It'll be years before the Christmas tree farm sells a tree like the one we have this year.
Every day, as I drove by the Christmas tree farm, I wished for the same thing: “Please let me be here long enough to cut down one of those trees with my kids.” Maybe I was overreaching. I mean, the trees were just babies, row after row of little Charlie Brown saplings that would take years to grow tall enough to tickle the 12-foot ceiling of our new family room. I was, after all, driving to radiation treatment for cancer.
While other parents lamented that their kids had outgrown Santa, I was relieved. Every milestone put me closer to seeing my kids all grown-up, watching them pack their soccer balls and art supplies into their hand-me-down cars to head back to college for another semester. As our children raced toward middle school, other parents dreamed of Christmas Past. But I dreamed of Christmas Future.
So when Elizabeth Edwards died the other day, I felt a pang in my stomach as though someone I knew had passed away, someone I’d shared stories about colic and kindergarten readiness and travel soccer with over chips and dip at the local mother’s group meeting.
One of us had lost the race.
Other parents talk about freezing time or returning to when their kids ran to them when they got home, all butterfly kisses and hugs. Or they complain about sullen teens who do not much more than eat, sleep and grow out of yet another pair of pants.
But I couldn’t have been happier buying my son his first pair of size 16 jeans the other day, the day Elizabeth Edwards died. He’d outgrown his 12’s just this summer and now his 14’s. He’s grown four inches since last spring, and his hands are bigger than mine. His face is longer, his nose bigger, and peach fuzz is growing over his lip.
Good, I think. He’s growing up. Good.
I have been driving by the Christmas tree farm again, once a week, for treatments related to post-cancer issues — issues that I don’t dare complain about now three years into remission. Now, with a dear friend, a brain tumor survivor and mother of two, in the ICU after her second seizure in a month.
The trees are a little taller, less Charlie Brown and more table-top size, like something you’d find adorned with a single strand of white lights by the hostess station at a nice restaurant. But it’ll still be years until they’re big enough to cut down and bring to our house.
So I wish the same thing: Please let me be here. Please let me be here long after my son has outgrown his size 16’s. Please let there be a Christmas Future with a tree from that Christmas farm scraping the ceiling of our living room.
Elizabeth Edwards is quoted in People magazine saying pretty much the same thing- she wanted another 8 years, just enough to see her kids through high school.
xo
Jen – wow. Powerful. I live every day praying I can get my kids to “18”….and then “21.” It’s so bittersweet – I don’t want them to grow up but I need to know that they are maturing and able to live without me should we come face-to-face with cancer again. The lurking boogey man in our world. Beautiful piece, Jen.
Great words, Jen. I well remember those exact thoughts early on in my treatment, when my son was only 9. Now, almost 9 years later, I still have those thoughts as my only child prepares to go off to college in a few short months, but with the gladness, joy, and thanks to God that I’ve been here to experience it! And, thanks for expressing how I feel every time we lose someone to cancer. Anyone who reads this, take those feelings and put them into action to help someone in need. Take them to the doctor, do their grocery shopping, clean their house, sit and visit with them – anything to give them help and hope. Merry Christmas, all!
I believe. You will.
Lovely — and packs a punch.
Yes! Very well said, Jen.
Beautiful, Jen. Thanks for reminding me of the best Christmas gift of all…another day.
Jen, I’m wishing for more than that for you. I’m waiting for the blog post you’ll write on your grandmommasaid.net blog about how you took the grandkids to the county fair for the first time. And got ice cream AND cotton candy. And how the youngest — the one that looks just like your oldest boy — threw up in the car on the way home. And how it was the most marvelous, memorable day. That’s what I want for you, my friend.
It makes me sad that the worrying steals some of your joy Jen , but maybe in another way it makes you enjoy everything that much more.
This post is so beautiful, so perfect and exactly right. As a mother of two boys under 7, I have the same wish everyday. I just want to see them grow up and hearing of Elizabeth Edwards, another mother, just forces reality in. I want to keep it out for a long while.
I wish you years. Merry Christmas….and thank you.
This might be the post I can’t write. Now that the walls are closing in on me, I can think of little else, yet if I write about it, I’m afraid it will become real, and that I can’t handle. God bless those size 16s, and the fact that you’re around to see them. What a gift you’ve given your kids, and yourself.
Way to fight for it.
Sarah
Thank you for sharing your feelings, and ultimately, validating our own worries and emotions. Merry Christmas, Jen.
I have long felt the same way, and I’ve never had cancer. One of the reasons I had children young was because my own parents were a bit older and I wanted my kids to grow up not worrying about my mortality. Now my oldest is a college freshman (who just came home for Christmas) and I look at him and think, Good. He’s grown up. Still not old enough to lose a parent. We’re never old enough. The way you’ve expressed yourself is so beautiful and makes so much sense.
Beautiful, and beautifully said (as always). Every day we get to see our kids get a little bit bigger, smarter, more capable, less vulnerable, is a gift — and you know that more than most. Thanks for the lovely post.
Yep. That about says it all.
I thought of you, too. You do such a great job at living, Jen Singer. Your words bounce around in my head long after I read your posts.
Hell, yeah