Catherine Howell Kirby

This is my sweet sister, Mary Catherine, and her newest (third!) child, Catherine. She was born Monday evening, October 2nd, a week or so shy of her due date, and weighed in at 6 lbs., 12 oz. And perfectly healthy in every way. We think she's really beautiful, and according to reports, she has a beautiful temperament, too...easily soothed, easily fed, so in general, she's on track to be a compliant, flexible third child. Here's hopin'. Mary Catherine, in typical form, is surviving better than most would. That kid is a fighter, a survivor, a champ in any situation. She's got Christopher (almost 7), and Molly (21 months) at home, too, and today Ryan went back to work for the first day, and I was talking to her on the phone tonight and she mentioned what she fixed for dinner tonight. Yep, she's a better woman than I.

It kills me that I couldn't be there to help her these last weeks that she has been on partial bedrest. Then it was so hard to go to work here on Monday and get a text message from her at her doctor's appointment that her dr. was going to induce her 3 days early, and know that I couldn't help her juggle kids and carpool and soccer practice to make it all work. I was so sad to not be able to visit her in the hospital and bring her Starbucks and curl up on the vinyl couch in her hospital room with Catherine in my arms. And now that she's home, I would do about anything to pick Christopher up from school and keep Molly for an afternoon so MC could shut her eyes for a little bit. I hate being away from my sisters, and at times like this, I feel it much more intensely...the desire to just be there, to be present for big moments, to be able to love them in really practical ways.

As it was, I sent pink roses and have called annoyingly often. When we talked on the phone this morning and she mentioned she needed a few random baby items, I raced to our storage unit to get what baby items I had and packed them off and mailed them to her next day air. I spent a lot of time online tonight obsessing about what kind of baby bottle labels I should get printed for Catherine, and wondered if she would need tags for her diaper bags, too. The thing is, I really don't want to throw money and things at this kid (and her Mama), I want to be there.

These last 10 years in Mississippi have been so good for me in lots of ways. If I'm going to be completely honest, one of the things I have enjoyed has been to have some space between my family and I in the early years of being married and figuring out what this new family (Michael and me, and later our girls) was going to look like - how we would be like our families and how we would be different, all that kind of stuff. It's been nice in some ways to not be known as my parents' child all over town, to have an identity of my own, to make friends of my own, to establish myself professionally on my own. It's been good. I'm ready to go home.

If only I could carry my family here with me. I need to be in St. Louis, and I need my Jackson family with me. And there's the thing...I can't have it both ways. It breaks my heart. But that girl in the picture is my sister, and against all odds, one of my best friends in the world. I need her. And I want to know her kids and to have her know mine. I have always said that when Lucy is 13 and hates me, I want her to have the kind of relationship with MC such that she could storm out of my house swearing at me under her breath and go to MCs and sit at the kitchen table and complain that her mother was bitchy and controlling. Because MC would understand (I have, undoubtedly, been my fair share of bitchy and controlling to her through the years), would let Lucy rant, and at the end, would speak for me and be a wise adult in Lucy's life. I need this.

So it will have to be good enough to carry this home, and the people who have made it home, in my heart. It will have to be enough to make plans to keep in touch daily, weekly, monthly. I will probably travel the dreadfully boring I-55 from St. Louis to Jackson far more often than I ever have travelled it from Jackson to St. Louis. I will have to swallow the sadness about these dear ones not watching my girls grow up and have important moments, from storming out of my house swearing to ballet recitals and graduations. I will cry. A lot. As I already do. As I am, again, writing this.

I wonder in heaven if we will have to miss people. I really need to believe that we won't...that we will all be worshipping God together, not some in Mississippi, some in Missouri, some in Pennsylvania, some in Texas, some in Nebraska. If it is true that in heaven we will have relationship with God and others as God intended those relationships to be, then relationships won't hurt. If relationships won't hurt, then it follows that we must not have to leave each other. Makes sense to me. That gives me hope. I can do this...it's the right thing to do. It just hurts.

A P.S. to this post on the topic of heaven . . . . . . . . . .
At the recent Back to School Night for Lucy at Covenant Preschool, one of the teachers was telling me a story about Lucy. It seems that Lucy has spent a good deal of time in the sandbox making "pies" at recess recently, and this teacher had asked her one day what kind of pies she was making. Lucy replied that she and Paul were making "poison pies." The teacher, somewhat concerned, asked why, and/or who, they were for. Lucy responded rather candidly and cheerfully that they were making them for themselves, because if you eat a poison pie then you will die, and if you die, you will go to heaven. And I have never known a kid who wanted to go to heaven like Lucy does. We talk about it almost daily. But, poison pies?!

Anyone care for a piece of poison pie? :) Some days . . . . .
And I have since talked to her about suicide and how this is not an ok way to get to heaven. She now announces, and quite authoritatively, to anyone who will listen, that, "You cannot make yourself die. Only God makes us be born and only God makes us dead." I mean, this kid is going to make me rewrite the book on parenting before she's 13. A suicide talk, at age 4.