Geographic field guide when they got their life list up to 100. She instantly started tallying all the birds in our yard and tagging along whenever I went birding. She continued diligently until yep—she earned her field guide while she was in kindergarten.
When she was four, she started insisting on reading her bedtime stories to us rather than vice versa. She started with picture books, but by the time she started kindergarten, she’d already read, aloud, every one of the Beverly Cleary “Ramona” books. She was in junior high while Minnesota still required every student to take a semester of home economics and a semester of shop. Even as she aced her AP courses and captained the school’s math league, she was just as painstaking on every other project, from metal- and wood-working through mechanical drawing and electronics. Her shop teacher told us that she amassed more points in his class than any student had ever done during his long career.
Katie started piano lessons as a preschooler and raced through all the assignments each week, keeping up through high school. She and a friend took turns as first chair percussionist in the East High band and orchestra, and in college she joined the Oberlin steel drum band; that’s where she met Michael. While she worked in the genomics lab at NYU, she taught herself database design to make it easier for the scientists to retrieve information. That led to her pursuing a Masters degree in Computer Science on the side; she set the curve in almost all her courses. And she then rose to Director at her first software engineering job.
That’s my Katie—when she starts a project, whether it was creating my website over a decade ago or pouring 300 hours into her blue-ribbon-winning entry in the Minnesota State Fair crop art exhibit this year, she sticks to it.
She’s also the person who transformed me into a grandmother, giving me the most wonderful grandchild I could possibly have imagined.
Walter shares Katie’s inquisitiveness, stubbornness, silly sense of humor, intelligence, and gentle, kind nature. And he is every bit as devoted to his mommy as my Katie has always been to hers.
Last week, Katie was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of blood plasma cells that is extraordinarily rare in young people, especially women. I wanted to cancel my Ecuador trip, but that biggest cheerleader of mine is insistent that I go. I’ll be back in just under two weeks, well before her first round of chemo begins, but even while my body is in the Southern Hemisphere, my heart will be beating in rhythm with that of my focused, creative, wonderful, beloved birthday girl. Her commitment to and love for her little boy and her life partner, and her determination and joie de vivre, along with the love and support of the family and friends to whom she has given so much love and support her entire life, should help sustain her through treatments so she can celebrate many, many birthdays to come.
There aren't enough words to describe the complexity of emotions I felt as I read your post, and I certainly can't begin to understand you and your family must be feeing at this time. I simply want to send my best wishes to all. May the birds be with you.
Well, thanks to your exquisite column on Katie, she is now part of my family, too. (Nice to have a genius in the family!) I will be following her every challenge with love and energy, and asking all the Powers of the universe for her safety and well being.