Like most mamas in their kerchiefs, I had worked for weeks to make the upcoming Christmas weekend jolly and bright for my family.
By Christmas Eve Eve Eve, I was done: Gifts were piled halfway up the tree, lights twinkled in every crevice. Food was ready to go, cinnamon rolls and ham, oranges ready to be squeezed for fresh juice, eggs and spinach pie.
It was time now to rest on my holly berries.
And so, two nights before Christmas, the kids and I settled into an unstructured, organic and unplanned evening of Christmas-song singing, takeout and puppy chow.
Then I went to bed.
And I got an unstructured, organic and unplanned fever, which cannot, when you have leukemia, go unchecked.
Suddenly, there I was in my candy cane leggings and snowflake earrings, curled up in University Hospital Room 3305, with an IV full of antibiotics and no guarantees of being released in time to put into action all my carefully planned plans.
With no guarantees of anything, really.
First, I cried. Women always cry first. Christmas in the hospital? How would we open all those presents, eat all that food, enjoy the peaceful atmosphere I had created for my family? Not to mention: What of this illness?
The kids assured me as they came and went: “We’ll make it work, focus on getting well.”
I looked around me at all of us “making it work,” all the nurses and aides, the kitchen workers and housekeepers, women mostly, all displaced mamas in their kerchiefs, here in this building working to get me better instead of being home with their babies.
I took to asking each of them: Will you work through the weekend? Will you get to have some time with family? Do you mind working on Christmas Eve? Thank you for being here, I told each of them.
I must have been extra nice because on Christmas Eve afternoon, the doctor told me there was no sign of infection. He had more tests to run, but he was letting me go home because it was Christmas Eve. The deal was: “If you get a fever again, you come back.”
The kids and I went straight home and had Christmas pasta soup and Christmas Eve gifts. We read “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and wrote Santa a letter.
And then a few hours before Christmas dawn, I indeed got another fever, which was just as well — because I went back to the hospital where those further tests over the next few days showed I was OK, I was just having an aberrant temperature.
And because I learned that Christmas doesn’t have to come in a house.
We had a magical Christmas this Christmas, in the hospital where I stayed until the day after Christmas, as magical as any, my three kids and their three significant others proving they can bear the torch now. They did it all on their own, parading down the hallway to my room, pushing four wheelchairs full of all the gifts and all the lights and the spinach pie, singing “We wish you a Merry Christmas,” as they processed.
Ever better than Macy’s, they did this four times over the next two days because that’s how long it took for us to get through everything.
Christmas stretched longer than ever, in fact. And I didn’t have to do anything but rest on holly berries and focus on getting better, like my son said.
Which I did.
My warm Christmas home is in my memory, for now, I know, sustaining and comforting. It will always, always be there.
But it’s not all there is now at Christmas.
So also now are lessons in surviving what I thought I never could, in knowing that where where there is intent, there is growth. Where there is growth, there is healing. Where there is healing, there is hope. Where there is hope, there can be Christmas.
Debra-Lynn B. Hook of Kent, Ohio, has been writing about family life since 1988. Visit her website at www.debralynnhook.com; email her at [email protected], or join her column’s Facebook discussion group at Debra-Lynn Hook: Bringing Up Mommy.
