In August, we bring a set of new full-time writers to the blog. Today, please welcome Kate Wilmot (’24), who will be writing for us on the 7th of each month. Kate is a Grand Rapids resident who has found herself in the in-betweens of undergrad and post-grad life. She is an avid children’s fiction reader and a globally-minded cook who will feed anyone that walks in her door. You can find her losing to her husband in pickleball, weight lifting, or getting coffee with her mom.

To my sister and me, my family’s birthday traditions are cornerstones for entering the coming year of our lives. My mom decorates the dining room with colorful bunting and Swiss paper crowns, with Grandma’s tablecloth and polka-dot wrapping paper, with the scents of pancakes and Ethiopian coffee before we wake. The room is warm with my dad’s smile, with Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday,” and with bleary-eyed hugs. 

But my sister was turning twenty, and she was living at school during the month of her birthday. Even more, Mom and Dad were across the country, supporting our younger brothers’ basketball habits on the twenty-eighth of April. They had apologized profusely and Erin, sweet as she is, had promised she didn’t mind. 

I texted her the night before, unsure of how to show up for her but wanting desperately to make sure she knew she was as loved as when our parent’s dining room was lit up with pancakes and fairy lights in her honor. We decided on church and lunch, and that would be that. It was finals week, after all. 

When I pulled into the parking lot behind Boer-Bennink to get her for church, I pulled up one knee and stared into the trees. I had forgotten to buy her a present. 

How does one make her sister feel loved when their parents have set the bar so high? 

I pulled up Stevie Wonder as she walked out of her dorm, her curly blonde hair clipped up and away from her neck, her thrifted dress covered in embroidered ladybugs. She told me I dressed like a mom, and I replied that she looked like an elementary school teacher, and we drove to church, singing along with Wonder’s R&B version of the birthday classic. I laughed as she reminded me how Dad always dances to the chorus. 

My husband, Caleb, who had felt a bit too sick for church that morning, met us at the apartment to walk to lunch after the service. The walk was far, but not so bad, and it was spitting rain, but Erin is untouchable. She is quick to smile and to dance, and Caleb was feeling better, and we all laughed with soaked socks as we sat down for lunch. 

Bites into spicy omelettes and confetti french toast, Caleb was asking Erin about her birthday plans, about whether she was going to see friends or open presents. A fear began to grow in me as she answered that she didn’t think she’d be doing anything, that her friends had maybe been planning something but she was feeling indifferent to it. I wish I could claim this fear as one that could be charity, a fear for my sister, who might not end up feeling loved on her day, but I can not. It was much more selfish: I feared inviting her to stay, knowing that if things got awkward–if she third-wheeled my husband and I, or if he third-wheeled my sister and I–I would exhaust myself trying to remedy the day. 

And lunch continued: we talked of the rom-com No Reservations, an under-appreciated movie about two chefs that my sister and I loved, of harissa paste chickpeas, a North African fusion meal I would be making that evening, of studying and how none of us felt the need to do it on that rainy Sunday. I burrowed deeper under my skin. All signs pointed to spending the whole day together. 

Caleb, finally, was braver than I. And to my surprise, she lit up at the idea, asking if I knew where we could stream No Reservations. 

So we spent the afternoon watching the chefs bicker and fall for one another over Italian desserts. We raided Bridge Street Market for lady fingers to try making tiramisu for the first time, and we whipped the eggs by hand because we didn’t own a mixer. We caramelized onions together for dinner, and waved our spatulas to Italian cooking music, and Caleb taught her how to play Exploding Kittens. And when we set the tiramisu in front of her for dessert, a bright pink candle poking from the center, I was tempted to see, in my mind’s eye, my parents’ dining table, covered in pancakes for birthday breakfast. But it was late in the evening, and there were no presents on the table, and I own no Swiss gold crowns. 

My family is a global one. We are always moving. We are Ethiopian coffee and North African fusion meals; we are basketball across America and Italian cooking music. 

My family is a global one. We are not always able to be all together. And as we’ve grown older, sometimes I fear we don’t always know how to be together. 

But as I drove her back to her dorm at the end of the night, I laughed. “Selfishly, I feel like I just had the best day of my life.” 

She turned toward me, eyes lit up in the headlights of the cars across the median, and said, “I feel that way too.”

Kate Wilmot

Kate Wilmot (’24) is a Grand Rapids resident who has found herself in the in-betweens of undergrad and post-grad life. She is an avid children’s fiction reader and a globally-minded cook who will feed anyone that walks in her door. You can find her losing to her husband in pickleball, weight lifting, or getting coffee with her mom.