The Gift

A few days ago, I searched my mind, in vain, for the memory of my most cherished Christmas gift. I’ve never been a good or gracious receiver of gifts; more often than not, the packages under the tree, once stripped of their merry glittering paper and spirals of ribbon, have not quite measured up to my definition of magic. I’ve known the reality of holiday let-down since I was about eight years old. Were my expectations too high, or were the offerings under the tree really as mundane and unimaginative as they ultimately felt?

Finally, though, reading a friend’s journal entry about the wonderful gift of snow for Christmas, in a southern town where such an event is truly magical…the memory washed over me in a wave. And I wonder how I could have forgotten. My most wonderful and treasured Christmas gift? My life.

Ten years ago this Christmas, I was walking down one of the most frightening paths a woman can follow. After years of palliative treatments for severe "female problems," I was scheduled to go under the knife on December 14, 1994. My doctor had determined, from an ultra-sound, that I had a huge mass surrounding my right ovary. The dreaded "C" word had come up in the consultation. I asked if he could avoid doing major surgery by getting a biopsy first; Eldad (my doctor), sweet man that he was, looked truly distressed as he replied quietly, "If it IS cancer, and you rupture it, then you spread it…" There was no choice but to submit to major surgery. And no way of knowing, once I was put under, what news I would hear on awaking.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to know you are going to die. I don’t have any idea how I would live, possessing that information. But I DO know what it’s like to be weeks, days, hours away from possibly facing that reality. And I know I was scared to death. The only thing I could do, from the day the surgery was scheduled in my doctor’s office, was try to go on as if I believed there was nothing to worry about. That I didn’t feel sick enough to have a cancer that large eating away at my vitals. To function on a brave, logical, calm level that never appeared to consider the possibility of impending doom. To wear this façade, fragile as an eggshell, feeling like it could shatter at any moment from the pressure of the panic beneath. And to have this thing… this heavy, dark shadow, with no substance, yet packing the weight of an elephant, constantly looming on the edges of my consciousness.

Here in Oregon, west of the Cascades, it snows maybe once a year; many years, it doesn’t snow at all. And if it does, in its capricious Oregon-weather way, it rarely falls before Christmas, when the wonder and beauty of it would balance out the transportational inconvenience. A week before my surgery in 1994, it snowed. We had just finished hanging our outdoor lights. We had acquired a brand-new holiday novelty---Christmas lights designed to hang in icicle-like drapes from the eaves. Ours was the only house in the neighborhood to display this new-fangled marvel that year.

Snow. Magical Christmas snow. I bundled up and toted the video camera outside (one of those huge ones that you needed a bearer to carry around for you). Lacking a sled, husband broke down a cardboard box; we slogged to the top of the street that ran past our house, and skidded back down, mostly off the box—two forty-year-old adults, not a kid in sight, hooting with laughter, sliding down the street again and again. Everything about that snow was a little brighter, a little lovelier…there was a nearly hysterical edge to my determination to make merry that evening.

The elephant that was the shadow of my unknown prognosis, followed me everywhere, nudging me to enjoy while I could. There was that real possibility, unvoiced and barely acknowledged, that this could be the last snow I would ever see.

A week later, as I lay struggling to shake off the anaesthetic fog after surgery, the first thing I was aware of was Eldad, standing by my shoulder and saying, over and over, "Wake up! You don’t have cancer. Do you hear me? You don’t have cancer! Everything is all right!" until I worked my paralyzed mouth into what I thought was a smile, looked him in the eye and nodded my head. As I drifted back into oblivion, I caught a glimpse of the elephant heading out the door.

That Christmas, I could barely stand upright long enough to decorate the tree. Last minute jaunts to the mall were given up in favor of resting in the recliner wrapped in a cozy throw. Husband spoiled me mercilessly with a huge pile of presents under the tree on Christmas eve. I felt weak, tired, and puny, but it was, hands-down, the best Christmas morning I can remember. Raising my head off the pillow, the only thing hanging over it the feather-light knowledge that this would not be my last Christmas after all.
This is my contribution to judith heartsong's December Artsy Essay contest...