Happy Birthday Katie

You would have been 54 today... we think

An interesting thing about having a court created birth certificate is that there is always an element of doubt. Is this really your birthday? You were tiny when you got here, to this country. You didn’t speak English yet. Your adopted parents and the court were just interpreting what you said and then later it was taken as truth… as evidenced by all your other paperwork, licenses, diplomas, social security number, everything really. Perhaps it was all just a lie perpetuated by evidence created based on that lie.

Sunday I was running in the woods with KS and a butterfly swooped in. Circled me. I stuck my arm out to the side with my palm flat forward as it circled. It swooped and gave my hand a surprisingly heavy tap and flew on, circling and following a little more and then moving on. KS laughed. Pretty sure she was thinking of Katie. I sure was. I think it was an American Lady - or at least a Vanessa of some kind. Katie liked Vanessas. Those and the ones she called “small blues”

Here’s a photo of a small blue she took at Pinnacles National Park in 2014. Yes, it’s resting in her palm. Acmon blue? Maybe.. not sure. Blue? you ask. You’re looking at the underside of the wing here. The top, you can see a tiny bit of it, is blue. Think for a moment about how many times you’ve had a butterfly in the palm of your hand. Then think about taking a picture of it with your other hand. Hmm. Well yeah, because she was Katie.

To find this photo… well, I was actually looking for a different one… but anyway - to find this photo I had to dig through several hundred folders of fairly well organized photos. She saved everything, it seems. If she saw something odd happening she would take a photo or two or three or four as evidence. Perhaps born out of her feeling that folks didn’t believe her when she would tell them what happened. There are even photos of the “evil” plumbers parked in the apartment parking lot in a way that blocked the garages. Photos of the neighbor’s boyfriend in the same lot as he yelled expletives up at her… and then she called the police. No audio. I never heard the expletives. I just came home to an explosive situation.

When remarkable things happen to an individual over and over there grows a sense of disbelief. Is this really her reality? Was she really abandoned on the street in Seoul? Did her sister really die in an orphanage? Was her family really as wacky as they sound? Was she really abused? Was she really kicked out of the house in high school after being blamed for everything that’s wrong? Did her parents really write her a letter saying that they wanted no further contact with her and she should , “go with God”?

Well yeah.

And she also got invited on random tours of unknown places like the Abalone farm under the commercial wharf pier - just because - well, because she was Katie.

And she somehow got free tickets to a fancy New Years Eve party in Pebble Beach so that I could be a photographer and take photos of her friend’s sculpture’s that were on display. With my crappy little point and shoot.

And she somehow managed to meet a variety of experts in their fields from around the world because, well yeah, she was Katie. And they would ask her for her opinion.

And she has photos in several editions of a cookbook that is published in a whole bunch of languages because, well yeah, she was Katie.

And she was responsible for a Natural History Museum for a while. And she was on governing boards and she did all sorts of things following the whims of her intuition and smarts. She did. Well yeah, she was Kaite. She was on NPR as an expert in Cicadas, btw.

She did a 2 year study of butterflies and flora at Pinnacles on her own, going there weekly because she was, well yeah, she was Katie.

Well yeah, she was Katie and I only met her in 2005.

In the last week I’ve returned to going through her four drawer file cabinet that is jam packed with files from the beginning of time. No, I don’t really want to see everything in there but I do need to 1. Make sure there’s no personal info that needs to be shredded and 2. keep my eyes open for important things. I have found a lot of shredding material and 1 pretty important thing (no, I won’t tell you).

I also found medical and work records from the few years before I met her. She did tell me she was a mess before agreeing, after much persistence from me, to stick with me. This brilliant woman, after a setback of the death of a boss (and dear friend and mentor) combined with a divorce, following abandonment by family, had ended up in such a state of depression she could not get out of bed nor sleep. She would just lay there. Eventually an official diagnosis came through of PTSD. Seems odd to me. Perhaps because they didn’t know what to call it. They just knew she wasn’t functioning in an acceptable, societal way.

I call it her amazing brain realizing that the abandonment she’s suffered through her whole life will continue. Realizing this with a photographic memory that is capable of playing back information over and over at light speed to the point that every time through it brings her down just a little bit more… and a little bit more… and a little bit more until there is seemingly no way back up. The realization that life is patterns and while there are joyous ups in a mind, soul, and body such as hers that are also terrible downs.

Prescription Drugs. Trips to the doctor (in itself bringing back more traumatic memories). Medical leave from work. Unpaid traffic tickets and court dates. More prescription drugs. Lay off notices when she went past the medical leave date. Letters of appeal. Deeper. Darker. A sense that no one believes her. That no one is on her side. She is alone.

And somehow she pulled out of it and moved to California and got jobs and found a place to live and found new friends and almost started a business and then met me.

The roller coaster you rode was not a tame wooden one for the masses… It was a marvel of questionable architecture full of loops and swirls and spins and left you with blown hair and a feeling of fear and exhilaration. A hard ride to endure.

And that’s the ride you were on. Well yeah, because she was Katie.