We’d planned this Sunday for months—to drive up to the mountains with a group of friends, Dennis and Jen and Brian and Crystal, to cut down a Christmas tree in the wild. Three families coordinated holiday-packed schedules, Jen purchased date-specific permits from the Forest Service, and we packed thermoses of cocoa and baskets of Christmas cookies to share. A day that would fill Gabi’s memory bank for years. Her last Christmas as an only child, now that a new sibling was growing in my belly. A perfect day. And a perfect mama who orchestrated it all.
Our plans changed when Gabi woke up that morning with a fever and then threw up down my shirt.
“If we’re going to use the tree permit, you have to go today,” I told Derek as I crawled around on her bedroom floor, mopping up the remaining vomit. I was thankful our bedrooms weren’t carpeted. “We’ve already paid for it,” I reminded him. The ten-dollar permit had used up our Christmas tree budget.
The year before, we’d bought a house plant at Home Depot and put it on a table so toddler Gabi couldn’t spread its dirt all over the floor. I hung a string of lights on the plant and promised myself the next year we’d splurge for a real tree. Memories of U-Cut tree farms surrounding Seattle made me nostalgic for my childhood Christmas traditions, and I jumped at the chance for a scenic drive through the Colorado mountains to bring home a tree in the back of the truck. I could already smell the evergreen that would fill our house with the aroma of Christmas.
In fact, I was gearing up to make Christmas sparkle with tradition. Now that Gabi was old enough to participate, I wanted to make everything around the holiday memorable. I had the sprinkles and cookie cutters ready, the plastic nativity scene unpacked, the Christmas books from the library spread on the coffee table, and, of course, Johnny Mathis playing on the CD player.
My mom did up Christmas with visits to Santa, Christmas ornaments from around the world, and more gifts under the tree than a teacher should have afforded. Her special touches made the holiday feel like a celebration. But after the gifts were open, there was always a little letdown—something, or someone, that I felt was missing. Christmas was one of those things I wanted to get right. I wanted it to be a memory of warmth and security for Gabi. Or was it really for me? To feed into my fantasy of Hallmark living that hadn’t been fully realized yet?
If my marriage couldn’t fill my empty places and motherhood had more disappointments than I’d expected, I could at least have the Christmas I’d dreamed of. I could control this part of Gabi’s childhood.
An hour after Derek left alone to meet up with our friends, I went to the bathroom to relieve my pregnant bladder. I glanced at the shut bathroom door next to me and felt my heart skip: no doorknob! Derek’s project the day before was to paint the bedroom and bathroom doors of the main floor of our raised little ranch house. We had a garden-level basement, so our main level was raised half a story above the ground. We figured we could safely leave the house with our high windows open, letting the cool December air in and the paint fumes out while we were gone on our new Christmas tradition. But suddenly I was locked in the bathroom, and my two-year-old was on the other side. I started to sweat as I thought of sick Gabi alone, out of my reach.
“Mommy?” Her voice was softer than usual but was pressed close to the door between us.
“I’ll be right out, sweetie. Go lie down.” The fading pitter-patter suggested her jammied feet were headed toward her bedroom, and then it was confirmed as Elmo’s familiar voice sang out from her book. I pictured her sitting on her bedroom’s hardwood floor, the Elmo book open on her lap. Relieved I might have a few minutes to figure out my escape plan, I looked around our tiled purple bathroom.
Then I remembered the open windows throughout the house to let in fresh air! The candles lit in the living room to mask the paint fumes! My heart skipped twice. Elmo stopped singing, and silence followed from behind the door. I quickly ran through the events of the day to assess how I’d gotten to this spot of desperation. Despite my panic, I laughed at the irony of the picturesque day I’d expected.
I looked at the hole in the bathroom door where the doorknob used to be. Of course Derek took off the knobs when he painted the doors the day before. I obviously hadn’t thought that through when I pushed the door closed with my foot as I pulled down my pajama pants. I needed to find something that would fit in that hole and turn the latch. I looked around the bathroom again and grabbed my toothbrush from the sink. As I tried to jam it in, the phrase “you can’t stick a square peg into a round hole” flashed through my brain. Only, this was a square hole and a round peg.
“Gabi?” I tried not to sound alarmed, but the silence was concerning. No answer. I spun around and opened the medicine cabinet above the sink and grabbed the tweezers. It was a stretch, but maybe they would work. No. My glance flew around the bathroom one more time and landed on the window above the tub. I climbed into the tub, opened the window, and stuck my head out to look down. From window to patio, it was almost a full story. The spigot for the hose was halfway down the wall, and the cement patio spread out below.
“Gabi, I’ll be right there. Just stay in your room,” I yelled over my shoulder. I wondered if she’d noticed the open window next to her bed. But I was more worried about the candles in the living room that could get knocked over. She’d already blown them out once that day. Why had I cared so much about covering the paint smell?
Climbing up into the window, I wondered if it was worth risking the escape. I could try letting myself down slowly until my foot landed on the spigot, but if that didn’t work, I could fall onto the concrete patio. A bigger hazard to the baby I was carrying than some paint fumes. Minutes ticked by as I sat there trying to make my decision to go down or not. I felt truly trapped. I couldn’t think of any other options. I peered around the windowsill to my neighbor’s yard. Maybe they would hear me if I yelled.
So I started yelling, “Help! I need help!”
How many times before someone heard me?
“Help! I’m stuck!”
I knew my neighbors would come help me figure out how to get out, or if someone parking in front of our house to attend Mass at the church up the street heard, they might call the police. I imagined the police car driving slowly down the alley to find a pregnant woman in the window because she’d locked herself in the bathroom. Martha Stewart probably didn’t have a holiday segment on this.
“Hellllp!” After multiple rounds of yelling and no neighbors, I stopped. Still perched on the windowsill, I prayed, God, help me get to Gabi. I untangled myself from the window and grabbed my toothbrush again. Please, please, please, I prayed as I jammed it in the square hole again. As I turned the toothbrush, I felt the door latch click open and I was free.
I ran into Gabi’s bedroom, the location of the last known sound. She was lying facedown, bare chested, her pajamas pulled halfway off. I knelt down next to her and felt the cool hardwood on my feet.
“Gabi?”
Her eyes rolled up toward my voice, telling me it was time for some more Tylenol. I drew her body up and let her legs hang heavy as I draped her around my chest and felt my heart rate slow down.
A few hours later, Derek walked through the front door, holding something with pine needles that looked more like a branch than the full evergreen I was expecting. We wrapped a few of his athletic socks around the trunk so it would be big enough for the Christmas tree stand I’d bought on clearance the previous January.
“They were all kind of like this.” I could hear the apology in Derek’s voice.
Pathetic was the best descriptor for our tree. Charlie Brown would have been proud.
Later as Gabi napped, I arranged the plastic nativity pieces at the base of the tree and looked over at the boxes of decorations that wouldn’t make it out. Our tree was maxed out with the five ornaments already on it, the branches bowing to the floor from their weight. I studied our decorated branch-tree with the same single string of lights that had adorned the plant the year before and wondered why nothing seemed to ever live up to expectations.
I rubbed my tummy and remembered the true magic of the first Christmas baby, fully human and fully divine. Such a simple act of becoming one of us, and yet so heavy with the burdens of the world.
As a child, I’d assumed the person missing at the Christmas table was my father. But maybe I was off mark all those years; maybe it was really Emmanuel. Maybe any holiday meant for a holy remembrance that we forget to remember feels incomplete. I was so busy trying to make the perfect Christmas, I was forgetting to remember Emmanuel, God with us. I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled and remembered.