Katrina

My three children were born in the months that the seasons change.  Sam, born in March, is my spring baby.  Jenna, born in June, is my summer baby.  Katrina, born in September, is my autumn baby.  I could probably make a case for them matching their seasons, but that's not what this post is about.  Nor is it about the fact that I did not have a winter baby to complete the four seasons.  This post is for Katrina on her birthday.

Always marching to her own drummer, Katrina was not willing to wait for her due date and instead arrived five weeks early.  Most parents will tell you that they have no idea what they are doing when that first baby arrives.  It becomes more complicated when the baby is a preemie.  Nonetheless, we survived, obviously, and that baby is now twenty-nine years old.

When Katrina was two-and-a-half years old, she told me that she had two minds:  a thinking mind and a dreaming mind.  Yep.  Imagine what it was like to raise a child with that kind of perception.

Katrina was born loving books.  Somewhere, there's a picture of her at ten months of age, surrounded by every book she owned, crying because she had "read" them all.  Being read to was her favorite thing, and she would memorize the text of her favorite books, among them The Wizard of Oz and all the Beatrix Potter books.  One of my favorite memories is of our weekly trips to the town library, where we would take out ten books and spend a lovely afternoon reading them all.

So one would think that this child would figure out how to read on her own at an early age, right?  A novice parent, I tried to "teach" her to read, which only led to frustration.  One month into first grade, at the age of seven, Katrina unlocked the key, and within a month or two, she was reading at a fifth grade level.  She never looked back.

And the avid reader became a gifted writer.  Go figure.  By the time she graduated from high school, Katrina had won eleven local, regional and national writing awards, including a silver and a gold medal in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.  She had no idea at the time how impressive this was.  She was just writing her way through the grief of her father's death.

In a few months, Katrina will complete her Master of Fine Arts in Writing.  Will she become a "successful" writer?  She already is in my book.

Twenty-nine years ago, this girl rocked my world.  She's still rocking it.  I will forever be in love with you, Katrina.