Resolutions Are For Other people, Right?

Certainly not me…  I’ve actually never (probably never.  At least, I don’t remember making any and if I ever did, I know I never stuck with them) made resolutions at the start of a new year.

But, having said that, I came to a realization (thanks in no small part to the “subtle” urging of a dear friend) the other day.  I had been doing a terrible job of staying in touch with friends back home.  Which led me to another realization.  Self-awareness can be a bitch.  Because, in addition to the above, I’d also done a terrible job of keeping up with my writing.

And not just here.

I started this blog with a very specific purpose in mind.  To trigger my writing.  More to the point, to trigger my writing about Diane, Caitlin, and our lives together as well as my life since that time.  I had been encouraged by several people in my life to chronicle what happened, that it was a compelling story and one that should be told.  A daunting task to say the least.  But I cranked out a few thousand words in a relatively short period of time.  At least until I started getting to the “hard” part.

I don’t know if it was writer’s block exactly.  I think it was more the fact that I wasn’t prepared to rip the wound that far open.  And it became an easy excuse to not pick up where I’d left off.  I thought by taking on the blog world it would get me moving on the book again.

I was wrong.

So, despite my marginal success with calling myself out “in public” on staying in touch with friends back home, I thought I’d take a similar tack with my other project and call myself out on this platform to keep working on how our family has evolved since May 22, 2003.  To that end, I’m going to (semi-regularly) insert parts of what I’ve written in the hopes it inspires me to get my ass in front of the keyboard for the purpose of writing as I had intended once I retired.  I’m not sure if I’ll go chronologically or not, but right now I’m thinking I’ll just grab a few hundred words in somewhat random order and see how it goes.

So, without further adieu-

“Drive careful.”

Those were the last words I, or anyone else, ever spoke to Caitlin.  Of course, I couldn’t possibly have known it at the time.  At the time, I was just being a Dad, you know?  One of my kids was out at night and I was concerned for her safety.  

Having said that, I already realize I need to revise the statement.  I’m fairly safe in assuming that the firefighters, paramedics, police officers, and the Flight-for-Life medical helicopter crew spoke to her that night after the crash.  I’ll bet the doctors and nurses she encountered at the hospital that night spoke to her too.  But I’m pretty sure mine were the last words she knew.  She called home about 9:30. It was her second phone call home that night.  She wanted to make sure she was driving in the right direction.    Caitlin had spent the evening at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, looking for an outfit to wear on a boat trip on Lake Michigan for her senior class.  It was the first time she had been to the mall since we moved and she wasn’t exactly sure how to get home from there.  

When I answered the phone the first words out of her mouth were “Should I be going east or west on Route 72?” 

I said “You should be going west.”  

She said “Oh good, I’m going in the right direction.  I’ll see you in a little while”  

And I said “OK.” 

And I said “Drive careful.”  And I waited for her to come home.

Diane and I met in June of 1995.  It was a blind date.  I thought she was beautiful.

My niece Melissa had lunch one day with her cousin Teena.  After lunch, they were sitting in Melissa’s car before Teena went back inside the salon where she worked.  Diane came out to go on her lunch break and Teena asked Melissa if I was seeing anyone.  Melissa told her she didn’t think I was and Teena said “We should fix those two up.”

We talked on the phone almost every night for about a week before we met.  It’s usually hard for me to talk to people I don’t know well, but it seemed pretty easy to talk to her.  Although my recollection was that she did most of the talking and I just listened.  She always told me that I was pretty talkative at that time.  We finally met on June 23^rd at a local fair.  Diane’s eyes were the most amazing shade of blue I’d ever seen.  She had a quick, easy smile and when she laughed, it was if she’d just heard the funniest thing ever. 

Her two girls, Cassandra and Caitlin were twelve and ten when we met.  She had been a single Mom for eight years and she and the girls lived in an apartment she rented from her Mom and Step-Dad.  

I lived in an apartment in a small town about fifteen minutes away, with my two kids.  Emily was eighteen and Ryan was fifteen.  I had been divorced for about a year when Diane and I met.  She almost passed on my phone number because she didn’t think I had been divorced long enough.

By the time we got married four years later, my kids were on their own, so it was just Diane and I with her two girls, a one year-old Jack Russell Terrier named Tobi and a five year-old cat named Abby.  We lived in a three bedroom, one and a half bath townhouse.  In theory it was the right size for us, but we both knew we wanted to buy a house that was a little bit bigger, maybe had a little property around it.  We started looking in earnest in 2002.  We went through countless homes; old, new, ranch, two-story, big yards and postage stamp lots, new subdivisions and old but we couldn’t find what we wanted.  Some were more than we wanted to spend.  Some were in need of too much remodeling to fit what we wanted.  Some just didn’t feel right.  Some we waited too long to make an offer.  I’ll always remember one we waited too long on.  It was on a half acre in a nicer, new-ish subdivision that was close to town, but still kind of rural.  It was just off Route 72, about a mile east of Gilberts.  As I recall it was a little bit more than what we wanted to spend, but not by much.  We talked about it for a week before deciding we wanted the house but we were a couple of days too late.  Somebody else put in an offer and it was accepted.  

After that, we decided to stop looking for awhile.  Instead, we’d get the townhouse ready to sell.  That way, when we finally found the right house we’d be ready to go.  We painted and ordered new carpet, neutral colors because we were told that’s what sells fastest.  One Saturday morning while we were out running errands together, we stopped to drop off some clothes at the dry cleaners.  While I was waiting in line, out of habit, I grabbed a real estate magazine and brought it out to Diane.  She looked at me like I had a third eye and said “I thought we weren’t going to look until we got done with the townhouse?”

I said “I know, it’s just force of habit.”  

A few minutes later, while flipping through the magazine, she said “Oh I really like this one!” 

I asked her where it was and she said “It’s in Wonder Lake.”

“Why do you want to go all the way up there?”

“Because I like the way this house looks.  Can we call the realtor?”

“Yeah, I don’t care.  It’s just that it’s an hour from here.”

So we called the realtor and got directions to the house.  When we turned on the street, she recognized the house from the picture in the magazine.  It sat on top of a small hill and looked really pretty up there.  The yard was about a half acre, it was a newer subdivision full of custom homes in a small town of around 1,200 people.    

She said “I want to buy this house.”

“But we haven’t even seen the inside yet.”

“OK, but I want to buy this house.”

So we met the realtor and went inside.  The first floor was all hardwood floors.  It had a pretty open floor plan with a fireplace in the living room opposite from the kitchen.  There was a small, formal dining room, a powder room and a laundry room on the first floor too.

“I want to buy this house.”

“But we haven’t even seen the upstairs.”

Upstairs there were three bedrooms, each with its own full bath.  The master bedroom had a fireplace and the master bath had a jetted tub.

“I want to buy this house.”

“Umm, OK.”

A couple of days later, we brought Caitlin up to see the house.  Since Cassi was away at college and engaged to be married, Caitlin got her choice of bedrooms.  She chose the bigger of the two remaining rooms.  And immediately started thinking about how she wanted to decorate her room, with animal prints.  She loved the house as much as her Mother did.  She couldn’t wait for summer (the summer that, ultimately, never came), so she could lie out on the back deck and work on her tan.