Best-laid Christmas Plans Derailed by Family Illness
The best-laid Christmas plans derailed due to unexpected family illness. While on chemotherapy, I maintain a quiet, sequestered life to protect me from the risk of infection. Once I realized my chemo schedule would leave me free the entire week of Christmas, I made plans with family to spend the week at my elder sister’s home and go across town to my parents’ home for various activities, including gift opening and Christmas dinner. I anticipated this special time to enjoy with my loved ones. Little did I know a severe, highly contagious virus would sweep through the household, resulting in our best-laid Christmas plans derailed.
Annual Tradition of Admiring Christmas Light Displays Was Missing a Few Important People
Early in the week, it became apparent that sickness had hit my parents’ house. First one, and then another fell ill with a nasty respiratory virus, making it imprudent for me to be in close contact with my dear family. Thankfully, my sister’s family across town remained healthy, so I stayed nearby with the hope that the virus would pass quickly.
We had also all joined in a family meeting using Skype early in the week, so I began to think about Skyping with one sister who could not be with us for Christmas for gift opening. It seemed to be the next best thing to being there.
As Christmas dawned, family members were still ill, making it impossible for me safely join them for our planned celebration. So, we cooked dinner in separate kitchens across town, transported dishes for Christmas dinner and gifts, and then logged into Skype so that we could watch as gifts were passed around and opened.
Although I did not get the hugs I normally enjoy while home to visit, amazingly, the joy of Christmas surrounded us and we were able to watch via Skype as each one peeled back wrapping paper of carefully selected gifts. Skyping made us slow down and focus on each individual family member, appreciating the joy of receiving a well chosen gift and the resulting gratitude expressed. And, we sent one another air hugs and other expressions of love through cyberspace.
While we had seen our best-laid Christmas plans derailed, we still savored a delicious, potluck home-cooked Christmas dinner and celebrated this special time together through the miracle of modern technology.
Soon after receiving the news that I would benefit from chemotherapy, I began to research chemo and learned I could make the cancer detour easier on myself if I learned what should go in my chemo bag.
I found numerous posts on Pinterest about chemo bags. So, with the help of my family, I put together the biggest chemo bag I have seen in the chemo infusion room. Each chemo bag is unique to the patient, but there are certain things I have found help make time in the infusion room more pleasant.
My Chemo Bag Essentials
Family members have contributed to my bag. Because I get cold in the chemo room, I take a fleece blanket that my mother made me to keep me warm. Coffee Beans, the Build-a-Bear my youngest niece made me, keeps me company and has come close to celebrity status in the infusion room. Comfy, red sequined slippers from one sister keep my toes warm and pillowed. Encouraging words on smooth stones from my oldest sister and a friend remind me to have hope and to just breathe.
A few other things I include are reading material, music, snacks (especially saltine crackers for nausea and hard candy to mask the taste of saline when the port is being flushed or disagreeable medications start flowing) or a healthy lunch. I also take a journal and pen, art supplies to draw or color, hand wipes and sanitizer, and a mask so that I can go to sleep when the meds start to make me sleepy.
If you are wondering, “What should go in my chemo bag?” or have a friend asking that question, then I hope you find some of my thoughts helpful. Many have shared suggestions for how to prepare for chemo so you can easily find resources to support your loved one or yourself on your cancer detour. These resources have shaped how I decided what should go in my chemo bag. If you are on Pinterest, you may check out my Cancer and Chemo Board for some ideas I have found helpful.
Coffee Beans, the Build-a-Bear my youngest niece made me.
Other Chemo Essentials
Two things I always try to take to chemo do not fit in my bag: a positive attitude and a smile for the courageous patients around me; the compassionate caretakers who do all they can to help me to be well; and kind, efficient office staff who ensure my care runs smoothly. I believe those two things might be the most important of all.
Along with watching predictably saccharine sweet holiday movies, baking Christmas treats, and wrapping presents, driving around looking at holiday light displays is one of my favorite seasonal pastimes. Each year, I drive out in search of new neighborhoods with creative expressions of seasonal cheer. Although it would be impressive to say my annual wanderings are researched thoroughly and plotted unfailingly, my navigational weakness means that more often than not I chance upon newfound delights by mere serendipity or the happenstance of taking a wrong turn.
This year, I stumbled across two delightful, though very distinct, displays in my wanderings. My first find featured the mature trees lining a lovely neighborhood lane. Although some of the homes were tastefully decorated, the highlight of the block for me was the light-wrapped tree trunks lining the street. Even houses that opted out of house lights had a wrapped tree near the street, creating a unified theme. The lighted trunks created a simple, but breathtaking effect, transforming the entire street with the magic of the season.
The second find was an individual house on my drive home from the grocery store. Driving along a residential street after an evening stop at a nearby store, I happened to notice lighted windows in a house and upon closer inspection noticed the windows were filled with scenes created using different kinds of holiday dolls.
Although the photos I snapped do not do justice to the seasonal whimsy displayed in each tableau, the essence of the holiday cheer captured in these window vignettes inspired me with the childlike wonder I associate with Christmas. Each window features a different theme, but with equally delightful results. I drove away from the house feeling cheery with childlike wonder inspired by the seasonal display.
While tinsel and colorful displays of lights do not capture the heart of the season, I found they can bring cheer and delight to the harried shopper trying to cross one more thing off of detailed wish lists. In those moments of pausing to listen and look around, I somehow find time and space to celebrate and commemorate Advent.
In these busy, task-filled days, may you find quiet moments of peace, joy and celebration.
Although my Christmas tree has been up and decorated for over a month, the busyness of the season has kept me preoccupied and in seeming perpetual motion–up until a couple of days ago. This celebratory weekend started off Friday with a favorite of my Christmas Traditions: an evening with a play and sing along of Handel’s Messiah in exquisite Memorial Church at Stanford University. The grandeur of the historic church as melodic voices raised the unequaled notes of Handel’s masterpiece.
Saturday, I finally settled on a recipe for the school potluck get together and went off to the grocery store. The funny thing is that I didn’t realize a parent of a child I have taught checks at the grocery story where I sometimes shop. Much to my consternation, when I got to the checkstand I was greeted by name before I even provided any form of payment with my name on it. At that point I realized who was going to ring up my purchase. Knowing somebody there helps me feel more like I am part of a community and not just an insignificant digit after the decimal point on the population sign of the third most populated city in California.
Once I had the groceries, I just needed a mini muffin tin to make the Spanakopita Bites I had settled on for the potluck. I tried to pop into a couple of overcrowded stores with ridiculously long lines of customers waiting to check out, I decided I would improvise somehow. Since I have lived this long without ever needing mini muffin tins, I realized it would have been a frivolous purchase. Instead, I chose to go with spanakopita cups made in regular-sized muffin tins and after my experience layering and buttering phyllo dough before adding the filling, I am certainly relieved I hadn’t purchased mini muffin tins. I doubt I would have made it to the get together. It would have taken forever. As it was, I was just a half an hour after start time, but still well before about half of the other attendees. It was a fun evening of chatting and talking about our upcoming break.
After cleaning up the dishes remaining from making my holiday Spanakopita Bites, which seemed like it took forever, I made a midday meal, creating even more dishes.
I geared up to make a holiday dessert for another upcoming get together. As a girl, one of my favorite Christmas traditions was making Christmas cut out cookies. Although she usually mixed up the dough, my mom would marshal my three sisters and me into the kitchen to cut out, bake, and decorate gingerbread and sugar cookies. My warm, happy holiday memory of cookie making is one that has persisted and a tradition that I have duplicated over the years. However, for the past couple of years I have lived in a house with a very small kitchen that was not at all conducive to cooking. Now that I have moved into a home with a spacious, newly remodeled kitchen, my joy in cooking and baking has resurged. I find it satisfying and relaxing, kitchen clean up notwithstanding.
Just as I was getting organizing things for baking cookies, a friend unexpectedly popped over. We had a makeshift dinner and then after a quick run to the store for essential ingredients for gingerbread, began mixing up cookies. Just like when I was little and my sisters and I all worked together in the kitchen, my friend measured out the dry ingredients while I creamed and mixed the rest. We each took a turn mixing the two together and when it was divided and wrapped for the refrigerator, we whipped up some buttercream frosting for decorating our spicy little figures before settling in to watch a Christmas movie while waiting for the dough to chill.
After waiting as long as possible in the face of the enticement of spicy gingerbread, we went back to the kitchen and armed with our own rolling pins and bits of dough, we started rolling and forming our Christmas gingerbread cookies. As I rolled and cut the dough, I thought about how long it had been since I had made Christmas cookies and then suddenly got caught up in the joyful rhythm of rolling, cutting, and placing cookies on my quickly filled baking sheet. Before long the cookies were out of the oven and cooling on a wire rack. In the meantime we mixed color into bowlfuls of frosting and began assembly pastry bags for decorating our gingery shapes. Anxious to begin, the first too-warm cookie caused the frosting to run. So, I slowed down and let the rest cool a little more before deciding how to decorate each one.
In spite of the fact that I ended the day just as it started–with a sink full of dishes to be washed–I have a deep sense of contentment and accomplishment. Although I have few baked cookies left to show for my efforts, I am filled with the joy of sharing a simple holiday tradition, inviting someone to share my kitchen, and devouring decorated gingerbread cookies and icy glasses of milk in wreath-decked glass holiday tumblers.
Sometimes I contemplate rewriting a Jane Austen Classic to make all the characters meet with the poetic justice their comportment demands. Many Jane Austen novels, both print and celluloid versions, are old friends. I find familiar comfort in the oft read characters and settings that transport me to simpler times. I applaud the tidy neatness of how Austen sets her vain, proud characters in their place, but elevates her humble egalitarians. A fan of happy endings, I enjoy Austen’s neat denouements with the inevitable banishment of sadness and grief, which may even have been brought into the lives of characters by their own poor or selfish choices. Love and goodness always triumph.
However, there is one detail in a much loved story that leaves my simplistic nature dissatisfied: in Sense and Sensibility, Miss Lucy Steele’s conniving nature pays off. She ditches Edward Ferrars, her diffident, disowned fiancé for his proud younger brother, gains the esteem (and fortune) of her new mother-in-law, and lives comfortably in spite of her self-serving machinations. I find that aspect of the novel difficult to accept, but all too parallel to life. I would like for such intrigues to utterly fail and yield absolutely no net result.
But, life isn’t like that. So I guess Austen was right to let Miss Lucy Steele gain greater status and remuneration from her wealthy mother-in-law than the pious Miss Elinor Dashwood.
Actually, I do not think that Elinor would have minded the turn of events at all. In my reading of the story, Elinor’s principal enjoyment in life was entirely independent of her income or situation. She found practicality, duty, honor, and commitment to be far greater wealth than capricious favor bestowed or withheld based on one’s performance. While noble and admirable, Elinor’s attitude would not have put food on her table or a roof over her head, so I am profoundly grateful that Colonel Brandon gave Edward Ferrars the living at Delaford and that Mrs. Ferrars relented and gave Edward and Elinor a small annual income to help them along. It was just enough to be comfortable and independent without being ostentatious or proud.
So all things considered, I guess Elinor’s lot in life was far superior to Lucy’s.
But, if I were rewriting a Jane Austen classic or creating an “Austenesque” novel of my life, I wonder if I would write myself in as Lucy or as Elinor.
When spoken, this word evokes feelings as diverse as each family. In some people, they feel a sense of belonging and community. For others, something entirely different and not at all pleasant.
Along my journey in life, that word family has engendered different feelings in me, too. When I was around 13, embarrassment was probably the keenest sentiment I experienced. But today, I would have to say pride and joy in belonging ring most true.
My parents both retired early. And, although stories abound recounting the boredom of retirement, I have been amazed at how my parents have found new interests and have pursued them with passion and commitment. To my astonishment, their new pursuits have forced them to learn how to use newer technologies, including how to Skype, text on a cell phone and research safely using the internet. Their continued adventures into new and complicated fields inspires and reminds me once again how much I want to be exactly like them when I grow up.
In fact, today, my mom is one of my greatest heroes. When what we had hoped for turned hopeless recently and I was losing sleep, she said, “I just can’t give up.” So with the fearless tenacity I have seen in her countless times over the course of my life, my mother perseveres in the face of hopelessness with indomitable heart.
No matter what has happened, what is happening right now, or what might happen in the future, I know my mom loves me, my sisters, and her grandchildren with relentless, fearless love.
So for me, probably the most precious word I know is family.
Over the course of a lifetime various people pass into our lives and right back out, while others come in and go on to other place without leaving us. These become our best of friends forever; the people you can pick up the phone to talk to or meet face to face after years of not even being in the same time zone and they are still that same friend as though you spoke just minutes before. They may have a few more wrinkles or pounds, children or grandchildren, but they are the same precious, unwavering friend you remember.
Gratefully, I have numerous such people in my life. No two are exactly the same, which gives life flavor and richness. But, all are precious and add something different to my life.
Upon recently receiving potentially devastating news, I called a friend of mine who cried with me as I cried. After my tears dried, and I began to move forward, I paused and stood next to another friend simply to absorb strength and a sense of calm. Another friend texted me to check in, gave me a kind, listening ear and some straightforward, but encouraging advice. Each friend is unique and succeeds in mending a different place in my wounded heart.
So, although parts of my heart are crushed and feel like they may never be whole again, there are these other places where my precious family and friends dwell. By their very presence deep in my heart, they bring joy, laughter, and hope for better times ahead making me infinitely grateful for my best of friends forever.
One evening after a musical presentation near the end of a recent school year, I was chatting with parents of my young students. In conversation with one mom who works in a very impressive, high power field, she mentioned how happy she was that her extremely bright son was integrated with the rest of the class, instead of segregated as he had been the year before. Not understanding exactly what she meant, I was slightly confused when she stated, “You seem to let them be who they are.”
With her and her husband looking on, I burst out laughing. “Who else would I expect them to be? The world only needs one of me.” However, I suspected I knew what they meant. In a time when data is more important than individuality, creativity or innovation, there is an expectation that students produce the same final product. In fact, I am supposed to provide a model for them to pattern after. However, my developmental-social cognitive philosophy prevents me from rigidly adhering to such a strictly behaviorist approach to learning and more than once accepted an alternate assignment from this parent’s intelligent young son.
I am not so arrogant to think my students cannot come up with a more interesting story or captivating idea than I can. In reality, one of the things I love about teaching is that I get to read ideas from many different people who haven’t yet learned to believe that their ideas will never work. Their imagination is not yet jaded and the confidence in doing the impossible is not yet pricked.
So yes, I try to let them be who they are and they in turn, let me be who I am—and that is a pretty fabulous arrangement.
My hijacked life doesn’t look like I expected it would. As a little girl, all kinds of people conditioned me with ideas and dreams about what life would be like when I grew up; when I become a woman. Little did I know that I would never become a woman, at least not in the way idealized by many of my mother’s generation.
Although I went through the requisite pubescent transformation, I never became a mother. In fact, I have never become many of the things everyone told me or expected of me: a lover, a mother or a caregiver. In fact, in some ways I feel as though my life has been hijacked.
I always thought I was doing something worthwhile in teaching and becoming a missionary and I believed while I pursued those worthy vocations that perhaps I would meet a man with similar interests and life paths and we would continue on pursing those worthy vocations together. As the years went by, the dream of children in that equation faded as it inevitably does, but oddly enough the anticipated find a potential mate has yet to be realized.
The Continuation of My Hijacked Life
Finally in the summer of 2015, spurred to action by my desire to be a parent I decided to investigate local foster family agencies and to attend classes for future foster parents. I had explored foster to adopt at other times and in other places, but the timing had always been wrong. This particular summer, just as I had completed all but one of the required training courses through the Bill Wilson Center and was preparing to submit my application to become a foster parent, I was diagnosed with cancer. Those plans to finally become a parent were immediately derailed and once again, I felt the crushing weight of disappointment in my hijacked life.
It seems like there is always another surprise on the way. Unexpected disappointments can crush and break, but one can rise up in brokenness with anticipation and faith that life is still good, even when it seems like our hopes and dreams have been hijacked.
My Hijacked Life Is Most Calm When I Am Near the Pacific Ocean
