So, Kristie, let me step aside, for once, and let you tell your tale in your own words. How many stories have been in this book so far? Six? Seven? It’s time for my coffee break anyway.
I’ve been blessed. That’s what I always say. I’m so blessed, in fact, that I put a list of my blessings in my Christmas card every year. It looks like this:
I am blessed because all of my kids like mac and cheese, hot dogs, and frozen pizza.
I am blessed that both boys think, talk, and act rough and tough but still sleep with their favorite Teddy.
I am blessed because every day I receive four credit card applications in the mail. Some would call this junk mail; I call it “free envelopes.”
I am blessed that my children live on the edge and will do anything if it’s a dare and not a sin. Like drinking “Mom’s special sauce” for five bucks. Chocolate syrup, ketchup, mustard, and pickle juice.
I am blessed that when Reagan wakes up, she yells “Lucas, D.J., I’m awake, come get me,” and I can get another five minutes of sleep.
I’m blessed that my kids love worms and bugs, since I do, too. I’m blessed that they eat tomatoes and beans straight from my garden, and dig up baby carrots, and bite right into peppers, because I did that, too. I’m blessed that Sioux City is cold enough in the winter for snow forts and hot enough in the summer to throw up a temporary swimming pool in the backyard. I’m blessed that my kids are constantly grass stained and hate to wear shoes, even though my daughter has Fred Flintstone feet just like my husband. (I wonder how that’s going to look in high heels.)
I’m blessed that Lucas is the kindest, most empathetic kid I’ve ever met. I’m blessed that my middle boy, D.J., is so strong-willed that he refused to use his real name, which is Dawson, and everybody said fine. “Why didn’t you name me Bruce Wayne or Cowboy D.J.?” he used to whine. He was in a Batman/cowboy phase; he dressed like one or the other every day for three years. I had no trouble pushing Batman through the supermarket in a shopping cart, but I finally had to get his kindergarten teacher to tell him cowboys weren’t allowed in school. My three-year-old daughter, Reagan, meanwhile, is a mermaid. She wears orange hair from the dollar store and three-size-too-big tap shoes from the Goodwill and calls my husband Eric (his real name is Steven), since that’s the prince from The Little Mermaid. “My prince is home!” she yells every evening when he walks in the door. And then they dance. Reagan never dances with me. “Sorry, Mommy,” she says, “you’re Ursula.” (Ursula’s the sea witch). But I’m still blessed, because she’s eight years younger than D.J., and I thought the next time I heard the patter of baby feet I’d be a grandmother.
I’m blessed with Steven, the man of my dreams. We’ve been married for thirteen years, and I still get butterflies in my tummy when I am getting ready to go on a date. Alone. With a boy. Hee Hee. And when he takes me out, he lets me order “the usual”: a grilled cheese sandwich with crinkle fries. He never tries to change me. He just laughs and says, “You’re a cheap date, honey.” And I say, “Lucky for you.”
I’m blessed because I have a nice house. Because I have a purposeful job, mentoring fifty-two kids with learning disabilities from age sixteen to twenty-four. A job where I can use my experiences to help people I care about, and where their courage and warmth helps me, too. I’m blessed because when my dog Molly died at seventeen, I cried so hard I thought I never wanted another animal. But some of the kids I mentor volunteer at the Siouxland Humane Society, and they introduced me to another dog, and now I have Princess to jog with every morning.
I’m blessed because last fall I ran the Sioux City marathon, and I did it the right way. I even gained weight on purpose to compete in the over-150-pound category, where I finished third. Which was amazing! But that wasn’t why I was blessed. I was blessed because every two miles my husband, sister, and even my dad were there to hand me water and cheer me on, and each time they were crying because they were so proud of me, because they knew how hard I had worked and how far I had come.
Where did I come from? How did I get here? Those aren’t questions I’ve often asked. I’m blessed by God. Every time I hear my three-year-old pray, I’m reminded of that. But it took hard work, too. I always knew that, because I’m the one who did the work. It wasn’t until I started thinking about this book, though, that I realized that maybe Robert Frost was right. Maybe there are two roads that diverge in the yellow woods of our lives, and I . . .
I married my cat.
And that has made all the difference.
If you want an explanation of that, and I hope you do, then we probably need to go back to the beginning, which in this case is 1984, when I was a dirty snot-covered (and proud of it!) nine-year-old kid living in Worthington, Minnesota, a pretty little town on a lake. I was a tomboy, I guess you could say, because I loved gardening with my dad and digging for worms and racing beetles in the palms of my hands. When my mom told me pigtails looked nice, I cut my hair off in the middle of the night and hid it in my jewelry box. I loved sugar, so I would sneak into the pantry and drink all the Hershey’s chocolate syrup straight out of the can. Then I’d walk around with chocolate sauce smeared all over my face, denying my crime. You know, that kid. Never worried about a thing.
But in the summer of 1983, Grandpa got sick with colon cancer. He was a big man from a very small town, Whittemore, Iowa, where he owned a meat locker, and to me he was about a hundred feet tall. He was very outspoken, and he had huge raw hands from cutting meat all his life. When my mom and older sister and I moved to Whittemore to take care of him, I was excited because it was like a vacation. And Grandpa was a hero to me. I still remember skating down the street every day to the diner, plopping into my seat, and saying, “I’ll have the usual, please”—grilled cheese with crinkle fries, of course—and feeling like I was some kind of grown-up. But the cancer cut Grandpa down so quickly that he started to wither before my eyes. I could see, even as a child, his big hands trembled. They couldn’t hold me anymore. My mom was strong-willed. She always said, “I have big shoulders. I can handle anything.” When my grandpa stopped fighting, I saw her fear for the first time.
When I got home to Minnesota two weeks later, I found out my cat had died. I’d left Puff at home with my dad in Worthington, but when we came back after the funeral, he told me Puff had died. I looked at him and nodded. Then I went to my room and cried. I was nine years old. What else could I do?
A few days later, another cat showed up at our side door. She was a calico, and she had the wildest mix of colors I have ever seen. No stripes or patterns, just a crazy quilt that made her look like a bunch of parts of different cats stitched together. Her ears were missing, like maybe they had frozen off. Her tail was a stump. She was ugly and beat up and undesirable in every way . . . so obviously I started feeding her. I gave her milk and a name and even a few dinner scraps I managed to slide into my pockets. So of course she kept coming back.
“Kristie,” my dad finally said after noticing Bowser hanging around the side door, “why are you feeding that cat?”
“Gwampa sent me dis cat,” I told him. I had a little kid lisp back then; I was all “wed woses are pwetty” in those days. But I puffed myself up and said, “Gwampa wants me to have dis cat, Daddy.”
Typical for a nine-year-old, right? A little parental manipulation? Maybe, but I believed it to be true. And I still do. If there’s a void that someone should fill, but they aren’t, God sends an animal. Bowser was sent. And Grandpa had something to do with it.