WANT ME TO HIT YA? (2025-8)

Our Kate.

Our daughter Kate is in those last few difficult feet before the finish line in the race to her PhD. It’s been an unexpectedly hard race. She signed up for a steady long distance run, straightforward and evenly paced, but they somehow put her in the hurdles instead. She didn’t register for hurdles. Nonetheless, that’s where she ended up. It’s a long story that involves being part of the 3% of applicants who were selected for a difficult program at NYU, her advisor – after two years into her four year program studying how the brain works - quitting to join Google, the University shutting down her lab and program, having to decide whether to quit or go through the intense process of applying again for another program, being admitted for a second time to a doctoral program, moving, starting all over again, a worldwide pandemic shutting everything down, including the border she had to cross to get to her school in Canada from her home in New York. Really, if you hadn’t lived it with her you might not believe it. Anyway, having resisted an intense pull to quit altogether, she is approaching the finish line in the submission of her Doctoral dissertation. I'm surprised she's still upright, though since we are so far away it may literally be that she is crawling on her hands and knees to push herself to the finish line.

She's exhausted. First, she lives 2,139 miles away and is doing this thing without the comfort of her inner circle. We have to blow her kisses and cheer from afar. We send Uber Eats occasionally, and prayers daily. She’s been pulling all-nighters for a week, taking two hour naps between writing and editing. She’s at the deadline and trying to push through. Libby, Dave and I have been texting her to try to lighten the air a bit. It’s a fine line, cuz we also don’t want to distract or be a bother.

This morming Libby sent these two texts, in honor of our mom, Kate’s Gram, whom she adored:

1. Want me to hit ya?
2. I’ll ask Gram to send sprinkles.
   
   
   

Libby was Mom’s companion for the last portion of her vibrant life. Mom wasn’t one to miss out on something meaningful. Libby drove a lot, with Mom in the passenger seat. We can’t even count the number of trips between Utah and California. Right about the middle of Nowhere Nevada Mom would look over at Lib, determine she was tired (after driving eight hours straight) and announce, “You awake? Want me to hit ya?”  If she actually ever did, you would surely be wide awake! But just the suggestion was enough to snap you out of a daze.

As for the sprinkles: Whenever any of us were struggling, in Mom's later years when she was resigned to her bed or her recliner because her legs no longer worked, she would lift her arm out from under her warm blanket, curl her fingers in toward her thumb, then flick them out toward you, sending Good Luck Sprinkles. We think she really did have magic in her fingers. When the stars come out at night now, we think she’s sending sprinkles still.

So, here’s to Kate today. She's a determined soul. I anticipate we will sometime in the next while receive a text that she has pressed “send” and her final draft will be out of her hands. 

Now, Mom, can you send some sprinkles to ther Doctoral Committee, in whose hands the work of the last many years of our girl rests? Or, if its absolutely necessary, maybe even hit them?

Kate and Gram, old pals.

Gram, Libby and Kate at Kate's college graduation.

Kate created a nose warmer for Gram one winter.