When mom says she can’t believe it, believe her.
Wednesday morning, Diane Calcaterra watched two of her triplets participate in National Signing Day ceremonies at Santa Margarita High. She could have been any of hundreds of parents of athletes across Southern California who had endured years of 6 a.m. drives to games, expensive personal coaches, breakfast burritos, fundraisers galore and long rides home – except that her story as the mom of triplets began with so much uncertainty.
Diane, 55, wore an Oklahoma sweatshirt for her son, Grant, a football player. She wore a Kansas State scarf for her daughter, Claire, a soccer player. At some point, she changed into a Kansas State shirt, just to be fair. Her son, Andrew, who is more a student than an athlete, is waiting to hear whether he is accepted in the business school at Michigan. Each of the triplets will be getting scholarships.
She sat between her husband, Chris, and her father, Jim, who flew in from Auburn, Ind., to watch an event he couldn’t have envisioned two decades ago when he saw his daughter going through all that pain. At some point Wednesday morning, all of them were in tears.
“It’s such a blessing,” Diane said.
Three heartbeats had survived.
Barely.
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Diane and Chris met in the mid-1980s when they were both sales representatives for medical supply companies. Then their companies merged, and they worked together.
“He was just some rep,” she said. “Then we were just friends. We worked for the same company. You can’t date. Dating a co-worker is death, especially for a female rep.”
Then Chris went against protocol and invited her over to watch Polobet the 1986 Super Bowl – the Bears slaughtered the Patriots – at his house.
“I invited him to cuddle on the couch,” she said.
Not long after, Chris invited her for dinner, and he cooked Cornish game hens.
“The Cornish game hens sealed the deal,” Diane said.
In April of 1988, Chris “got down on bended knee and ask me to marry him, spend the rest of my life with him and have his children.”
They were married on Nov. 5, 1988 in Ft. Wayne, Ind. They wanted to have three kids.
The first kid came easily. Nick Calcaterra was born in 1993. He graduated from Santa Margarita, attended the University of Oregon and now lives in Seattle working for Gallo Wine.
MISCARRIAGES, BUT HOPING
By 1995, Diane was 34, and the second child wasn’t coming as easily.
Over the next three years, she began getting in vitro fertilization treatments in which her eggs were taken out of her body, fertilized with Chris’ sperm and placed back into her uterus.
She got pregnant three times and had three miscarriages.
“There were times when Chris was ready to give up, and times when I was ready to give up,” Diane said.
When she got pregnant again in 1998, she didn’t have much hope.
When Chris was out of town, she began bleeding. “I thought I was miscarrying again,” Diane said.
That’s the day the doctor noticed three heartbeats.
During her pregnancy, Diane was in and out of the hospital five times. She was confined to strict bed rest.
Her friend joked that if those babies made it all the way through, they’d all end up on the front page of the newspaper.
In December of 1998, the Calcaterra family was on the front page of the Cincinnati Post. The story was about the three sets of triplets born in Christ Hospital in Cincinnati on the same day.
“They came into the world with pomp and circumstance,” Diane said. “They’re leaving high school with pomp and circumstance.”
‘JUST SURVIVE’
The triplets were born Dec. 4, 1998.
Andrew was 3 pounds, 10 ounces and had a hole in his heart, which eventually closed on its own. Claire was 3 pounds, 11 ounces and needed a blood transfusion. Grant was 3 pounds, 15 ounces (he’s always been the big one), and he needed hernia surgery.
They spent weeks in intensive care.
“At that point, it was all about survival,” Chris said. “Just get healthy. Just survive.”
Jim Stahl, Diane’s father, was in tears as he talked about the triplets.
“We’re very fortunate they all ended up in good health,” Stahl said.
GROWING UP
They grew up healthy. Grant, a tight end, is 6-foot-4, 225 pounds. He caught 105 passes for 1,884 yards at Santa Margarita and got 24 scholarship offers. He graduated early has been attending classes at Oklahoma. He needs to put on some weight, but he hopes to play as a true freshman.
“It’s a blessing to have a great family,” he said. “It’s great to sign with my sister.”
Claire has had a difficult time on the soccer field. During her junior year, she broke her tibia and fibula in a collision with a goalie. In her second game of her senior year, she broke the same leg again.
Kansas State did not pull her scholarship offer. She’ll find out this week if she can start training again. She’ll be leaving for Kansas at the end of the summer.
“I know it’s bittersweet for my parents,” she said. “They’re happy for us, but we’re leaving.”
Diane and Chris are about to be faced with an empty house.
“We not only lose our kids, but all their friends are over all the time,” Chris said.
They plan on traveling a lot. They want to see as many football and soccer games in Oklahoma and Kansas as possible. And, Chris said he’s going to start taking Diane on business trips. He sells ophthalmology devices in Europe, Japan and Australia among other places around the world.
And there’s something Diane has always wanted to do. She’s taken a few writing courses at UCLA.
“I’ve started a novel,” she said.
Contact the writer: ksharon@scng.com
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