Merry Freaking Hallmark Christmas

It's Christmas morning. Whatever religion, tradition, vague belief system or lack thereof you subscribe to, don't, or wish you could to make yourself feel better, most of us at least acknowlege this day is a doozy. It's about family togetherness and, almost inevitably, this means making it work. Like maybe you are Jewish but you show up to your Christian family's thing, because grandma will be there and the cousins haven't seen each other in a long time. Or maybe you are particularly upset about the mindless consumerism around you, but you still found yourself scrambling yesterday afternoon because at the last minute you decided to put your own stuff behind you and get the niece something after all, and all you could find last minute was something that was, at best, momentarily delightful. Or maybe you have self-imposed dietary restrictions, but you decide that if it's between your own ideals or your aunt seeing you enjoy her buttery sweet potato casserole, you choose family. Not to mention you spent all day yesterday cooking just so you could bring something you can eat. 

Or maybe you aren't seeing family at all this year. Maybe you've just decided to not do it this year. For whatever reason. Maybe your kid is fighting cancer, and you can't risk anyone making him sick, bringing in one of the many plagues floating around out there in the real world outside the walls of your sanitized little house. If that is the case, you might be curled up in your fuzzy bathrobe right now while a tiny bald tot plays with the toys he unwrapped last night, when he was too excited to wait one more day to reveal the mysteries under the tree (an admittedly ugly, sad looking plastic tree you recently rediscovered stored in your parent's barn, having hauled it up there years ago after you found it in some condo you were cleaning during your Summit County ski bum days, when every December 26, on the busiest day of they year, as you were making like forty beds and scrubbing down twenty-something bathrooms during the six hours between when Christmas guests checked out and New Years guests checked in, you also had to figure out what to do with a half-dozen cheap plastic Christmas trees they had bought and dragged into their condos, and then couldn't fit in their luggage for the flight home, or even drag down to the garage with a "free tree" sign on it). You might be waiting for the rest of your family to wake up, although you aren't sure why, because then you will have to stop writing the longest parenthesized sentences known to man and actually do something, like make breakfast. Because even though you spent the entire day cooking yesterday with the proclamation that you would not be lifting a finger all day to cook or clean and you have an entire fridge jammed with delicious leftovers, that didn't include breakfast. Obviously.

Or maybe you know, or suspect, or have it on good authority that this will be the last Christmas you will spend with your child. While other families create traditions meant to carry into the future, Christmas Eve pajamas, milk and cookies for Santa, another year printed on a silver dollar in the toe of a stocking, you are simply trying to breathe and not blink, trying to save every moment and not miss a single thing, because this moment, right now, is what you will return to again, and a million times again, during future Christmas mornings when there is a jagged hole through all your favorite traditions where your child is now. 

Or maybe that Christmas morning was a year ago today, and you had no idea. Or you did, and now you are where you so dreaded being then. Now you are trying to decide if you can even face your extended family. Or do any of those things that once included a little person who was your world. You are wondering if you have forgotten any details, holding them and counting them and seeing a small face in your mind as you imagine it would be, older than the last memory you have of it. You are just trying to remember to keep taking breaths. Putting one foot ahead of the other. Pretending to be okay for those around you, who are pretending for you.

I admit it. I am not the biggest fan of this day. It contains too much pressure to make it a freaking Hallmark holiday. It is so much focus on biological family, when everywhere, family is what you make it. So much focus on the kids, when so many people have their hearts dangling by razor wire because of their children. Children they could not have. Children they could not keep. Children who were conceived but not born. Children who were never able to help decorate a tree. Children who loved everything about the holiday, and now it isn't the same without them. My heart is with these families today. I ache for them. I know they wouldn't want anyone else's holiday to be less magical because theirs is one of the hardest days of the year, but knowing they are out there makes me slow down. It makes me breathe and not blink, trying to save every moment and not miss a single thing, because this moment, right now, is what I will return to again, and a million times again, during future Christmas mornings when my own little darlings are gone. Whatever takes them from me. Best case scenario, age. College. Partners, their own busy lives. Worst case, tomorrow I have no promises that I won't be facing the future without them. They only time I have to hold them is now. If this moment passes me by, it may never present itself again. Time might see them grow into wonderful adults, but it will also take them away from me.

Christmas was good, growing up. My Grandma Christina saw to that. Not to say I didn't have two other grandmas who didn't also make it great, but I spent the entire season at Grandma Chris's house. She created a big extended family that made a point of getting together for the holidays. As soon as the last of the leftover thanksgiving pie had been eaten, I helped her get out boxes full of dainty dishes holding cinnamon scented votive candles, tack long pieces of bright yarn across walls to hold Christmas cards, even make popcorn garlands and bring in pine boughs to decorate with cinnamon sticks, dried orange and apple slices. I marveled at her heirlooms that only came out for the season- delicate table runners, depression glass bowls to be filled with the peppernuts and other tasty holiday dainties we would make. My grandparent's Christmas table was not only gathered around by family, but by community, their intentional family. The neighbors (in rural Western Kansas, anyone who shares a telephone prefix is a neighbor) who had no family of their own, friends who knew no invitation was needed, visitors who just happened to be on their way through, young people from Europe, spending semesters working in the Kansas farm industry. It was always chaotic, and it was chaotically normal for me. While for some families, Christmas was a time of exclusion, of withdrawing and focusing on their own families, ours was all about inclusion- making sure nobody was alone unless they chose to be. Providing festive cheer for anyone who might have a hard time providing it for themselves. Grandma's own childhood was a lonely one, a connundrum of being both a bit of a celebrity and isolated by her own parent's issues in a community that valued proper appearances. They were like a Pennsylvania Dutch version of the Von Trapp family, known through the Holdeman Mennonite congregations of the U.S. for their musical talent as they traveled the country giving singing lessons and demonstrations. The shared experience of minor celebrity did not hold the little family of four together as her parent's marriage fell apart, and she and her older brother were left dangling, unsure where they fit in. At 17, a young beauty with enormous light hazel eyes rimmed with long, curling lashes (the same lashes lying over her great grandson Alex's cheeks as he sleeps on my lap), she met a 24 year old farmer, and by the time she turned 18, she was married, pregnant, and worshipped the ground he walked on, as she would the rest of her life. As she made her own life, she did everything she could to make sure anyone at risk for feeling the way she had growing up was tucked under her wing, fed a cinnamon roll, and forced, against all of their intentions to the contrary, to smile, to join her as she sang carols and mashed vats full of potatoes, to experience the warmth she radiated. 

The carefree Hallmark holidays ended, eventually. Their oldest son, my uncle, was killed in a car accident at 33, leaving a wife, a four year old, a two year old and a three week old baby. That same year, the wife of the elderly childless couple who had spent so many Christmases with our family was mauled to death by a mule (because this apparently still happens in Kansas). The next-oldest uncle's family, by the time carseats were becoming mandatory and they had son #6, stopped coming down from Northern Idaho for special occasions. The family scattered. By the time grandpa was diagnosed with stage 4 adenocarcinoma spreading from his stomach, we had committed to spending Christmases working in the ski resort lodging industry, which is a jealous mistress at every single holiday, no matter the season, but especially Christmas. They tried, they still invited their intentional family, but the big, chaotic Christmases of other years didn't happen anymore. 

Grandpa was 67 in January 2004, grandma providing palliative care for him iside the home they had built together. When she called my mom to drive nine miles out to the farm one night because grandpa seemed to be choking, my mom sped through the night with plans of suctioning and CPR if necessary, but arrived to find him lying in Grandma's arms, no longer breathing. The family came together to mourn and to bury his embattled body, to provide comfort to Grandma, then returned to families and responsibilities. My parents brought Grandma to see us in Colorado that year for a late celebration after the Christmas and New Years rush died down for us. She did all the things she would have done other years- made peppernuts and date wheels, cooked big meals, sang her songs, and we tried to make it merry in spite of her having been recently widowed. She was young yet, at 60, her hair only graying during the two years she and grandpa had faced the loss of his future. She went back home to try to put her life back together, and during a snowstorm one week later, as she stoked a fire in the fireplace to chase away the loneliness and gloom, she just...stopped. After a long day of trying to call her, my mom drove the nine treacherous, dark miles through the snowstorm to find a dark house, cold ashes, and her with the fireplace poker, lying in front of them. Maybe it was a sudden, catastrophic stroke. Or a massive heart attack. Maybe an aneurism burst. We didn't investigate. We were too tired, too flat. We just dug another hole in the frozen dirt beside the fresh mound Grandpa slept under and lowered her down, the music suddenly, for the first time in all of our lives, silent. We wondered how we could possibly feel anything more, and simultaneously less, than we already felt. 

After she was no longer here to even attempt to bring her children, friends, and stragglers together for the holidays, the traditions died as well. Some of her remaining four children began traditions with in laws and no longer had time for our family. We scattered from literally one coast to the other. For Bobby and me, Christmas was a nightmare of customer service. We occasionally tried to make it special, but often, we were all just too exhausted and sick of people to even finish dinner and gather around the tree Bobby's sister always insisted on putting up. Having grown up with no mother, their own mom having died of metastatic breast cancer when she was nine, she took it upon herself to provide her brothers with a merry Christmas regardless of the circumstances. 

There was the Christmas almost five years ago, when my own mom was bald and exhausted as she fought the fight of her life against breast cancer. I don't even remember it, but it must have happened. We must have done something special. Surely we did. Surely we didn't make her experience that one alone.

Then we left Summit County and the ski lodging industry. In the last three years, we have tried to salvage the holiday. We have no traditions. We have no particular memories, the Hallmark Christmases we both have had are so far in our past they do not define the holiday for us. Every year, about a week before the 25th, we suddenly decide maybe we should do something after all, and we cobble something together, and we call it merry. Bobby's brother, sister in law and the little cousins don't come anymore, so we do our best to make it merry with Bobby's sister Marci, my parents, and usually, my mom's brother Leroy and his wife, Mary, whom we have named our babies' godparents. Except again this year, cancer has messed with Christmas. It's a good thing we have no traditions and don't really take it very seriously, because we might be really bummed by the fact we can't see anyone we love this week. As it is, we know the reunion is coming. We just have to rebound from this round yet and start Maintenance.

So that is the long version of why I don't particularly care much about Christmas. I love time with my family, but who needs a holiday to have that? I love things like crackling fires on wintery nights, but Christmas doesn't have a monopoly on that. And who says gingerbread houses, lights on trees, and ridiculously sweet treats are a Christmas thing, and not just a winter thing? I am okay with our loved ones buying my children toys for under our pathetic plastic tree that contains exactly four ornaments, but we didn't feel like we could afford to get them anything this year, since we are as solvent as we are because of the support of loved ones. Instead, we have focused on the pretty lights, the food, playing together as a family, the fact that Daddy is home right now. We don't, and in the future, probably won't do things like elf on the shelf or Santa. I get the whole making childhood magical thing, I do, and can respect others doing these things for their kids, and understand the thinking behind them. But we are still searching for those "us" traditions, and they are not it. The theme of our lives, at least the way I try to remind myself to live it, is about finding the magic in the ordinary, instead of creating it in the extraordinary. Belief in mythical characters doesn't seem essential to a happy childhood. Being completely honest with the small, inquisitive minds, and then being there to help them process, this feels more authentic. Which is why the whole "Christmas spirit" thing seems redundant. If we can't live the rest of the year with goodwill, seeking peace, having all those sickening Hallmark moments, finding the magic, celebrating the obstacles behind us and noting all the good things that have come our way, what's the point of going through the motions once a year? And as far as many of those things that are uniquely "Christmas", I never did them. We did food, and then more food, but not stockings, trees, pajamas, nativity scenes, Santa, or Christmas morning. I am only now learning about them as other families talk about them. I wish I were kidding.

Now as far as the religious part of it, that was a huge part of my childhood Christmas experience. Hymns and carols, the Biblical Christmas story, all that. As we struggle to find our own way to present these things to our own children, being honest about the things we don't know, being sensitive and respectful to the many, many different beliefs others have, we have no traditions yet. Maybe someday. I don't actually feel much pressure to "keep Christ in Christmas" or fight against some sort of imaginary "war on Christmas" because, well. We appropriated it first. We invented adopting holidays and then being freaked out that anyone else might do the same. I think we all know by now that it isn't actually baby Jesus' birthday any more than it's the day a jolly old white guy pops out of the chimney and grants material wishes based on the past year's performance. What began as a celebration of the winter solstice has come to mean so many things to so many people. To us, it is a great time to recognize that another year was ours to live. Winter is half gone, and spring is coming, if not visible yet. That everything passes.

And that was all she wrote, at least on Christmas day. Continued December 26:

Apparently, as evidenced by all that stuff I wrote while propping my feet in front of the fire yesterday, tangents happen in the absence of real news. It has been peaceful here at our house. Bobby turned down the option to go to North Dakota to work through the holidays, which also means no money. We did a lot of talking about it, and finally decided that if a penny saved is a penny earned, a penny not made is a penny lost, and we decided to simply make monetary payment in exchange for time together as a family these two weeks. This is our big investment for the year. Every dollar lost to time spent with each other through hospital stays, clinic days, time in our house, gathered around the fireplace, playing with new toys is simply a payment made to someone else who will earn it in our place, in exchange for us being able to stay in each other's presence. And there you have it. Classic freaking Hallmark, isn't it? 

We are almost done with Delayed intensification. I know, it seems like we barely started. But the last high dose chemotherapy this phase would have been PEG-aspariginase on Wednesday. Except that, due to D's inability to tolerate PEG, instead of one IV infusion, we have to get two weeks worth of shots of Erwinia aspariginase. Our schedule is normally Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but due to both Christmas and New Years falling on Fridays this year, our schedule is Wednesdays, Saturdays and Mondays. Not that we mind going to the hospital on Saturdays. It's actually a bit of a bonus. It is quiet. The clinic was silent, immaculate, and deserted. They unlocked it for the four patients today who could not have their chemo schedules rearranged, we all arrived about the same time, a few nurses came over from inpatient to administer the drugs, and we just had to kill an hour afterward in the deserted halls while monitoring for reactions. This time, we opted out of messing up a clean infusion room, knowing we usually prefer to roam the halls anyway. Daniel became an ardent admirer of a 15 year old girl named Aliza, also there for Erwinia shots, who also opted for the infusion chairs beside the big windows instead of a private room. They share a diagnosis, except hers is more intense because of her age. They got their shots together, cheering for each other's bravery. Daniel watched her receiving hers, then helped her rub it better, and pull her pant legs back down to cover the bruises. Then she read books to him. New best friends. 

The lack of people in the clinic halls meant Daniel and Alex had free range of them. I even allowed Alex to crawl on the floor, since it was freshly mopped with very few shoes walking on it today. And as an added bonus, on top of our peaceful hospital day, the cafeteria had set out free fruit, veggie and cheese platters as a holiday treat in the dining area downstairs. We helped ourselves to delicious, expensive fresh fruit like we owned the place, practically swooning over it. Monday will be far more chaotic. 

After Erwinia ends, it usually takes two and a half to three weeks until counts hit nadir. And another week until they start to recover. So, although we are a week and a half from done with Erwinia, we are five or six weeks from counts rebounding. Daniel is looking pale to me. Maybe even a little yellow. His lips are pale pink. His cheeks still have a slight blush, but no glow. He has bruises everywhere. I know both his platelets and hemoglobin are lower than is healthy, but likely are not critical. We won't get more bloodwork until next Wednesday, but we don't need it to tell us everything is compromised. We are still just hanging out, not going anywhere except the hospital, enjoying the quiet and willing things to stay stable. Well. Enjoying as much quiet as the volume control of two babies allows us.

On January 29 (ish), Bobby reluctantly starts his next new work adventure. He has been turning down offers of a promotion to Field Coordinator for several months already, but finally caved. He really doesn't want to have to be in a supervisor position. He would rather just hide in his truck, where nobody bothers him. Especially since the pay raise does not really compensate for the added headache. However, the position also comes with a guaranteed schedule. Four days on, a day and a half off, four nights on, a night and a half off. Not only will he know the hours he will need to be there, he will know the days he will have off. We have not had more than five minutes lead time on this information in the last year and a half. I am so grateful to him for doing this for us. Exchanging his nice, warm, clean truck for a job managing people, which is his nightmare, not to mention a twelve hour shift on his feet, walking 9-10 miles per night. Again with the adulting. Why are the options never good ones?

Much love to our dear ones. I hope your holidays were wonderful, and that you didn't blink.