Paper Rings (A Calvin Murtaugh Story)

Prologue: The Baker's Dozen

Thirteen is our number. It's the number of players my husband Tom recruits for Defense at Lincoln College every season. It's the number of times we zero out our bank account each year to make ends meet. It's the number of months we worried in the hospital as my second eldest fought childhood cancer. And it's the number of kids we try to keep track of.

Thirteen's an insane number of kids, but having a small family was never an option for us. See, Tom loved growing up with seven brothers and sisters. And after my sister died, I spent most of my time wishing I had seven brothers and sisters.

Tom and I met at Illinois Polytechnic University. He was a senior dreaming of becoming the head football coach there. I was a freshman dreaming of becoming a sports reporter. He wanted eight kids. I wanted eight kids. Bam. An hour after I met him, I knew he was the one.

We just had family at the wedding. Oh, and Shake McGuire, Tom's best man. What a hot dog. A year later, we had our first- Nora. I loved taking her to work with me. After Teresa, Charlie, and Lorraine were born, we realized our dream of living in the city and having eight kids and two careers wasn't gonna' work. As much as we wanted our big careers, we wanted our big family more. So, Tom settled for a Division III coaching job at Lincoln, I quit writing for the tribune, and we moved to the country.

Tom and I got busy when we moved to Midland. We had Henry, Sarah, Jake, and Mark in consecutive years. After that, as if we didn't know how children were made after eight times, we got pregnant again with magic number nine...which is when we got the first set of fraternal twins—Jessica and Kim. Ten kids.

With each child, Tom and I got further from our big career dreams, but we didn't think about that. We had our hands full with ten. We were happy...and we were done.

Then we went to a party celebrating Shake McGuire's appointment to athletic director at our alma mater. And well, too many beers and nine months later, we had Mike. After that, Tom got a vasectomy, but he didn't hear the doctor say that it would be a few weeks before the procedure became effective. In 98, Nigel and Kyle got us to that crazy number 13. But by then, Tom and I were experts and managing chaos.

Then Teresa got sick, and we managed a whole other type of chaos. No parent is ever prepared to hear the words cancer when it's directed towards their beautiful teenaged girl. No parent is ever prepared for their entire world to tilt on its axis, and to have this all-consuming fear that they will go to sleep one night, and that day might have been the last one that their family would have together. Fortunately, after 13 months of treatments and surgeries and hospital stays, my girl was given the all-clear, but our lives never did slow down.

We are experts at managing chaos, and it's a good thing, because it doesn't look like our lives will slow down anytime soon. 

Excerpt from Kate Baker's Novel: Cheaper by the Baker's Dozen

My name is Teresa Arlene Baker and I just want to make one thing perfectly clear. I did not go to Yale intending to fall for Calvin Murtaugh. If anything, I went there to be everything that the Murtaughs thought we Bakers were not. I went into school with every intention of keeping my head down and making the grades to get into law school. I had a set of challenging goals, and I wasn't about to become sidetracked by a pair of blue eyes and attractive dimples... Well, there were serious muscles attached to those dimples, but I wasn't going to be distracted by those either.

But life has a way of throwing all of your plans for a loop, and like my parents, I keep learning how to live in the chaos. Some days, when I'm stressed and missing home, I pick up my mom's book and I read those lines. My parents had a plan. Their plan had five fewer children, a life in the city, and did not include one of those children being diagnosed with cancer. They had their plans and then, when their plans were overturned, they learned how to live and even thrive in the chaos. It was a good lesson to learn. If anything, I definitely understood the need to live in the chaos.

And falling in love with Calvin Murtaugh was chaotic. Especially given how much our fathers have despised each other. 

I suppose this all really started the summer I turned fifteen and Calvin was sixteen. We'd hated each other every summer but that one. Our last summer together. My family had actually missed the annual Lake Winnetka Labor Day competition the year before. I'd been sick for weeks and eventually the doctor said that I needed to go to a specialist in the city. So, we'd left, I received a cancer diagnosis, and I'd battled for my life a solid thirteen months. Then, after regaining my health, it was time to go back to the lake.

I could not have felt uglier than I had that year. My hair was just growing back, and so it was short, but fortunately it was more than fuzz. But I was pale and thin I looked like death warmed over. I'd also gotten braces and acne was coming in and I was still trying to relearn my body since it had been taken over and given dozens of new scars. I'd been convinced no one would ever see beyond my diagnosis, but that was just the first time Calvin Murtaugh surprised me.

It seemed that no matter how much of a rivalry my dad and Jimmy Murtaugh had, it just so happened that the Murtaughs and the Bakers were destined to share important milestones in our lives together. In this instance, Calvin and I were both going through that awkward teenage phase together. We both had braces and acne. Of course, while his was scattered and barely noticeable, I felt as if all I had to do was walk into the kitchen in order to get a massive breakout on my face. That summer, I'd been too self-aware and exhausted and scared and beaten down to get into the zeal that battling the Murtaughs usually inspired. But my father, who had stood over my hospital bed each night after getting out of football practice, had taken on a new zeal for life and was focusing a solid year of stress and worry into the games. It was...not pretty.

Despite everything that had gone on in my life, for some reason I wouldn't understand until years later, that summer Calvin Murtaugh was the only thing I thought about. Like my younger brother Charlie, Calvin played football, but he also played baseball. His awkward gangly limbs were already beginning to tone out with muscles from playing sports. His dimples, which he'd unfairly sported since birth, were beginning to become killer, and they're innate power detracted from his own dorky braces. I was smitten and this focus was a welcome distraction from the past year.

So, I spent those summer games sitting on the sidelines, trying to get a tan, and staring at Calvin Murtaugh. On Labor Day he was my kiss under a starry sky that was lit up with fireworks. I was just a girl, in that moment. I wasn't a cancer survivor. I wasn't child number two of thirteen. I wasn't even Reese. I was just plain old Teresa Baker, and I was having my first kiss from a cute boy that I liked. It was the most romantic moment of my little life at that point, but then we went back to Midland, and we didn't return to Lake Winnetka. For that time, our story was over.

Still, it was Calvin Murtaugh who taught me that my world hadn't ended with my cancer diagnosis. That I had an entire life ahead of me and I should live it. Calvin is good at that, at seizing life in both hands and getting the most out of every day. It shook me out of my rut, and after that I was able to look ahead and plan. I made new goals and dreams and I worked towards them.

I lived again, thanks to a kiss from Calvin Murtaugh and words of wisdom from my Mother.