Katherine Center's Blog, page 4
August 15, 2014
Feature in the Houston Chronicle
This feature about our “bathroom o’ wisdom” by the fantastic Maggie Galehouse appeared in the Houston Chronicle in February 2014.
Yep. That’s our downstairs half-bath, all covered in wise quotes about life. I started taping them up a few years ago with the idea that it would be good for my kids to kind of learn ’em and live ’em. But I’ve found that they’re good for me, too.
The post Feature in the Houston Chronicle appeared first on Katherine Center.
feature in the Houston Chronicle
This feature about our “bathroom o’ wisdom” by the fantastic Maggie Galehouse appeared in the Houston Chronicle in February 2014.
Yep. That’s our downstairs half-bath, all covered in wise quotes about life. I started taping them up a few years ago with the idea that it would be good for my kids to kind of learn ‘em and live ‘em. But I’ve found that they’re good for me, too.
essay for Houstonia Magazine
This essay about growing up and letting go–and Camp Waldemar–appeared in Houstonia Magazine in February 2014.
HOLDING ON
IN A WAY, MY MOTHER NEVER TRULY LEFT her childhood home, even though she moved out long ago. It’s a classic River Oaks Georgian with two enormous magnolias with mushroom-colored trunks in the front yard. Her dad built it in 1940 with materials from his own company back when Houston literally ended at their block. It’s the place where she grew up (we have snapshots of her as a baby when the trees were just saplings), and it’s where her parents lived until they died. Even after they were gone, though, she couldn’t bring herself to sell the house. Instead, she rented it out for years before deciding to fix it up and move back in, almost 40 years after she’d moved out.
It was her way of holding on. The renters got the use of the house, but she padlocked the attic: its long cedar closet still filled with family keepsakes that have been there for decades—1950s prom dresses of my mom’s, old hats of my grandmother’s, beloved stuffed animals, classic bed sheets, scrapbooks.
One day last fall, I was helping my mom clear space in the attic for a new furnace when we noticed something nearly hidden behind holiday decorations, something under the eaves and long forgotten, something that looked like an old camp trunk.
We carried it downstairs, opened it, and found a raft of lost treasures: my mother’s baby clothes, her dolls, a pair of bronzed baby shoes, a diary from when she was 10, an autograph book with Roy Rogers’s signature, an old canteen, school papers, report cards, and a small stuffed animal that her camp friends had signed.
We came across a few of my grandmother’s things as well, including her own baby clothes from 1912 and a box with yellowed tape and a note in blue ballpoint that read “Wedding Dress” in her handwriting. My mom had no idea that the dress, from 1937, still existed.
I wanted to see the dress. “Can we open the box?” I asked.
My mom shook her head. “We should wait for your sisters.”
The last thing we found was an old shoebox. Inside was a stack of letters on pink stationery, each addressed in careful, awkward cursive that slanted down the paper.
My mother put her hand to her mouth. “Oh,” she said.
“What are they?”
“My letters home from camp.”
My mom was nine in 1950 when she first went off to Camp Waldemar for Girls in the Hill Country. Her dear aunt Phyllis had loved it so much, she convinced my reluctant grandmother to let her young daughter go. And from that first summer, all the way until she was a 16-year-old Aztec chief in an enormous green headdress, she loved every day she spent there.
Going through the stack of letters started off with a bang. On the back of the very first envelope we opened was a note from a counselor named Monty: The doctor says Deborah’s knee is just bruised, though it is uncomfortable for her right now. Don’t worry about her. Her cold is practically gone and her eyes are fine now. She missed the skating party last week, but went to the radio show.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Didn’t I ever tell you?” She’d been accidentally knocked off the dock by some girls carrying a canoe. She tried to jump across the slip but missed, crashing knee-first into the dock before tumbling into the Guadalupe River. The letter went into serious detail, including an aerial map with arrows showing the direction she’d tried to leap and a four-inch oval tracing of her swollen knee.
After that, the letters settled into standard adorable camp fare.
Dear Mother and Daddy, I am having lots of fun. Please send Scotch tape.
Dear Mother, Today we had some sickning stuffed eggs in jello. I was starved until I saw it. We all got sick. Having lots of fun.
Dear Mother, Not much has happened since the last time I wrote to you. How are the dogs. Do they still have ringworm.
In my head, my mother has always been the very definition of capable, which is why I found myself noticing every little mistake I saw—the misspellings, the missing question marks. I knew, of course, that my mom had once been a child—but it was one thing to know it, and another thing entirely to see her handwriting and hear her little voice on the page. It bridged the distance of all those years, somehow. It was like I could almost reach her.
Many years after those Waldemar days, when my mom was a mom herself, she sent her daughters to Waldemar too. (At one point, she had three girls in three different tribes, which meant that my dad wore a pair of pants with different colored legs—orange and purple—and a green polo shirt, to divide his loyalties equally.) Now my daughter is the same age my mother was that first summer, and she has just spent her first long term at Waldemar. Like my grandmother, I worried that she was too young. And like my mom, my daughter loved it. We hardly got any letters at all.
At camp’s end, our whole family, mom included, drove to the Hill Country in August to pick up my daughter. She looked taller, the tiniest bit sunburned, and she hugged her little brother and swung him around in circles.
Waldemar still looks much the same as it did when it was built in the 1920s, with the same fairy tale architecture that you never see in real life. The stone cabins designed like Swiss chalets and French chateaus are still there. The dining hall walls are still made of gray river rocks—some with embedded fossils. Everywhere you look there’s something surprising and wonderful, just like always.
My latest trip made me wonder if a place like that might be a more powerful experience for Houstonians than kids from other cities. What I mean is, Houston loves to bulldoze things. We love to raze and reinvent. But there’s another side to folks here—at least the ones in my family—that you don’t hear about as much, a side that wants to hold on to the best parts of the past, a side that insists that just because something’s gone doesn’t mean it’s lost.
Maybe it was the 100-degree heat, even under my orange parasol, but out there last summer I felt myself trying to conjure an image from long before I was born: my grandmother at the age I am now, in her cat-eye sunglasses, picking up my mother at the end of her camp term. For just a moment, I had this crazy notion that if I tried hard enough, I might catch a glimpse of her. It was a strange and tantalizing and bittersweet feeling of closeness.
The older you get, the more you realize that life is bigger than you—that you can’t even slow time down, much less turn it around. But that doesn’t mean you don’t keep trying. That’s what my family does, at least. We fill camp trunks with treasures, we tell stories, we go back to places we visited with people we loved, and we just keep holding on, even as we’re letting go.
February 22, 2014
other covers
• • • United Kingdom • • •
• • • Germany • • •
• • • Portugal • • •
• • • The Netherlands • • •
• • • Hungary • • •
• • • The Czech Republic • • •
• • • Audiobooks • • •
• • • Large Print • • •
*More images as they become available!!
June 15, 2013
the fabulous Brené Brown
• • •
“Last week my good friend Katherine Center celebrated the launch of her new book,The Lost Husband, with a party here in Houston. I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of The Lost Husband and I’ve already read it twice. Yes. Twice.”
The post the fabulous Brené Brown appeared first on Katherine Center.
May 13, 2013
QUOTES
Here are some Katherine Center quotes–gathered from around the web. Feel free to add other favorites below!
From essays:
You are writing the story of your only life every single minute of every day.
–Katherine Center, What I Would Tell Her (Mom 2.0 Video)
“Nothing that doesn’t push you past your limits can change your life. It’s true of work, it’s true of parenting, and it’s true — a hundred times over — of love.”
–Katherine Center, Nothing Worthwhile is Ever Easy
There is an entire universe of things my mother knows that I don’t.
–Katherine Center, Things To Remember Not to Forget
We all carry our mothers inside us.
–Katherine Center, Things to Remember Not to Forget
Maybe the past is supposed to fade—and that’s actually a kindness of human memory.
–Katherine Center, Things to Remember Not to Forget
You can’t know what you know now and feel the way you did then.
–Katherine Center, Things to Remember Not to Forget
That’s what just hit me: How you really can’t have everything. You have to give up the old to get the new. You can’t be the child and the mom at the same time. You can’t be your young self and your old self at the same time. You can’t know what you know now and feel the way you did then. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t.
–Katherine Center, Things to Remember Not to Forget
Our lives disappear, even as we live them.
—Katherine Center
We build our lives in moments, and even the ones we can’t remember become the story of who we are.
—Katherine Center
The human race has a lot to answer for, and it’s not as easy to feel hopeful as it should be—but you make it more important to try.
—Katherine Center
The way that I love you makes me a better person.
—Katherine Center
The way that I love you makes me a better person, and the way that you love me back makes every sorrow worth it.
—Katherine Center
Don’t let anyone convince you that love doesn’t matter.
—Katherine Center
We are at our finest when we take care of each other.
—Katherine Center
And so my hope for you, good boy, as you grow taller every day, is that you will learn to take good care of yourself, and you will learn to take good care of others—and, someday, you’ll see how those two things are exactly the same.
—Katherine Center
It’s so easy to think that your strengths don’t matter.
—Katherine Center
Look for beauty in everything.
—Katherine Center
The best things about womanhood might possibly even be the conversations. The chatting. The gabbing. The whispering. The hands-on-hips eye-rolling. The yukking-it up.
–Katherine Center, Kirtsy Video
We’re looking for stories that speak to us. We’re looking for stories that connect us with something true. But, instead, a lot of the time we get strippers. All I’m saying is, when boys are writing the stories, the percentage of strippers is bound to go up. And real stories about real women kinda don’t get written at all.
–Katherine Center, Kirtsy Video
And despite everything I know now, I still believe, as I did when I was little, that there is an entire universe of things that my mother knows that I don’t. I still believe that nothing truly bad can ever happen if my mother is around. I know it’s not true. But still. It is true.
–Katherine Center, Things to Remember Not to Forget
I worry constantly about carpool and whether or not I’ve forgotten a carload of weeping children at the school gate. How on earth does anyone do it? How did she make it look so easy? Or maybe time makes everything seem easy. Or maybe I am really terrified that I’ll never become enough like her to keep her with me. I know that we all carry our mothers inside us. But somehow that doesn’t seem like enough.
–Katherine Center, Things to Remember Not to Forget
From various interviews:
I guess that’s the upside of not being young anymore . . . You know from experience that the struggle always leads, in some way, to something better.
–Katherine Center
I like to write about people who are real and likeable. I like to write about people who tell their stories in that close and intimate voice we use with best friends. I love the closeness and honesty and vulnerability that come from characters who can talk that way.
–Katherine Center
All my main characters are people I’d love to sit around having coffee with. They are people who will tell you honestly about the things that scare them and worry them and trouble them. Because those moments of connection between women–when they really decide to be honest with each other about their lives–are some of the best things in life.
–Katherine Center
Some of the greatest ideas we have come from making do.
–Katherine Center
What matters most is how you respond to your heartbreaks and your disappointments and your fears. What matters most is who you become in response to them.
–Katherine Center
Writing a novel is a lot like reading one.
–Katherine Center
Success is doing the right thing for who you are.
–Katherine Center
My goal is to try to be as happy as I can — going through every day just as it is.
–Katherine Center
If you feel lucky, then you are.
–Katherine Center
Look for the good stuff.
–Katherine Center
You don’t have to be perfect to be awesome.
–Katherine Center
From Novels:
People are always beautiful when you love them.
–Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful
In fiction, you can be as true as you want. Real life is a different story.
–Katherine Center, interview
Sometimes there is no way to hold your life together. Sometimes things just have to fall apart.
–Katherine Center, Get Lucky
There is no tenderness without bravery.
–Katherine Center, Get Lucky
It’s vital to learn how to make the best of things.
–Katherine Center, Get Lucky
Beauty comes from tenderness.
–Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful
It’s always better to have what you have than to get what you wanted.
–Katherine Center, Get Lucky
I suddenly understood what it was, exactly, people longed for when they longed for their youth.
–Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful
The eyes see everything through the heart.
–Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful
When you love someone, she becomes beautiful to you.
–Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful
It’s more important to be interesting, to be vivid, and to be adventurous than to sit pretty for pictures.
–Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful
“Here’s what I tell myself now. That it’s vital to learn how to make the best of things. That there is no tenderness without bravery. That if things hadn’t been so bad they could never have gotten so good. And that it’s always better to have what you have than to get what you wanted. Except for this: Every now and then, when you are impossibly lucky you rise above yourself-and get both.”
–Katherine Center, Get Lucky
I believe women are too hard on themselves. I believe that when you love someone, she becomes beautiful to you. I believe the eyes see everything through the heart–and nothing in the world feels as good as resting them on someone you love.
–Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful
Laughter is beautiful. Kindness is beautiful. Cellulite is beautiful. Softness and plumpness and roundness are beautiful. It’s more important to be interesting, to be vivid, and to be adventurous than to sit for pictures. A woman’s soft tummy is a miracle of nature. Beauty comes from tenderness. Beauty comes from variety, from specificity, from the fact that no person in the world looks exactly like anyone else. Beauty comes from the tragedy that each person’s life is destined to be lost to time. I believe women are too hard on themselves. I believe that when you love someone, she becomes beautiful to you. I believe the eyes see everything through the heart–and nothing in the world feels as good as resting them on someone you love. I have trained my eyes to look for beauty, and I’ve gotten very good at finding it.
–Katherine Center, Everyone Is Beautiful
Text from the Mom 2.o Video:
What I Would Tell Her (If I Knew What To Say)
You are a miracle.
And I have to love you this fiercely: So that you can feel it even after you leave for school, or even while you are asleep, or even after your childhood becomes a memory.
You’ll forget all this when you grow up. But it’s okay.
Being a mother means having your heart broken.
And it means loving and losing and falling apart and coming back together.
And it’s the best there is. And also, sometimes, the worst.
Sometimes you won’t have anyone to talk to.
Sometimes you’ll wonder if you’ve forgotten who you are.
But you must remember this: What you’re doing matters.
And you have to be brave with your life so that others can be brave with theirs.
The truth is, being a woman is a gift.
Tenderness is a gift.
Intimacy is a gift.
And nurturing the good in this world is a nothing short of a privilege.
That’s why I have to love you this way. So I can give what I have to you. So that you can carry it in your body and pass it on.
I have watched you sleep. I’ve kissed you a million times. And I know something that you don’t, yet:
You are writing the story of your ONLY life every single minute of every day.
And my greatest hope for you, sweet child, is that I can teach you how to write a good one.
May 12, 2013
VIDEO: What You Know Now
At the launch for The Lost Husband, I read a short scene from the book, and then I also read an essay that I wrote a while back for an amazing project called The Prime Book.
It’s a book of gorgeous, sumptuous pictures by the photographer Peter Freed that aims to redefine what it means to be a woman in her prime.
From the PRIME website:
The idea of the book is to pair the photos with the voices of the women in them. Here is my essay:
The Prime Book is not out yet, but you can LIKE their Facebook page to get a notification when it is!
What You Know Now
At the launch for The Lost Husband, I read a short scene from the book, and then I also read an essay that I wrote a while back for an amazing project called The Prime Book.
It’s a book of gorgeous, sumptuous pictures by the photographer Peter Freed that aims to redefine what it means to be a woman in her prime.
From the PRIME website:
The idea of the book is to pair the photos with the voices of the women in them. Here is my essay:
The Prime Book is not out yet, but you can LIKE their Facebook page to get a notification when it is!
The Lost Husband–LAUNCH!
It’s been a heck of a week!
We had a FANTASTIC crowd at the launch for The Lost Husband this week! It felt like there were a thousand people there, which can’t be right. But it was standing-room-only, and Brazos Bookstore sold out of books.
I am so grateful to all the people who came to cheer this book on. And I’m grateful, too, to TARGET for choosing it as a featured book and USA Today for calling it “heartwarming.”
And so, so grateful to PEOPLE Magazine for giving it a beautiful review!
It’s always a bit of a naked feeling putting out a new book. You’ve worked so long and so quietly–and then, suddenly, it’s out there, and reviews are popping up everywhere . . . That’s part of the fun, of course–because it’s gratifying to share the stories with readers at last. But it’s a little nervewracking, too.
I wish I could send everybody who came to the launch–or who’s given it a good review, or who’s Facebooked about how much they loved it–a heartfelt, handwritten thank-you note on gorgeous linen stationery to tell them how grateful I am.
As it is, I’ll just have to hope that somehow they already know.
May 4, 2013
my ikea hack
So I went to Ikea the other day. And I bought this clock.
I’d been looking online for something cheery for our kitchen, but I hadn’t found anything. And I was getting impatient, because I kept glancing at the bare wall where a clock should have been.
This one seemed fine. And cheap! And kinda retro.
And while I was there, I grabbed these napkins. Just because I thought they were pretty.
And then it hit me that the napkins might look nice on the clock!
So I grabbed my scissors, and some Mod Podge, and I cut little petals out of the napkins and glued the petals around in a scallopy border.
But then the clockface itself looked a little plain. A little sad.
So I decoupaged a few flowers in the middle. And painted a few highlights.
Now we just need to figure out how to hang it so it doesn’t fall off the wall when the back door slams (like our last 3 kitchen wall clocks have).
I loved making this clock! The cutting! The pasting! The sense of anticipation! I had the song “La Vie En Rose” going through my head the whole time. Especially my favorite line: ”Everyday words seem to turn into love songs.”
That’s something I need to remind myself next time I feel sad. I am always happy when I’m making things.
