The New Mrs. Kate Korby

This last weekend, Gabe, my mom, and I traveled to New Paltz, New York to witness the wedding of my dear friend, Kate Shuipis. (Gabe was the champion of the world, by the way. We traveled from Salt Lake to Denver to Atlanta to New York (logically!). It was grueling and he was pure contentedness.) Kate was the first person I met in Duxbury and we were instant friends. Her family is my second family. She and I grew into women together. Although she lives far away, now married to a mountain man stone mason named Justin, I think of her often and wish happiness for her always.

Getting ready



The man himself, Justin


An Emily sandwich. Some may have called us band and orchestra nerds, nay dorks. I call us wicked awesome. Clearly.
Emily Stanfill, Kate Shuipis and Emily Herchen.

Elizabeth, my second mom, and my mom, best friends. My mom does not have freakishly small hands nor does she own a super creepy brooch. That creeping hand belongs to Gabe, just to ward off speculation.

Michael walking Kate down the aisle
Married at last!

Cutting the cake

I can't say how joyful I felt to be with my friends again, to be with my second family. They are beauty to me.

This will not reflect well on me....

But...the other day Mike and I had his sister babysit while we went out (bless her soul). As we explained how to best put Jude down for bed, Mike and I disagreed about the most effective method. To sing a soft song or not? To rock him sweetly or not? (You'll never guess which side of things I was on...) I was ticked that Mike disagreed with my recommendations (he pooh-poohed them, really...furrowed his brow, scoffed) and I was frustrated (nay, fuming) as we left the house. Sitting in the car, I told him of my frustration and then called him a meanie-head. He then called me a meanie-face. This conversation ensued:

Me: "Bum-face!"
Mike: "Wiener-head!"
Me: "Boobie-buns!"
Mike: "Poopy-face!"

I laughed myself silly; we both did. Mature, no? It was surprisingly difficult to come up with 12-year-old-boy insults. I don't recommend resolving all conflicts this way, but..hey...it worked. Tension diffused. Turns out we had misunderstood each other anyway...Mike is all for songs and rocking and such cuddly stuff at the appropriate time in the ritual.

Homeward Bound

Last night we drove back home through the night. Mike made me a little nest of pillows and blankets in the back, we tucked Jude into his carseat with his beloved blanket, Mike popped in Harry Potter on CD and off we went into the sunset, palm trees swaying behind us.

Between Baker and Barstow, at about midnight, Mike called to me quietly and I roused from my nest to crawl into the front seat. A lightening storm surrounded us in the black night. Thick, zig-zagging streaks of lightening touched down all around us, so close, lighting the sky with dramatic electric, flourescent light. I gripped Mike's arm, mesmerized, awed, a little scared. Jim Dale reading Harry Potter played quietly in the background and Jude slept on. Mike dropped his hand from the wheel and we held hands through the storm. Watching the lighting together felt intimate beautiful, these cracking, brilliant flashes touching down all around us while we traveled safely on.

Three years ago today

I married this hunka-hunka burnin' love.

best. decision. ever.

Once upon a time...

I was here. In Segovia, Spain. See? That's my head and Segovia. Together, as they ought to be.

It was two years ago, almost exactly, that I got back from Spain. I went by myself, for a month, right before Mike and I got married. A few days ago I inadvertently found the emails that Mike and I sent back and forth while I was gone. I lived for word from him. During the evenings alone in my small apartment off Manuel Beccera in Madrid, I turned on sappy music and looked at every picture of us together over and over. The time in my apartment after we had gone to the symphony to hear Rach 3. I'm still dressed up and Mike is (seductively, I can say that now) casual in a hoodie, his arms wrapped around me. The pictures of us posing on the lifeguard tower on the beach in San Diego when I first went to his family's homestead. The first time I attempted to surf. I look like I've been whirled around in an egg beater (which the ocean practically was that day). Mike asleep on the couch over Christmas break when he came to meet my family. Over and over. I dozed off to sleep every night with his picture by my head. A devoted fiance. This last week it was strange to reread our emails, to get a glimpse of our relationship two years ago. Our words were full of fresh longing and unabashed mush (although Mike now claims they were actually written by somebody else...I sent him a few choice ones to remind him of the gush, but he claims that he was at least self-consciously cheesy, if authorship could even be proven...which it cannot). Coming up on our second anniversary, I feel astonished that love changes--that as I pined for Mike thousands of miles away, I couldn't possibly imagine how love feels now, how it reaches deeper, grows broader, expands past old boundaries of seeming fullness. I have a sense that the fullness only grows more full, that the boundaries continually expand to new vistas, that the river continues to dive deeper and deeper.

Sweet Chaos

It seems appropriate that my current planner ends at the close of this month. Following June '09 there are only two pages for notes and then the blue, plastic cover. Fin. End calendar. Enter baby. End calendar. Enter paradigm shift, embrace unknown, introduce unquantifiable entity. Baby.

I vacillate between excitement to meet him, to leap into the beautiful chaos of tiny hands and tender fragility and, on the other hand, anxiety about not being able to plan, to jot down dates and follow the predictable cycle of my life thus far.

A few nights ago, Mike and I were on our evening walk around the block when he said, "It's odd to think that years from now we'll look back on our time here and feel nostalgic about our walks." On this particular night the air felt balmy and cooling after the heat of the day, the mountains covered in lush verdure, the falling sun streaming through the clouds. In the distance we could see Utah lake shimmering as we rounded our last corner. Is it possible to feel nostalgic in the moment? To feel simultaneously the sharp sweetness and the ache and tug of its loss with the fall of each step?

I've had anxiety about losing this--the evening walk. The green mountains. The simplicity of Mike and I walking side by side, hand in hand, talking quietly around our block. After a particularly difficult day yesterday when a well-laid plan slipped away, when baby was labeled a "complication," Mike took my face in his hands and said, "It will only get better. He will only make this better."

As I sit here feeling our baby move in my belly, I feel ready to leap into sweet chaos.

The Big Day...

He was a happy man.

Clark n' Kelsie sittin' in a tree...

It's true. My "little" (6'5'') brother, Clark, is getting married this weekend. If he's married, do I have to stop saying "the kids" are coming to visit when he comes over? Mike always makes fun of me for clucking around my younger siblings like a mother hen, swooping around them with my fluttering maternal wings to make sure they have plenty of food and towels and pillows and that they make it to bed in good time and travel safely in the snow and and and.... Never mind the fact that they are all well into their college years and well-acquainted with independence (and, the jerks, much much taller than me besides). After one of my anxious, detailed planning sessions preceeding their arrival, Mike will mockingly say to me, "Let's make sure we have enough sidewalk chalk and animated movies to keep them entertained too. Oooo...do we have enough sippy cups?" I glare in return. We always called Britton and Clark "the boys" growing up and I can't imagine calling them, "the men." Even though (I admit), they are no longer adolescent, gangly boys in need of an (overly) protective elder sister's watchful eye (nay, vigilant...their poor girlfriends, I was notorious for mad-dogging them).

I remember the day when I saw Clark as a man for the first time, when my eyes finally saw past the smooth-faced boy time-frozen in my mind. We were in my grandmother's backyard on a dry, hot June afternoon, sitting on the cool cement stoop in the shade. Clark was coming out to school for his first semester. He had grabbed his guitar and wanted to play me a few of the songs he had written over the preceeding months (and which he planned to use as ammunition to slay the flocks of swooning ladies up at BYU-I, and--trust me--slay he did...the poor suckers never stood a chance). As he crooned and lilted through his songs, I saw him. His broad shoulders and angular face. A man's face. All in an instant. It shocked me.

I'm still shocked.

And on Saturday he'll be married. Ring on finger. Lovely lady at his side. Strutting into the future as man and wife.