Hannah's Gift

by Maria Housden

  Now Hannah was a vision of loveliness, kneeling on her bed in front of the dollhouse she had received from Santa. She was wearing a lace headband around her bald head and a new ivory satin dress that would have been perfect for the flower girl at a Mafia wedding. That is why I had known she would love it.

  The night before, on Christmas Eve, Claude had come to stay with her so I could run out and buy a few last-minute gifts. It was the first time I had stepped out of the hospital in three weeks. As I had stood in a store at the mall, holding up the Mafia Christmas dress, a woman browsing through a rack of little boys’ trousers noticed.

  “Are you thinking of buying that dress?” she asked.

  “Well, yes, but it’s pretty expensive,” I said sheepishly.

  The woman smiled. “I have three boys,” she said emphatically. “BUY THAT DRESS!”

  Now, looking at Hannah, I was glad I had. It was the first time she had worn anything besides a hospital gown in two and a half weeks. She had even buzzed the nurses’ station and told them to come to see. Compared to how she had looked days before, she looked positively radiant. Although her face and arms were bloated from having so many fluids passing through her and her eyes looked dull and sleepy, she was sitting up. Her skin was less yellow, and only lightly speckled from the residue of her rash.

  Claude, Will, and I grinned at each other from behind our paper masks. The three of us were also wearing plastic shower caps, long-sleeved hospital gowns, rubber gloves, and elastic-edged booties. The masks constantly slipped off our noses no matter how creatively we tied them behind our heads. Hannah called the outfits “space suits.” Everyone, except her, had to wear one. Her immune system was still so compromised that the slightest infection could kill her.

  It felt so good to be together. I felt as if my cup was running over. Everything that would have seemed ordinary a month ago now seemed as miraculous as a resurrection. Claude seemed to think so, too. He was hopping forward and backward, tipping his camera, snapping pictures.

  “I can’t wait to show everyone how great she looks,” Claude said.

  “Hey, you two,” I said to Will and Hannah, “Daddy and I have some news to share with you.”

  The two of them looked up. Claude reached for my hand and squeezed.

  “Our family is going to have a new baby.”

  “When?” Will and Hannah cried in unison.

  “In July,” Claude said.

  The two of them squealed and hugged each other.

  “Wow,” said Will, “this is the best Christmas present ever. Hannah, don’t you think it would be really cool if it’s a baby brother?”

  Hannah frowned. “ I don’t think that will work, Will,” she said. “I want to name him Briar Rose, so he has to be a girl.”

  “Well, if his name is Briar Rose, I hope he’s a girl, too,” Will said.

  While Claude continued to take more pictures, I let my eyes and heart be filled with all the joy in the room. What we were sharing could never be captured on the surface of a glossy photograph. This joy didn’t need to be documented; it already had a permanent home in our hearts.

  Communion with Dr. Tomato-head

  ABOUT A WEEK AFTER CHRISTMAS, HANNAH’S TRANSPLANT doctor entered her room with big news.

  “You can have anything you want to eat for dinner tonight, Hannah-banana,” Dr. Tomato-head said.

  Dr. Tomato-head’s real name was Dr. Brockstein. Hannah had started calling him Dr. Tomato-head when he insisted on calling her Hannah-banana.

  He was obviously pleased with his generous offer. Hannah looked at him thoughtfully. She was wearing her Christmas dress with her red shoes.

  “It’s true, Hannah,” I said. “Your body has worked really hard to get strong enough for you to be able to eat again. You can have anything you want.”

  She screwed up her face and tapped the side of her head with her finger.

  “Hmmm …” she said, closing her eyes to think. “Do you have any hard rolls?” she asked.

  The doctor and I looked at each other, surprised.

  “I think we do,” he said, “and if we don’t, we’ll get some.”

  “Thank you,” Hannah said, folding her hands in her lap.

  “Is that all you want?” he asked.

  “No, actually, there’s one more thing,” Hannah said. Dr. Tomato-head’s face brightened with obvious relief.

  “I would like some grape juice, too, please.”

  “Are you sure that’s all?” he asked, his brow slightly wrinkled in confusion. “You could have pizza, ice cream, chocolate chip cookies … anything!”

  Hannah peered at him, slightly annoyed now.

  “I want a hard roll and grape juice,” she said, holding her hands out, palm side up in exasperation, “like Communion at church,” she added, as if it were so obvious that we were dolts for not seeing it.

  She turned to me. “Mom, will you help me take off my dress? I don’t want to spill juice on it.”

  Ten minutes later, Dr. Tomato-head, two nurses, and I watched as Hannah slowly and thoughtfully tore the roll into pieces and dipped each one into the glass of grape juice before putting it in her mouth. Oblivious to us, she chewed, swallowed, and stared silently into the slip of twilight sky outside her window. I wanted to kneel in front of her and kiss her feet.

  Two hours later, she rang the nurses and asked for sliced tomatoes with mustard.

  Change of Mind, Change of Heart

  HANNAH’S HEAD WAS NOW COMPLETELY BALD; THE LAST few wisps of hair had finally dropped off. We had been in the transplant unit for four and a half weeks. Both of us had had enough; we were more than ready to go home.

  I handed her a red plastic cup, filled with apple juice. She took a sip.

  “Nope, it’s not right,” she said, handing it back to me.

  I couldn’t believe it. I had been doing it, at her request, the same way for days: apple juice in the red cup, milk in the green, Pepsi in the yellow, and water in the blue.

  “It’s not right,” she repeated, looking evenly at me.

  “Which one isn’t right?” I asked.

  “All of them,” she said.

  I wanted to throw the whole lot against the wall. I breathed slowly and counted to ten. Usually, it was my greatest joy to let Hannah decide which beverage she wanted in each cup. While some people seemed concerned that I might be spoiling her, I didn’t agree. I saw it as a way to preserve some sense of Hannah’s dignity. So many things were literally being forced down her throat, she needed to have control over something. Today, though, I felt more exhausted than willing.

  “Hannah, this is exactly the way you’ve asked me to do it every other day.”

  “I know,” she said, folding her hands on her lap, “but today,” she paused, and leaned forward, drawing her words out as if she were speaking to a particularly thick-headed child, “ I changed my mind.”

  My exasperation melted away as I threw my head back and laughed. She had said it as if changing one’s mind and running the risk of pissing someone off was a new concept to me. She was right; it was.

  Savage Joy

  NOW THAT HER COUNTS WERE HIGH ENOUGH, HANNAH WAS allowed to venture out of her room. No longer content to stroll or wander, what she loved most these days was speed.

  “Let’s go for a ride,” Hannah said.

  We pulled her bike from its parking spot under the anteroom sink and pushed it into the center of the hall. The two-wheeler was hot pink and purple and sported a pair of training wheels. The Make-A-Wish Foundation had left it for her on Christmas Eve. Hannah stuffed her pink blanket into the basket on the front and climbed onto the seat. I gave her a slight push. Stretching her legs as far as they could reach, she began to pedal. As she picked up speed on the linoleum floor, I ran along beside her, the IV pole careening. The bike rocked from side to side, its sparkling handlebar streamers flying.

  “Hang on, Hannah,” I shrieked as she lifted both hands to wave to the nurses at the nurses’ station
, who grinned and waved as we passed.

  “You’re going to wear your mom out, Hannah!” one of them cried.

  Hannah threw her head back and laughed. I laughed, too. It was more joy than I could fit in my heart to see her having so much fun.

  “Look out below!” she shouted as we rounded the corner by the elevators. She coasted to a stop and hopped off her bike to turn it around. As I untangled and readjusted the IV tubes for the return lap, I noticed a small crowd of people weeping and whispering outside a rarely used room at the end of the hall.

  “What’s happening down there?” I asked a nurse who had broken away from the group and walked toward me.

  “The little boy in that room was hit by a car this morning and just died,” she said softly.

  I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach and, at the same time, lucky in a way that I would have hated to admit out loud. I couldn’t imagine losing Hannah to death so suddenly and unexpectedly, without time to prepare her or myself for what was coming, without a chance to savor every last drop of her before she was gone. Had this boy’s parents even had a chance to say good-bye?

  No matter how intense and frightening the months since Hannah’s diagnosis had been, I felt grateful for every moment I had shared with her. Even the darkest ones had contained slivers of savage joy. I now knew that there was something simple yet exquisite about the gift of time; time to savor, time to remember, time to say good-bye.

  Nurse Katie and the Tea Party

  HANNAH AND I CAME HOME THE FIRST WEEK IN JANUARY. She returned to preschool a week later, wearing her Christmas dress and a black velvet hat with a garish pink bow that kept slipping off her bald head and knocking the paper hospital mask off her nose. Her friends at school had exclaimed over her dress and hardly seemed to notice her lack of hair.

  Today, Hannah was wearing her Christmas dress again, because, as she had explained to me, “this is a very, very special occasion.” Nurse Katie was coming for tea.

  Katie was one of Hannah’s favorite nurses; she worked at the hospital where Hannah had her surgeries. In her early twenties, barely five feet tall, with short dark hair and dancing eyes, Katie had never seemed distracted by something else when she was with Hannah. She always seemed to genuinely care how Hannah was doing, and was never too busy to be silly.

  The two of them used to play their favorite game every time Katie came into Hannah’s hospital room.

  “Is there anything I can get for you, little Miss Hannah?” Katie would begin, trying to look as serious as she could. Hannah would grin and fold her hands in her lap.

  “Yes, there is,” she would say, barely able to finish the sentence before she burst out laughing. “Nurse Katie, could I please have a tomatie?”

  Katie would lean toward Hannah and, in a solemn, serious voice, say, “I’m so sorry, ma’am, but the Katies have eaten all the tomaties, although we still have plenty of bananas for little Miss Hannahs.”

  Now, Hannah was setting the tea party table herself. Walking slowly and carefully, she carried an eclectic assortment of china plates and cups, one at a time, from the kitchen to the coffee table in the living room. She ordered the cups and plates into a lopsided circle and set a white plastic daisy and vase from her Barbie tea set in the center. Three leftover birthday napkins, a Winnie-the-Pooh and two Little Mermaids, were joined by one that said “Happy New Year,” lined up end to end “so we can see the pictures on them,” Hannah explained.

  She had decided we should pour the tea from the “grown-ups’” pot. The one from her Barbie set was already stuffed with an impressive collection of Band-Aids. Because we used so many of them, we had become aficionados. Buying anything but the “regular” ones, we now had boxes of them in every size, pattern, and color.

  As I watched Hannah arrange and rearrange the items on the table, I held myself back from making any suggestions. It wasn’t easy. There was a part of me, I realized, that was overly critical of everything, that wanted to teach people, especially my children, about the “right” way to do things.

  Hannah was smiling and humming, every once in a while stepping back to survey her work. She was in no hurry, and seemed completely unconcerned about the way a tea party is “supposed” to look. I watched her quietly, savoring the joy she was experiencing and the care she was giving to everything that she was doing. I longed to bring the same attention to the busy-ness in my every day, to do something simply for the joy of doing it, without worrying whether people noticed or liked it.

  Joy, I realized then, is not concerned about being messy, mismatched, or unloved. If I was serious about living life more fully, I was going to have to let go of my need for everything, including myself and others, to be perfect.

  Joy in a Jeep

  I HAD TAKEN DOWN THE CURTAINS AND OPENED ALL THE windows, letting the warm spring breeze chase winter’s mustiness out of the house. Claude was outside, raking and seeding the yard. Will and Hannah were helping me wipe woodwork and furniture with slippery lemon oil. We made our way through the downstairs and had just started on Will’s room when I heard a vehicle pull into our driveway, its horn honking loudly. I didn’t even have to look to know who it was. The kids didn’t, either.

  “Pastor LJ,” they screamed, running to the window.

  I heard Laurajane’s laugh and got to the window just in time to see her blowing kisses from the front seat of her topless, bright red jeep.

  “Hey, that looks cool,” Will said, leaning dangerously out the window.

  “It is cool.” Laurajane laughed. She lifted her Phillies cap off her head. “Hey, what are you guys doing? Can you go for a ride?”

  “We’re cleaning,” Hannah said, holding her dust rag up for Laurajane to see.

  “Cleaning???” Laurajane shrieked, as Will and Hannah laughed. “You tell your mom there is absolutely, positively no cleaning allowed on a beautiful day like this. You two get down here right away and tell your mom she’d better come, too!”

  Will and Hannah dropped their cloths and flew down the stairs, throwing themselves into Laurajane’s arms. Planting a loud kiss on each of their cheeks, she lifted them over the side of the jeep and buckled both of them in. As the four of us backed down the driveway, Laurajane beeped the horn. Claude paused, grinned, and waved.

  The sun was high in the sky and warm on our faces. Laurajane stepped on the gas.

  “Faster!” Hannah yelled from the backseat as the wind whipped through the open jeep.

  Laurajane and I glanced at each other and grinned. Her eyes were bright and wild. I knew mine were, too. Laurajane stepped on the gas. The jeep shot forward. We all whooped with glee. This was the most fun I’d had in a long time.

  “Hey, Mom!” Hannah screamed. “I can feel the wind in my hair!”

  I spun around to look. Sure enough, I could see it for the first time in the bright sunlight. Hannah’s bald head was now covered with the slightest brush of down, and every wisp of it was standing on end in the stiff breeze. Hannah ran her hands over her scalp.

  “I have hair,” she screamed. “I have hair!”

  “Yahoo!” Will whooped, leaning across the seat to give her a hug.

  I started to cry. Laurajane did, too.

  I mouthed the words “Thank you, thank you.”

  She reached across the front seat and gave my hand a squeeze. As we hurtled around a bend, Hannah shrieked again.

  “Pastor LJ, Mommy. That’s where I’m going to live!”

  I looked where she was pointing. There, on the corner, was the pinkest house I had ever seen; every inch of it was painted light rose, except for its deep maroon trim.

  “Yuck, Hannah,” Will yelled. “That house is totally pink!”

  Hannah giggled and screamed in his ear. “I’m going to have a pink car with no top on it, too.”

  Will shook his head and rolled his eyes.

  “Girls,” he said.

  Nothing Special

  SUNSET LICKED LIGHT FROM THE SKY. IT HAD BEEN another warm
spring day. The air smelled ripe and muddy. Claude and I held hands and walked while Will and Hannah ran ahead. I was now six months pregnant, and I could feel the baby shift and settle into the rhythm of my stride.

  Will’s friend David was in the driveway of his house, playing basketball with his dad. Alan and Claude had coached a Little League team together and sometimes played pickup games of basketball with other dads on Tuesday evenings. David’s little brother Michael, who was a few months older than Hannah, was squatting in the front yard, poking a stick into the dirt. Will cupped his hands and shouted to David, who grinned and hurled a long pass to him. Will caught the ball, dribbled to the hoop, and missed. Hannah, meanwhile, found a stick and joined Michael in the dirt. Alan saw Claude and me and waved. By the time Claude and I reached them, Alan, ducking and wheeling around the two older boys, had faked a few misses of his own.

  “I need some help here, buddy,” he called out.

  Claude laughed and joined in. MaryAnn, Alan’s wife, poked her head out the front door.

  “I was wondering what all the commotion was about,” she said, grinning.

  She motioned for me to join her on the front step.

  “Hey, Michael,” she shouted. “What are you two up to?”

  “We’re looking for bugs,” Hannah said.

  “And worms,” Michael added.

  “Yeah, and worms,” Hannah said.

  “Oh, great,” MaryAnn said, rolling her eyes. “I guess that means a second bath for both of you tonight.”

  It was right then that it happened. It was such a strange and glorious thing that if I hadn’t experienced it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible. I forgot that Hannah was sick!