Ode to Hannah

Lovely Hannah at almost 30.... on her wedding day....

Hannah and her new best cowboy.... Tom Kraner.....

Hannah in Afghanistan 2009

A Sister Visit
The Day Hannah Left for Afghanistan

Graduation from JBU Graduate School pictured with dear friend Leah

A visit from Dan and I to Hannah at JBU

Very close Seesters at Abby's High School Graduation

Hannah's first international Work gig in Mexico on our family mission trip in '02

This has been a significant week in the life of our family into which the first grandchild/nephew Beck William Westerman was born.... (more on that later by one excited Grammie) but another big event is the 3oth birthday of our oldest daughter Hannah today on January 28th, 2012.

I have now been Hannah's "Mother" for almost 19 of those 30 years and I want to go on record as having said that it has been a privilege and honor for me to hold this esteemed place in the life of this very accomplished young woman (no Mom's prejudice here). I realize that sometimes it has been sad, empty and poignant not to have her birth Mom, Pam, here to share her life but Hannah has been good about letting me into her life and for that I am deeply grateful. I guess my approach has never been to replace her Mom but rather to be a Mom to her. I hope I have done that, for the most part, these 19 years.

When Hannah and I started the mother/daughter journey together when she was 11, she told me she just couldn't call me "mom" because that was Pam's name and it had a sort of sacred place in her vocabulary (my interpretation). I totally understood and appreciated the candor of her comment. In a gentle way you know where you stand with Hannah and that remains true to this day. She attends to her relationships. So when I was putting away dishes in the dining room, one day when Hannah was a sophomore (I believe), and she asked me if I would mind if she started calling me "Mother" I knew that I had sort of "arrived" with Hannah in terms of her finding some sort of peace in with our new arrangement. Not to say that she wasn't open to that relationship all along, but after several years it was now proven and tried and it was something that she could trust. Hannah doesn't give her heart away quickly like the other sanguines in our family... it is more of a deliberate choosing and when you make the grade you know that you have her loyalty for life. So from that remarkable day forward I have been "Mother" to her and it also led Abby to think that it was sort of a good approach because she has always thought Hannah has a "corner on rye" so I was doubly blessed that day.

I have watched this young woman grow and bloom and it has been a rather intentional unfolding. Hannah and I have very different approaches in terms of personality and style to life and Hannah has always been very much her own person. I am sure I frustrated her at times with my over-the-top approach and I didn't always understand her quieter ways but we have worked at it over the years. She was accomplished and poised in high school both in her academics, piano, art and sports. She had some good girlfriends but the rest of the social part of high school was hard in little Chugwater.

We sent her off to John Brown University (where Pam attended for a year) and it about killed her Dad to leave her at the flagpole that one hot afternoon in 2000. JBU was good to Hannah but the settling in was hard really for about the first two years. I think she felt as though she had to start completely from scratch in a place where she was unknown. For a quiet and more reflective person, she didn't just put herself out there so even the fall of her sophomore year I remember us visiting and doing a bit of and "intervention" with her. Once she found her sea legs, she was off and took from JBU all it had to offer academically, in terms of mentors, solid quality people of faith and the flavor of its international students (many of which she has visited and it still in contact with today). She even got her MBA from there before she left even though corporate America holds no appeal.

After JBU she planned her overseas year and a half around the world trip and thus started her living out of a suitcase, ready to go at any time, trips to be with friends far and wide, an unconventional employment gig, which she maintains to this day, even into her marriage with a man who shares these patterns and values. In Hannah, I see a young woman who puts a premium on her faith in Christ, investing in people one-on-one, the world and its diversity and affairs internationally, with a heart of the underdog mixed in with a tender dose of compassion. She might have started with a bit if hesitancy in terms attachment to the new family but she has cultivated it in her "Hannah-esque" style and embraced us all as she has deliberately sought out opportunities to spend large chunks of time with each of us (Jeremy in Nantucket for a summer, Mick in North Carolina at the UNC basketball camp, many trips with Abby and even time to visit them in their various far-off home in the Faeroes and Philippines, living with Charlie in the cottage his senior year of high school and then with Dan and I for the past year at the ranch not to mention all those trips to the sets of grandparents). Hannah ties the KW Krew together in a most amazing way....

Now Hannah has Tom to share her life with... he doesn't even mind her picking her meat and ordering multiples from Sierra Trading Post (trading indeed). It has been fun to watch her fall in love.... and while Tom was on the fast track to get married, Hannah maintained Hannah's deliberate nature, but as has her brother Mick says "it's fun to see Hannah so happy," once she made up her mind. Indeed it has been fun to watch and Hannah I thing you have arrived at 30 in pretty good fashion....

God has been faithful to you all of these 30 years. Can I begin to predict where she will end up in the next thirty?!?! That is for God and Hannah (and now Tom) to wrestle down... I haven't a clue.

Happy 30th birthday, dear daughter Hannah! I love you and honor you this day.

Mother

P.S. The pictures posted are a bit random and I have none of you when you were little since they were lost in the fire. Enjoy as you can...