Kris Nolan Brown

My stepmother Kris is only six years older than I am.

That, all by itself, is plenty of reason to hate a stepmother. Did I mention she has great legs? Don’t even get me started on her boobs.

Dad had dated other women after Mom died and even came perilously close to marrying one of them. He was a young man, as my grandmother liked to remind us, and he most certainly would choose to marry again.

Kris Nolan Brown

Why, my brothers and sisters and I wondered? Weren’t we enough company? Dad, however, did not marry in haste. It was several lonely years after Mom’s death that he married Kris. We’ve been grateful for our stepmother ever since.

About the same time that our darling mother died of breast cancer and Dad  became a 49-year-old widower with ten kids, Kris was a very young and pregnant wife. One early morning, sailing down the highway on her way to work, she came upon a terrible accident. In the mangled vehicle was her husband Tom, who had departed for work just a few minutes before Kris.

Tom was barely alive. In the emergency room before they rushed him to surgery, Kris clung to him.

“RBO,” he whispered to her. Real Bad Owie. It was their little joke whenever they bumped a toe or an elbow and needed sympathy from each other.

“Yes,” Kris said. “RBO!”

Because Tom was strong enough to tell Kris he loved her before he was whisked away, she held out hope he’d make it through surgery. But it was the last time he was able to speak. He died three days later.

In the same way Dad was making himself get out of bed every morning to go to work and care for ten kids, Kris would give birth to her only son, raise him alone, and force herself to go on with the business of living. Ken and Agnetta Nolan, her parents, supported her through that very hard time. Her best friend Tina Labellarte  was in the delivery room when Kris’s son Nolan was born. Afterward, when Kris was exhausted dragging herself to work and caring for a very colicky baby alone, she would strap Nolan into his car seat every weekend and careen 90 miles down the road straight into the loving arms of her in-laws, Tom and Jo Clare. Kris rested, and Tom and Jo held Nolan, a little scrap of a human being - all they had left of their lost son.

We learned about those heartbreaking times in her young life the very first time Kris ever came to our house. Dad had dated Kris for quite a while and decided it was time for all of us to meet, a sign that this was serious stuff. By then, most of us were married with small children of our own, and the entire Brown family battalion was nervously waiting her arrival.

Kris, of course, was nervous, too. She ushered through the door five-year-old Nolan, scrubbed and shining like a kid out of a catalogue, and we all looked each other over in an awkward silence.

Until Nolan tooted.

“Oops!” he grinned, slapping a hand over his red face.

We laughed. We relaxed. And step by step  - hour by day by month by year - we formed a new family.

“This is my sister,” Nolan once introduced me to his day care provider after I stopped to pick him up for Kris one day. Then, turning to a little boy beside him, he whispered behind his hand, “But she’s old enough to be my mom.”

Kris made Dad laugh – like Mom used to. Unlike Mom, however, Kris was a working girl. As the CEO of Goodwill Industries of Greater Nebraska, she was passionate about the business of promoting dignity and better lives for those in our community who are disabled. All across the state, Goodwill was opening stores and integrating facilities, programs and awareness into community cultures. Kris Nolan Brown was at the helm pushing progress right along.

Dick Brown wasn’t used to the new genre of the “working wife.” To his credit, however, he forced himself to evolve with the times and embrace this new era with a dynamic wife twenty years his junior. And it worked. He was happy, Kris was happy, and we were happy. Kris became our kids’ grandmother, and a sister/friend/mother to all of us. And when Dad died just ten years after they married, Kris became the anchor of our family.

Shortly after Dad died, Kris and my sisters and I nursed our grief over Coronas and margaritas at our favorite Italian restaurant one evening. It was a mistake, perhaps. We were missing Dad so much, and Kris, on top of it all, was preparing to give up her only son to graduation and college. We sat for a long time staring miserably at our drinks.

“My next husband’s name will be Harry,” Kris suddenly announced. We looked up, surprised. “Because then I can say,” and her mouth twitched in the telltale way it always does before she laughs, “I’ll marry any Tom, Dick or Harry.”

We stared open-mouthed. Then my sister Terri snorted. Just like that, we were laughing so hard our sides hurt. It felt good. It felt hopeful. And it felt like somewhere Dad was laughing with us.

Dad’s been gone 15 years now. Some of us are grandparents, and our little brother Nolan is a successful businessman in Omaha married to his beautiful Brianne. Kris, who is still dynamic and full of her cheerful energy, will retire from Goodwill this summer. In those intervening years since we’ve lost Dad, Kris has been the family matriarch at every holiday, baptism, and athletic event. She has traveled hundreds of miles to be by our sides during surgeries and graduations. And once a year, she and my sisters and I make a trip to Omaha for our annual girls’ shopping weekend – one time in white-out, blizzard conditions.  Nothing, and I mean nothing, comes between us and our shopping trip.

We sometimes forget what an amazing woman our stepmother is and how respected she is in her professional life. She doesn’t ever talk much about her work at Goodwill. In fact, only a month or so ago, she casually mentioned she’d gone to California to collect an award.

“What award?” we asked her.

After some prodding, she admitted it was the International Goodwill Industries J.D.Robbins Distinguished Career Award.  A mouthful. And it came with a thousand bucks.

Our mouths dropped.

“It was nice,” Kris said shyly.

To Nolan and all of us, she is simply Mom, Kris and Grandma. She’s the one at Thanksgiving who still thinks it’s possible to snap a picture of all her kids and grandkids gathered in front of the fireplace. There are 70 of us. Even as she's taking a picture, some of us are reproducing. It's what we do. But nothing deters Kris.

She’s the one who took in her elderly parents when they could no longer care for themselves.

She even took in two dogs after she married Dad – and one was incontinent. Kris doesn’t even like dogs.

She’s the one who laughs hardest at our jokes, the one who never forgets a single grandchild at Christmas, and the one who’s stuck with us through thick and thin.

And she still has great legs.