Mrs.G: Chapter Two

Growing up

Where did you grow up?
 I was born and raised here in Cbus, in a little suburb called Hilliard. When I came home from the hospital we went to my Grandma's house. My parents along with my brother were living with her.

In the couple years before I was born my parents split up, and my Grandpa Hunter (paternal), went over to my parents house and packed up my mom and my brother and moved them in to he and my Grandma's house. Their was always a sense of disappointment with how my father handled the whole situation and my family didn't exactly keep their feelings to them selves.

A little over a year before I was born my mom and dad got back together but my Grandfather in the mean time took ill. He had a very aggressive lung cancer and it took him within a year. He died a year to the day I was brought home from the hospital.

My family still lived with my Grandma and in May 1987 my parents were starting divorce proceedings, I call myself a love child for this reason.

I can still remember the Ridgewood house, the tree in the front yard that I fought so hard to climb, always in vain. I was so little. I remember the basement being a perfect circle and my brother and I roller blading around and around, I remember the wall of mirrors in the dining room that would cause me to climb on the dining room table and use it as a stage.

When we moved out we bounced around from apartment to apartment until my mom bought the house I grew up in. I was 7 and we moved in to this new condo community on what was the outskirts of town. When we moved there it was the complex and a grocery store, McDonalds and the rest was just corn fields.

* cute fact* as we were building our house, my mom took my brother and I there one day to see the progress and they hadn't put the insulation up. My mom grabbed a pen and had us sign the walls in our bedrooms. I so very badly want to see that little hand written signature again*

What was your earliest memory?

I can remember back to when I was 4, their was a particular incident at my Grandmas house that was absolutely terrifying.

I was an odd kid, I wasn't scared of the dark, in fact I loved it and would search high and low for the perfect  dark spot such as a closet (where my mother would find me quite often). Then one day, while playing in the basement I came upon my Grandma's old upright, out of commission freezer. I thought to myself, it has to be as dark as a closet, IF NOT DARKER!!! So my little four year old self decided to try this out, I pulled open the door and climbed in.

Here is the thing, there is more than one reason fridges keep your food fresh, its not only keeping your food cold, but also keep air out.

Yes, I had just voluntarily locked my self in an air tight freezer. I remember the door shutting and not immediately being scared. There was a few moments of WOW THIS IS THE BEST DARK PLACE EVER!!! Then the air was used up. I can remember gasping for air, trying to feel around for door, then crying. I was terrified, my little mind didn't grasp that severity of this predicament because at 4 you don't really understand death. But I remember bracing  myself and kicking with all my might gasping for air.

I finally got the door open and I remember gulping air and bolting up the stairs. I was hysterically crying and when I rounded the corner in to the living room I remember the look on my mom and grandma's faces. They had been catching up one minute and the next trying to decipher what happened from a screaming 4 year old. I dragged the downstairs and they saw the door open on the freezer and little scuff marks from my shoes on the walls inside.

Looking back this all happened in a matter of minutes but in my fearful mind it was hours, if not days.

I don't mind the dark, but to this day I don't like being in basements much or tight spaces.

What games did you play?
I had to do a lot of make believe growing up. My brother didn't really want his pesky little sister around so it was usually me playing dress up.

My grandma gave me a bunch of her old dresses from the 1950's and I would grab that and my old Fischer Price record player and my grandmas Andrew Sisters record and pretend my family had to escape city bombings in during WW2.

Or I used to move in to the bathroom and set up my bed in the tub and pretend I had this little cabin in the woods.

Next up: The teenage years.

Mrs.G: Chapter one

The first chapter is Birth and Family.

I wasn't sure I was going to write this one because who really wants to know about my birth and my crazy ass family? Then I was like what the heck lets go balls to the wall and start from the very beginning.

What is your full name, do you have any nick names: Kathryn Dawn G@#%^, because my name is Kathryn I have a litany of nick names. My family all calls me Kate, in fact they do so much it weirds me out to hear them call me something else. Everyone else calls me Katy, I am Kathryn when I am in trouble with my dad and Kathryn Dawn when I get in trouble with my mom. Because of this whenever I get called Kathryn I always get that feeling in my stomach like I did something wrong, this causes problems with my old school grandma that refuses to call me anything else.

Because you don't see Kathryn spelled that way a lot and you never see Katy spelled that way, I get called Kathy a lot. I hate it. I am not a middle aged woman with a mullet and glitter kitten applique sweatshirt and turtleneck combo. You would think that the Katy Perry phenomena would have spread awareness to the world that there are other ways to spell Katie.

My Parents are Dennis and Frances. My mom was born in Cincinnati in a small German catholic community called Sedamsville and my dad was born in Bloomfield, Iowa. What you have never heard of Bloomfield? It's a small farm town in the south east tip of Iowa, there were more students in my high school than there are in Bloomfield... and surprisingly it is one of my favorite places.

I was born here in Columbus on a hot summer night. That Wednesday was supposed to be like every other day. My dad was at a softball game and my mom and brother were at my Grandma's house cleaning up for dinner. The week before my mom had been hit with a foul tip, right in the stomach and still had a bruise, my brother thought it was cool because he got to keep the ball. After getting dinner cleaned up my mom went to the bathroom and her water broke. My mom is an ox, she never complains and probably thought her contractions were just irritating and not contractions.

When my mom told my grandma she wanted my brother to shower before they left and my mom said they didn't have time. This was a lie, she just thought it was dumb to keep a woman in labor waiting.

Remember when I said my dad was at a softball game, well while all this was happening he was still at the game. Mom phoned a family friend to drive to the field to get him. My dad got to the hospital, tight softball Jersey, shorts that were way to short and my brothers sweat band around his head. It was the 80's, anyway, my dad ran right past my Grandma and my brother and to this day my brother swears that is the moment he knew he had lost his father.

In the delivery room my dad asked Dr.Kennedy if she was going to give him a girl and she said "you kind of already decided that".

3 hours later WHOOP there I was.

11:21pm 5lbs, 4oz.

I was a month early.

The baseball induced my moms labor.

I joined my brother Nick, my only blood sibling and Cory joined us 5 years later when my dad started dating my Step mom.

I am not really close with either of my siblings, Nick because of the age difference and Cory because I rarely see him and he kind of labeled him self the black sheep of the family and for a few years was determined to ruin any chances he had at a life. He is back on track now though and I pray he keeps it together this time.

When I am around my brothers we are great together, we laugh and joke but when we separate and go on to our respected lives we won't talk for months.

So chapter one is done. Do we like this idea? It is actually asking more questions but I don't want to make this one chapter in to a novel.

11 years

In the moments during and after the attacks of September 11th, we were forever changed as a nation, as citizens and as individuals.

When I talk about this day and its events, or watch news coverage it brings back the confusion, fear, and helplessness that I felt to such a degree I remember it to be almost crippling.

For the first time in our nations history we saw an attack of great magnitude unfold right before our eyes, we saw the second plane hit on live television. It is such a personal experience, where you were and what you were doing when the planes collided with the towers, when they collapsed, when the pentagon was hit and when the passengers and crew lost their lives in Shanksville, PA.

I remember watching the news scared and also confused, I didn't get it we were the good guys, we come in and save the day, why would some one do this? I so badly wanted John Wayne to appear with his troops and make the world right again.

 As he towers once blazing, started to crumble, you knew in the few seconds it took for these Juggernauts to reduce to rubble that thousands of souls were lost. We were lost.

That thick dust filled the streets, engulfed sky scrapers, hunted down the fleeing natives, reaching for them, pulling them in to its unknown. The tendrils of dust reached the sky and coiled out to the far corners of this nation. We all could feel it as if we were running those streets, we gasped for air, we could feel the debris on our skin.

Once the dust lifted, who was left looked like ghosts, it was eerily too fitting.

After watching news coverage all day I remember thinking how I got to kiss my mom good night and tell her I love her, and how I prayed the ones lost did too. I so hoped that before they left that day that they kissed their husbands, wives and children and said I love you to each one. I can remember thinking this is it. The sun   can't rise tomorrow, that would mean the start of a new day when we have had barely enough time to process what happened, people are missing, questions aren't answered.

But it did, and we did what Americans do, we reached in to the smoldering rubble and pulled one another up.

The sun has risen and set on this day 11 times since that morning and it will continue, and we will always remember.