Under the Tree (short story)
Under the Tree
The Christmas season started with such promise. David came home from work early on December the 8th with the tree tied to the roof of the car. We put on Christmas music and talked about the gifts that might be under it the following year. By then Gretchen would be nine months old.
“I wonder will she be the kind of girl who likes dolls or will she be more of a skateboard type? he asked.
“Well, not at nine months!” I laughed, “but I always wanted something with wheels, so maybe she’ll be like me?”
We knew Gretchen was a girl from about twenty weeks, but we kept it to ourselves.
“It’s going to be so exciting wrapping presents on Christmas Eve for our own child,” David said, hanging tiny wooden trinkets we had bought at a Christmas market in London. And when we finally turned on the twinkling, coloured lights it was just perfect.
For days I came home from work, turned on the heat, the kettle and then the tree. I liked to stand for a few minutes with the steaming cup in my hand, drinking in the atmosphere, and sometimes Gretchen would kick as if to remind me she was still there. Now, that same tree looks like a mess of foliage and baubles representing nothing but failure.
A bundle of letters and cards were piling up in the hall for a week or so but I haven’t felt like looking at them till now. The first one I open says “Heartfelt Sympathy” and a handwritten note falls out. It’s from a woman I barely know. She tells me that she is reaching out to us because she knows the pain of losing a baby, saying she lost her baby boy fifteen years previously. She offers to come and see me, if I’d like that, and I think I would, but not yet.
There is no birth cert for a baby born without life. No death cert either. But I want the world to recognise that a short, but perfect life was lived in the darkness of my womb, and I’m grateful that those who never kissed her perfect feet, or felt her fleeting warmth, have taken time to acknowledge her.
I make a scrap-book of memories. I paste in the scans – first the ones showing lovely, steady growth. Black and white, grainy images with visible hands and feet and face profiles. And then the one that confirms the worst. After the delivery, the nurses gave me a little footprint and a tiny bag of ginger hair. I glue them in beside Gretchen’s wrist-band, barely wide enough to go around my thumb. Then I cut the messages from the cards and letters. Any scrap of proof goes in and, in a way, I feel like I am pasting myself back together again. Then I cover it in the most beautiful wrapping paper I can find and place it under the tree.
