Kathleen Marie

Kathleen Marie.
Is that not the coolest name ever? Much cooler than Sara Margaret, for crying out loud.
Kathleen Marie was my aunt. Still is as a matter of fact and is otherwise known as MSUgal. Perhaps you’re familiar?
Anyway, Kathy is my dad’s only sibling but was four years older than myself so she and I grew up together. I had a younger sister named Amy, but she was quite evil until adulthood and so not to be trusted at all. But that’s a story for another day.
Kathy was terribly cool. I wish I had the picture of us in our matching pink Easter outfits purchased by my grandma, her mom. I’m sure she has it somewhere so keep an eye on her blog; it’s sure to surface. She also had a majorette hat made out of a bleach bottle. Like I said, cool.
Kathy had no end of wacky schemes and games should you go to her house, which we did at least one evening a week. The problem was, the extreme planning and plotting required for these adventures would consume all but ten minutes of the visit leaving the whole affair to be rather a tease.
We would play Dreamboat. This is how dreamboat works. You first have to clean Kathy’s room so that you can prepare properly for dreamboat. Kathy has a white canopy bed with pink bedclothes so clearly this will be worth the effort. You clean and organize and perhaps dust and vacuum. Then you pile on the bed and pretend to be on a boat. Umm. Surely there was more to it than that? Well, anyway, I’m sure I’ve just forgotten the details but dreamboat was well worth the preparation. I think
Anyway, there was also Barbies. Never was there such a Barbie collection as Kathy’s! She had a blue hatbox filled with Barbie supplies. Of course one had to clean the bedroom to set up the Barbie city. But that was just to take maximum advantage of the Barbie playing. And then we’d. Uh, anyway, we would probably have lots of fun. If we ever actually played Barbies, which I don’t specifically remember doing.
Moving forward in time, Kathy was quite the queen of the holidays. One Christmas Eve (as that was the Trent Holiday), she answered the door and she was wearing....a black t -shirt with a studded peacock on it and a wrap-around skirt! Fantastic! And she had a black leather jacket with a fur collar. She was a fashion-maven. Every Christmas she would light roughly 1,000 candles in my grandparent’s house and make us turn off all the lights to admire the holiday glow. Exciting times, those. But my favorite holiday memory involves Elvis Presley’s rendition of Blue Christmas. Think about it, got it? OK, I have a cassette taped recording of Kathy singing Blue Christmas ala Elvis with a bit of Loretta Lynn thrown in for good measure. Anybody wanna hear?
The year I graduated from high school the Mr. and I, not yet married, hijacked a seat with my grandparents and Kathy who were off to visit relatives in Niagra Falls. Actually my grandpa’s only sister was gravely ill but we figured, the falls are within driving distance and why should they go to waste?
So while my grandfather kept a bedside vigil, Kathy took the car and off we went to the falls. First stop, Dracula’s Castle. The wax museum of horror. Oooooh. We skulked along giggling and exchanging our witty banter when from the end of the corridor came a sound... a distant rumbling. And then from around the corner came somewhere between 3 and 80 teenagers screaming and running at full tilt. The mob ran past us shoving us against the walls of the dark museum. Never one to panic, Kathy took firm control of the situation.
“IT’S A FRANKENSTEIN!!!” yelled Kathy.
And so, Dean, Kathy and I took off running back toward the entrance of the museum in a blind hysteria trying to outrun the Frankenstein. As we ran, we shoved small children and senior citizens out of our paths. In our defense, we warned them to run. They just stood there and stared. Idiots.
At a particular juncture in the darkened museum there were two steps down to a different level. There we were, me in the lead, Dean holding my hand and Kathy hanging on to the back of Dean’s jacket. I saw the stairs and took them without hesitation, 1-2-3, and kept running. Dean, being the athletic one amongst us just sailed right over them action-hero style. And Kathy, hanging on to Dean’s jacket and looking over her shoulder to check the advance of Frankenstein, was dragged down the stairs on her knees and ended up laying face down on the dark carpet of the castle. I stopped, having heard the “thud” and instructed Dean in a rather shrill scream to go back and help her. Kathy, being nothing short of a hero raised her sweaty head and gasped, “I’m fine, keep running! Save yourselves!”
And so we did.
We ran, we three, twisting and turning around the darkened hallways. Heading toward the entrance. Pushing tourists out of the way. Ever aware that horrific death was on our heals. A Frankenstein no less.
Finally, we pushed through the turnstile backwards, stumbled into the daylight of the lobby. Panting, hands on our knees trying to catch our breath. Foolish people waiting to enter the museum and walk into the hands of certain doom. Kathy looked down and found that the knees of her jeans were torn and her kneecaps bloody. She was limping and wounded; but we were alive. My God, we were alive.
As we gathered our wits about us; the crowd whispering amongst themselves, speculating as to what had happened in the dark recesses of Dracula’s Castle; the object of our terror emerged from the dark abyss.
A fat kid in a snorkel jacket wandered over and said, “Hey, where’d everybody go?”
In our defense, he was very big and could easily have been a Frankenstein.
And this my friends, is a typical day in the adventure that is Kathy and Sara.
We’ve backed each other up when life was unkind. We’ve lent a shoulder, a buck and a promise to stand together when times were rough. We’ve forgiven without being asked to and laughed ourselves sick.
We’ve sat together at the kitchen table and drank coffee with my dog sitting next to Kathy and drinking coffee out of a bowl.
We’ve marathon Christmas shopped until we thought we’d keel over.
We’ve shared pasta lunches at Hudson’s and gone for Town Club pop as children for Christmas with my Grandpa.
We swam in her pool and planned my wedding and cried together at the birth of her daughter.
We know each other from the inside out and couldn’t fake it with each other if we tried.
She’d kick your butt if you hurt me, and I’d kick it if you hurt her.
We have that secret language of family and memories...It’s a Frankenstein, You’re fading, There’s something suspicious, Jump back Tookie and a hundred other nonsensical statements that make perfect sense to us.
And when the chips are down and there’s a Frankenstein on your tail; we’ll come back for one another.
Now that is cool.