She was a beautiful baby, this firstborn little girl, with a head of dark curly hair and sparkling blue eyes. But as she grew and began to toddle around on her fat little legs, her mother noticed a certain turn of her head that seemed to say, “I’ll do it my way.” Her name, Kathleen, morphed into “Laleen” as she began to take control of her little world.
The family, Daddy and Mother and baby sister Karen, moved to a little house out in Whatcom County on the Kelly Road. That’s where the harrowing adventures began. The yard was fenced, but little “Laleen” figured out a way around that barrier. When Mother wasn’t looking, she tried a new stunt. She noticed the crawl space under the garage and thought, “Aha! Freedom lies beyond!” Wriggling under the garage, she scooted her way out the other side. Just then Mother looked out the door to check on her adventurer and realized that she had vanished from the yard. Where was she? How had she escaped?
Mother ran across the yard toward the country road. Not far down the road, there was Kathleen, running down the middle of the road as fast as her little legs would carry her. Mother took off after her, amazed at the child’s speed. “Kathleen! You stop right now!”
Kathleen turned and looked back at the sound of her mother’s voice. Mother was running full tilt, her apron flapping crazily in the breeze. For some reason, this struck Kathleen as hysterical and she began to laugh uncontrollably. I will leave the “capturing’ of Kathleen to your imagination, but there was a reckoning for sure!
Over the next winter, Kathleen grew as little girls do. On a fine spring day she tried the garage trick again, but got completely wedged in the crawl space and began to scream in panic. Mother heard her, came running and managed to back her out slowly, inch by inch. The little girl cried in her arms, and I expect Mother cried a bit herself.
On another day, Mother slipped out of the house for only a minute to hang a couple of sheets on the line, leaving baby Karen in her crib and trusting Kathleen to stay out of trouble. Once the door clicked shut, Kathleen saw her opportunity and seized the moment to turn the key in the lock. When Mother tried to open the door, she realized what was happening and tried to talk Kathleen into turning the key. But Kathleen couldn’t quite make it work. Mother, panicked, miles from help with no car or way to get back into the house to the babies, managed somehow to get the door off the hinges.
So began her adventurous life. Married at 18 and off to Northway, Alaska with her new husband, a hunter, pilot and guide who once hauled an airplane out of a wilderness lake and flew it out of the woods. They homesteaded in a little cabin where Kathleen spent days alone with baby Marty, quite contented. For a time, she and the family harvested salmon round the clock on Bristol Bay. Later she returned to college and became a computer programmer for British Petroleum in cold, dark Prudhoe Bay. The last four years of her husband’s life, she spent as a valiant and loving caregiver. And still, when we visit on the phone, we laugh over our memories and talk of where life and our faith has taken us.
That little girl who crawled under the garage is one of my heroes .